Highlights

So far history has been a hit. We are reading Story of the World: Ancient History, volume one of a set of four world history books written for kids Anya’s age. The book itself is a light, story-driven tour of ancient history, and I also bought an activity guide which has tons of recommended extra books and crafts. 

We’ve made: 

- a model of the Nile delta in a giant pan 

- sugar cube pyramids 

- cuneiform writing in clay 

- Sumerian clay seals 

We really liked a library book called Ancient Egyptians and their Neighbors. A section on Mesopotamia talked about architecture, art, clothing, food, and work, and included some projects. Anya picked a weaving project. Mesopotamian weaving was done vertically. 

Anya is keeping a history notebook—about once a week she narrates to me what she remembers on a certain topic, and I write it down. It is fun to hear what she remembers and she’s interested enough to narrate long paragraphs without prompting, telling me “no period there, use a comma” or “that’s the end of the sentence!” She was happily surprised and proud of herself last week when she recalled for her narration the names “Tigris and Euphrates Rivers.” 

Writing has been fun too. Each lesson involves listening to a passage that I read from a novel (classic children’s stories usually), answering comprehension questions in complete sentences (all oral), and then copying a sentence or two from the passage (the sentences practice different elements of style and punctuation). She always asks to do the writing lesson first! 

Alina’s favorite preschool activities have been the ones with Froot Loops, during our colors unit. The only activity I had planned for them was making Froot Loops necklaces, but she started asking for Froot Loop activities every day, so I came up with a bunch. Draw a number card and count out that many Froot Loops… arrange them into a rainbow… use them to “trace” letters… 

In a lot of ways she is beyond the level of the preschool curriculum, which I’m reusing from Anya’s preschool year. But it has fun and simple craft ideas that she likes, and great book suggestions, and catchy little songs and poems for each unit, so I’m just picking and choosing as we go. She gets so much practice with counting and letters, sorting and following instructions, etc., in daily life. 

One other highlight to mention has been memorizing poems together! We usually work on it a little bit every morning. I love watching how quickly they learn, and how pleased they are to recite the words once they learned them. The last lines of our most recent poem are “The world’s on fire in the cold clear air / Autumn, autumn everywhere.” Tim took the girls up Sauk Mountain last week and when they got back, Anya told me, “Mom, it was like our poem! I was thinking of our poem!”