Week One

I can't believe this post has been sitting in saved drafts since May 15th! I am so bad. :(


So, we've just finished our first "week" of scheduled homeschooling. Why is "week" in quotes? Well, it took us longer than a week to finish. Jasmine got sick towards the beginning of the week, Monday night, so we didn't finish until this week (that would be the week of May 15th.)

A couple of weeks ago I discovered Brightly Beaming Resources. I can't remember how I found it, but it took me a couple of days to look through the website. I wish I had discovered it before. It is great! And I'm not saying that lightly. I have been looking for some sort of guide to use with homeschooling before Jasmine was born.

The curriculum starts at three months old and goes up to eleven years of age. For those of you that are secular homeschooling, like we are, the infant and toddler sections have bible verses, but they are very easy to leave out and don't interfere with other things being taught.

There are also sections that are not complete, weeks 22-36 under Sound of the Week, Story of the Week only has one lesson, Science of the Week only has plans for 7 of the 80 books listed, (but it gives good ideas what to do when you get to that stage), only 3 of the Country of the Week (which can be used with the letter of the week) are done.

So, we started with "Steps to Reading" for ages 2-7 years old. We did week one of the "Preparatory Curriculum," (found here.)

Each week has a theme, week one's theme is cows and here is an example of the "Learning Poster" that you can build for/with your child covering the weeks ideas and activities.

Monday: I showed Jasmine pictures of cows and we practiced a bit of mooing. We read few board books that had cows in them. I printed out this image of a cow and calf for our poster.

Tuesday: the shape was square, and we ate a few square foods, like crackers and cookies.

Wednesday: was the letter "A." Jasmine made an Alien A using the letter "A" and some water colors. I got the idea from No Time For Flash Cards.


We also colored an "A" worksheet that had an upper and lower case "A" with pictures of things that started with "A" from Mommy Nature.com. Here is the worksheet.

Thursday: was number one. I found Five Fish in a Fishbowl from First-School. I colored it with crayons, and we will add a fish a week.

Friday: the nursery rhyme for Friday was Hey Diddle Diddle. I printed out a .pdf from Laura B. Smolkin, found here.

Here is a view of our Learning Poster, sorry it is so blurry.


And a picture of our bulletin board,


I do think this is a good series, but I think if we do it again I will change the themes to fit the letter we are studying that week (i.e. A is for Astronaut or something like that.)

We did week two in early July, hopefully I will post it quicker than it took me to do week one.