We started right in on the first grade reading curriculum this year. Hannah can read most of her books on her own now, with limited help from me. I think her preschool teacher will be shocked when she realizes how well she can read this year.
Her teacher will also be surprised when she sees Hannah's handwriting. This is another area in which Hannah has grown tremendously over the summer. Her letters are all recognizable now, with no help from me. She is still working on keeping the letters on the lines and making them face the right direction, but she is doing so much better!
In math, we just started basic addition. She completely gets the concept, but she is still counting to get her answers. Memorization is something that will have to come with time, though.
Finally, we are having a blast with the unit studies. I really don't think Hannah even realizes she is "working" when we do these. We began this year by looking at a globe and talking about water and continents and how the earth rotates on its axis. Then, we identified North America, the United States, and Ohio. Our first major unit is North America, and we are going to be reading books and learning geography and science based on those books.
Because Nana and Bubba traveled to the Grand Canyon this summer, we started by focusing on that. We read a beautifully illustrated kids book called "I See Something Grand," found the Grand Canyon on a map, talked about the animals in the canyon, discussed erosion and how it works, and looked at the pictures from Nana and Bubba's trip. Both kids loved it!
Today, we began one of our major ongoing projects for the year, as well. With lots of help, Hannah covered a large Styrofoam ball with paper mache. Once it dries, she's going to paint it blue, and then we will glue each continent onto the globe she has made as we discuss that continent. Because the core is Styrofoam, we can use straight pins to label the specific locations we focus on. Hannah had a blast getting so messy today! I'll have to take some pictures once the painting begins to demonstrate the work in progress...
Poor Ben... he wants so badly to be involved in whatever Hannah is doing, but he doesn't have the patience for any worksheets quite yet. I am hoping that preschool helps with that a little. He always reads with us, and then, he'll sometimes draw on blank paper or use his safety scissors to cut the paper into a hundred tiny pieces. I know that's good practice for him, since Hannah couldn't use scissors until she was at least 4. He's also become obsessed with his letters. He loves taking a set of laminated cards with letters on them and tracing the letters again and again with a dry erase marker. He actually does a very good job staying on the lines, too!
The poor little guy is such a perfectionist, though! He cries and wants to give up if he's tracing a rectangle and the line is a little wobbly instead of perfectly straight. And he gets mad if his letters don't look exactly right! I keep telling him that he's doing exceptionally well for a 3 year old, and that it takes lots of practice to draw straight lines and perfect letters, but he still gets very distraught. I don't know where he could have gotten that trait... ha, ha.
I'll finish with Hannah's first unassisted journal entry (well... except for adding one apostrophe and having her turn a few of her a's and p's around):
Translation: "I didn't like the roller coaster, but I did like all the other rides at the fair."
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