LHFHG Unit 1 - Continued

I'm posting this entry almost two months later!  It is amazing how much I forget if I don't post something immediately.  And I even had plenty of pictures to help jog my memory!

Annabelle, you are a handful my dear!  It was after today's lesson, Unit 1 - Day 4, that I posted an entry on the Heart of Dakota forum titled "Dawdling Child Drags out Lessons" to seek advice from more experienced homeschooling moms. 

For today's lesson, we pulled out a blue and brown piece of construction paper.  You wrote the number five on the blue piece of paper and the number six on the brown piece of paper.  I called out names of land animals and water animals and you were instructed to hop, crawl, creep, swim, etc. across the blue paper for water animals and the brown paper for land animals.  The numbers written on the papers represented the fifth (blue for the fish and birds) and sixth (brown for the land animals) days of God's creation.

Being the dawdling and creative child that you are, you promptly left the room when I called out "flamingo."  And you came back dressed appropriately as a flamingo!  It is no wonder it takes us 45 minutes to get through a typical 15 minute lesson on many days!

LHFHG Unit 1 - Kindergarten!

We began our official Kindergarten journey almost two weeks ago on Monday, May 14th.  Unfortunately, the stomach bug from Saturday turned into strep throat by Friday.  Our first day of Kindergarten was a huge success, but then the illness got the best of both of us, and I wanted to throw in the towel completely on everything, including being a mom!  It is always a huge relief to realize the exhaustion is a result of an illness because it is during those times that I doubt everything including homeschooling, expanding our family and mommyhood.

Annabelle's favorite part of school is storytime!  There is no question on that one.  My plan is to complete Little Hearts for His Glory half-speed with Annabelle.  I do, however, plan to do the Phonics and Fine Motor Skills full-speed (daily).  And based on Annabelle's interest, I suspect we'll be doing storytime at full-speed as well.  She LOVES the Thornton Burgess books!

This week Annabelle learned that there are seven continents, and she learned the names of all seven continents using the "Rhymes in Motion."  Here the girls are hopping like kangaroos to Australia singing to the tune of "Skip to My Lou."  Annabelle had originally grabbed the two bunnies that Sophia is holding to use as her kangaroo and joey.  She then lovingly shared with her little sister.

We are using the recommended Singapore Earlybird Kindergarten Mathematics 2A and 2B for Annabelle's Kindergarten year.  There are a lot of hands-on activities included in the Little Hearts for His Glory guide to coincide with the Singapore lessons.  This week she traced her numbers and then placed the corresponding number of stickers on each traced number.  This is definitely not new math  to her at all, but I understand that Singapore advances fairly quickly in the next few years, so we are going to follow the guide for now in hopes that we build a solid foundation for math in these early years.

I also filled a Ziplock bag with dishwashing liquid, and she used this to practice writing her numbers as she counted her My Little Ponies.  We were supposed to only practice writing the numbers one through five, but we had twelve ponies to work with, so she counted and formed her numbers up to twelve.  Again, we are just covering the basics for Annabelle, but Heart of Dakota makes learning so much fun that she isn't bored with the activities.  And, yes, she climbed up onto our dining room table to do math because "Grandmama let me do it."

Annabelle (and Mommy too!) also really enjoyed the Artistic Expression box for this week.  We walked our pencils in lines in large motions on white paper, and we then colored each section created by the lines using black and gray colored pencils and/or crayons.  It created the look of a collage.  Then, we drew an outline of a cross on yellow paper and glued it to our collage.  Annabelle added a picture of Jesus dying on the cross.  The key idea for this lesson was that Jesus is at the center of history.  We really had a lot of fun being artistic this week!

For our dramatic play this week, the person holding the flashlight in the middle was pretending to be the sun, and the person circling the "sun" was the "earth."  The third being just had to join in on the fun since whenever Daddy lays down on his back, one of the little people in our house always finds it necessary to jump up and down on his belly!  As the "earth" completed a circle around the "sun," we sang "Happy Birthday Dear Earth...You are now [one, two, three, etc.] years old."  How novel is that?  Heart of Dakota adds the creativity and fun to our daily lessons!  And this lesson coincided with our history lesson for the day.

I love this next picture where Daddy is pointing to himself because he is now "three years old!"  Even Daddy gets to join in on the fun!

Annabelle also enjoyed memorizing her Bible verse for this week.  Since we are doing Heart of Dakota at half-speed, I have added in a daily devotional from Little Visits with God by Allan Hart Jahsmann and Martin P. Simon.  This book was actually mine when I was a young child.  They were dear to my heart as a child, and I actually requested that my mom pass these onto me when Annabelle was a baby.  She has enjoyed them ever since.  We use this devotional on the days that we aren't using Devotions for the Children's Hour by Kenneth N. Taylor.  We are also trying to get Daddy involved in the memory of scripture by including him in the daily scripture memory games.  

Stay tuned...I am going to update this post on our 1st week of Kindergarten over the next few days, so hopefully you'll see some new pictures and text to this blog post.

Strep Throat

Annabelle and I both have strep throat.  This is yet another first for Annabelle (and I wish last, but that is doubtful)!  Annabelle has apparently had it since last Saturday or at least that is when the symptoms began to show.  Though I didn't realize until yesterday when my own sore throat and fever were not lessening that we both probably had strep.  (I started getting sick myself on Wednesday).  I checked her throat and noticed it was red and swollen with white spots and I was completely convinced.  I called the doctor immediately without hesitation which is very odd for me to do as I very much do not like to spend $80+ to find out my children have a virus.

I forgot how absolutely horrible and painful this can be.  Though apparently I am the only one in complete misery!  If only adults could fight illnesses like a child...running full speed ahead with a temperature of 100+ degrees with only the occasional complaint of a sore throat.

Annabelle's symptoms started last Saturday when she woke up at 4 a.m. complaining of a tummy ache and sore throat.  She then spent the next six hours vomiting.  And then she seemed fine besides the typical puniness.  I thought her throat had been sore from the vomiting since she only had acid on her stomach when she first started vomiting.  Apparently I was wrong!

She gradually got better, then she got puny again after her ballet dress rehearsal on Wednesday.  But she still didn't complain of a sore throat again.  She even performed beautifully for her ballet recital on Thursday!  I guess the dose of Tylenol an hour before the recital did the trick.  I never would have exposed all of those children if I had known she had strep throat!  I really didn't understand what was going on because the only time I ever noticed a fever was Saturday night when she woke up from a night terror.

But now we are both attempting to recover with our free meds of Amoxicillin from Publix!  Thank goodness for free prescriptions!  There is nothing worse than paying $118.45 for a visit to the doctor for yourself to get a prescription when you already know you have strep throat because your daughter was already diagnosed earlier that morning.  The kicker is that my rapid strep test actually showed up negative!  Fortunately the doctor still prescribed the meds since he said it looked just like strep throat.

Annabelle's pediatrician also checked Sophia which I wasn't counting on.  The rapid strep test showed up negative for her.  I should have just refused as that will just cost me another office visit for her as well.  Apparently, children under the age of 3 rarely get strep throat.  It is more common in children between the ages of 5 and 10 years of age.

Aaahhh!  The joys of a school age child!  $250+ later!

Though I sound like I am complaining the entire post, I do actually see the silver lining.  I am still in a lot of pain myself and my patience with the kids is absolutely horrible, but I know if Annabelle had not shared the love (as the lab tech at the pediatrician's office asked her), I would have never known she had strep throat until she only got worse.  I guess God does work in mysterious ways!

Box Day!

In the homeschooling world, when new curriculum arrives in the mail, it is known as box day!  It is at this time that the homeschooling parent and child get to sift through all of the new materials.
We celebrated our Box Day today!  I finally decided that Annabelle was placed in a guide a little too young for her.  It pained me to move on up as Little Hands to Heaven is such a sweet guide.  It would have been perfect when Annabelle was 3 or 4 years old, but she needs to be challenged just a little bit more, and I could sense the boredom with her "school Bible."

So I placed my order Tuesday evening, it shipped early Wednesday morning, and we received it today!  Heart of Dakota's customer service is exceptional!

Annabelle has been suffering from a stomach bug today, but she was still so anxious to open the box despite her aching tummy.  She didn't want to wait!

Despite all of the new goodies and new chapter books (and she loves her some chapter books), she was a bit disappointed that her new "school Bible" had not yet arrived.  I ordered the Bible from a different vendor, so it should arrive by Monday or Tuesday.  But, she mentioned that she is more excited about her new Bible than any of the rest of it.  Annabelle loves her some Bible!  If you ask her, it is truly her favorite book.  The girl cannot get enough of it!

Here are pictures of our Box Day for Heart of Dakota's Little Hearts for His Glory.  I am so very anxious to get started with this new curriculum for her official start to Kindergarten.  I really think she is going to like it.

And the placement of the box on top of her head was completely her idea!  But it made for a really cute picture!  Crazy girl!