Unit 20

Happy New Year.

This week we are back on the Little Hands to Heaven by Heart of Dakota.
This is also Cora's first week in the bilingual art/dance class. She is attending two days a week in the mornings, which still give us more than enough time for our activities. Plus, it gives me some one-on-one time with my little guy.

Speaking of the little guy, I am excited to see Caleb participating in our activities more. In the past few weeks his vocabulary has really grown and he is making wonderful, clear sentences. He is counting and singing he's ABC's. Loves to do the finger plays and listens well to the bible stories. It should be fun to incorporate him more into the lessons and not have to wait for his nap time.

Before Christmas we skipped to unit 21 so that we could save the review week for after Christmas. This has worked out very well. Nice to have a review after so many weeks off of this material.

This week we are studying about Daniel and reviewing the letters A-Q.

We had a lot of fun today playing with sugar!
I covered a paper with sugar and Cora used her finger to draw the letters as I called them out.
She really enjoyed this activity.
After we finished she had free time to draw in the sugar.
Next,we discovered how sugar dissolved in water and finished up with a nice sugar hand scrub.
Very fun!

I should have used the sugar water to make salt crystals, but I forgot about that until my hubby reminded me how we did that project when we were kids.
Oh, well have to save that one for another day.

----------------
Sugar Crystals:
----------------
Boil about 1 ½ cup (400 ml) water.
Add about ¾ cup (200 ml) of sugar to the water, and stir the solution well.
Pour the solution into the jar. Make sure that the jar you selected can withstand the temperature (a glass should work).
Suspend the string from a pencil.
Submerge the string in the solution.
The sugar crystals will grow slowly on the string over a period of several days. If you want the string to hang straight in the jar, tie a weight to the bottom of the string.

http://www.sciencekidsathome.com/science_experiments/sugar_crystals.html

New Year

I spent a few hours this morning making a plan for the coming year.

We are currently in Unit 20 in the Heart of Dakota, Little Hands to Heaven.
I have us scheduled to take a week off before every review week. That's a week's vacation every 4 week.
With that schedule this curriculum will take us through mid April.

I was toying with the idea of switching to Our Father's World -kindergarten. But after reading the reviews, I think we are going to stick with Heart of Dakota for another year.
That said, I have not ordered the next set of books yet so, until I do I can still change my mind.

As far as the rest of the year, I plan to try to stick with the 4 wks on 1 week off pattern, plus any VBS or camps over the summer. Then we'll take a break in December (maybe November, too) and do another fun Christmas study.

Here's to a fun year full of reading, learning, laughing, and lots of playing!
Happy New Year!