What are the needs of Five Year Olds?

An article that I have found helpful in homeschooling our five year old, based on child development and academic readiness.

Avery's first day of preschool

Avery had her first day of preschool last Tuesday and today was her first full day of preschool. (The first week preschool was only a half day.) She was apprehensive at first, but today she did really well and when I picked her up she had a huge smile on her face because they had just finished playing a game with the parachute!

Avery goes to Mollie Michie preschool, a co-op preschool, so I was actually in her classroom for her first day helping, and then Emili Hays was co-oping on the 2nd day of preschool and she knows Emili really well, so that really helped ease her into preschool life :-) It's nice Emili's little boy, Oliver, is in her class. Today she ran over to Ollie and gave him a hug and said, "Goodbye, Ollie!".

Kyla and I enjoyed a full day of homeschooling today while Avery was at preschool. She practiced writing her numbers 6 through 10 in her Handwriting without Tears book. Then we baked a pumpkin raisin cake to kick off the beginning of September. Pete taught Kyla measurements this weekend and she was able to hand me the 1/3 cup when I asked and would tell me how many scoops I needed to make 1 cup. She's a fast learner, for sure. After baking, she was off to catch crickets from the backyard in put them in her bug catcher. To finish off the morning, she knitted on her knitting tower and I almost finished knitting a pink scarf for her to wear this fall. This afternoon was Kyla's first day of gymnastics class and she loved learning cartwheels and handstands and swinging on the uneven bar. She met some other little girls her age, one of which lives just down the street from us.

What a blessing of a day. I cannot stop thanking God for my wonderful family. I love my husband and girls to pieces, and though we're only at the beginning, we're loving homeschooling. I love being able to be the one to listen to Kyla read her first sentence..what a blessing to be able to stay at home and teach our girls. I've also been thanking the Lord over and over for how wonderful Avery's skin has been since our move to Charlottesville. We feel like we have a big piece of our family back. Everyday life became very difficult and stressful when her eczema was bad in Charlotte and here she spends most of her days just like other little girls: playing, laughing, singing songs, dancing, doing crafts, etc. She spends less and less time scratching. Life is so much better. Thanks for praying for her and for our move.

Carter's Mountain

Carter's Mountain is just about 3 minutes away from our home, and so the other day after Pete got home from work, we packed a picnic dinner and went to the mountain to pick the first apples of the season! We've enjoyed baking apple crisp and eating lots and lots of very tasty apples. The girls LOVED picking the apples off the tree and playing peek-a-boo in the apple orchard. I became a little obsessed with getting the prettiest, reddest apples which happened to all be at the very top of the trees, of course. So, Kyla was our main apple picker and climbed up on daddy's shoulders to get the best apples of the bunch! I attempted to climb some of the trees and managed to get one or two from the top...it was a very fun day with temperatures being a very pleasant 70 degrees! Then on Tuesday (baking day), Kyla helped chop the apples for our apple crisp. I think eating it was her favorite part, though :-)

Nature walk collection

This past Friday, on our "nature day", we went on a long walk around the neighborhood. Kyla has been really loving the themes to our days. On our walk Kyla collected a bunch of favorite things she saw along the way. I thought she was going to draw them, but she had other ideas, like making 3-D art. :-)

Nature Study: Butterflies

Kyla and Avery have had a lot of "catching up" to do since we've moved into our new house. We lived in an apartment until Kyla was 3 1/2 in Los Angeles and so running around outside all day in her barefeet didn't happen very much unless we were at the park. We were in Charlotte until Kyla was 5 and Avery was almost 3, and even though they were outside more, our small little backyard wasn't very "exciting" for them...not much to explore. Just a patch of grass. Adding to that, Avery's outdoor allergies, we spend a lot of time inside.

Well, Kyla has been spending about 70% of her days outside in our big backyard catching butterflies all day long. She's also caught a praying mantis, and other little bugs that roam around. Then, she comes inside and draws them in her nature journal and this is the science portion of her homeschooling for kindergarten this year: observation. Simply soaking in and absorbing all of the nature around her and then drawing pictures of what she sees. She loves every minute of this and I do too!