school plans for the big girls

With our school year more than halfway over, I continue to muddle my way through it. It's time to accept that I'm flying by the seat of my pants this year and it's okay and it's even working. Enki's third grade curriculum wasn't a good fit for us, and I had many sage stories left over from our second grade work last year. The sage work continues to nourish Alybug and Em, so we have stuck with it. I am much less prepared this year with my cultural units. I have managed to pull a little together, but not with the depth I did last year. And yet, they are thriving and connecting deeply with our work. The fall found us learning about Baal Shem Tov and this winter we are working through Malidoma Some's story. I'm not sure who's coming up next. But it will come together just in time.

Alybug and Em are voracious readers. They're both reading Akimbo stories now- it connects in with our sage work. They've read most of the American girl series books. Alybug has read the Caroline years series of the Little House stories, not written by Laura Ingalls Wilder, but still enjoyed by Alybug. Em just reads and reads constantly. Her recent favorite is Rent A Third Grader. She regularly reads aloud to Pumpkin- picture books and chapter books. Pippi is the current read in this vein. Both girls like to write. They are keeping reading journals this year. We began using these as a place for the girls to write summaries of books. We have also taken off with some creative writing in them, and I am impressed with their work here. They've done perspective writing (e.g. with Abel's Island, write Amanda's story- the novel tells us Abel's story and Amanda is there at the beginning and the ending) and creating their own stories (e.g. the Kaya book series includes 6 books- you write book 7, Kaya's next adventure). Oh, and the writing is pretty much all in cursive these days. That just happened.

I began doing some spelling work with the girls, but they weren't transferring the knowledge into their writing, so I backed off. They both, but especially Alybug, have lots of room for spelling improvement, but I expect it to come in time.

As for math, we work some math practice worksheets occasionally, and both girls are comfortable with adding and carrying and subtracting and borrowing. They have multiplication and division down conceptually and are just beginning to get into multiplication tables. They're great at "counting by" (thanks to the Strange Family circle verse). I expect to do more place value work in the spring. Both girls are loving piano and they get math-y thinking and work in with this. It's fun for me to watch them learn piano and to see how Miss Justine teaches them.

Science is still happening in our garden and just in our natural world. Art is well-loved- practical arts and fine arts. I am happy for how much I continue to grow in this part of my creative self along with my girls.

So, school is happening. Our rhythms are much more relaxed than they have been in years past, and Alybug and Em are working more independently than ever before. It feels like we're evolving.