After getting home from our Christmas and New Years trip to Colorado, we were glad to be settled at home for a bit. Routine is such a good thing for both kids and it makes each day a lot easier when the kids know what to expect.
Kamy has picked up a new little giggle. It is super sweet and it’s a little, high pitched, short giggle when she thinks something is funny. She didn’t do it for very long, and it was nearly impossible to prompt, so we didn’t catch it on video. Regardless, it always made Keller smile whenever he heard it.
Keller and Kamy have started reading the first Harry Potter book together in the evening before bedtime. They usually read one chapter a night and Kamy loves it! She’s doing a great job following the story line and can summarize the chapter for me when I put her to bed. It’s turning into a special time for Kamy and Daddy. Caden likes to listen from the catwalk, which we have been allowing as long as he is quiet, though the actual story is less important to him.
Kamy got to spend a couple of days with Min — to make a new quilt! This one involved a lot more piecing and Kamy did awesome. She helped make every block and Min sewed them together at the end. They started with a quilt panel of ballerinas in colorful tutus and built it from there. Kamy loved going through Min’s fabric stash picking out fabric and they even went to the quilt store for more. The quilt grew in anticipated size a couple of times and Min had to go back to the store for more fabric twice! Kamy loves her new quilt and she sleeps under it every night.
One afternoon in January we had a play date with another of the girls from dance class. She is also home schooled and they live about 4 minutes away, so we made it a priority to get together. Kamy and Emma and Caden had a lot of fun running around outside and playing in the sandbox. Kamy is content to follow Emma’s lead on playing, so everyone gets along great. =)
One thing we’ve been working on with Kamy is her empathy and awareness about how she impacts other people. Caden is generous and thoughtful naturally, so we have been praising him and hoping Kamy would pick up on it. She finally did! Kamy told me, “I want to do something nice for Caden because he always does nice things for me.” Hooray — the generosity neuron fired! You can bet that we praised her up and down when she told us that.
Lastly, school has gone pretty well now that we are back home and settled. We started a new reading curriculum, All About Reading. Kamy’s not a big fan of it, but I do see a bit of improvement so we are going to push through and finish this level. I do not think we will do level 2, but I figure it doesn’t hurt to emphasize the basics from another angle. We’ve been working on word families, building sentences, sight words, telling time, single and double digit addition, bar graphs, and subtraction. For the most part Kamy cooperates, but occasionally she pushes back and I hear “this is not fun.” We have tied the privilege of “screen time” to having a good attitude about and completing school work, so there’s a natural consequence to complaining. I still really like homeschooling — the flexibility cannot be beat and I like that in 30 minutes we can cover what we need to and move on with our day.
(I apologize for no photos — apparently I didn’t take any decent ones this month at all. Oops!)