Readin' and Writin' and 'Rithmatic

We are exactly halfway through our school year!  Sort of surprisingly, I can say that the journey has been great so far.  Matthew and I are really enjoying it.  We have a nice little routine where we do about 45 minutes in the late morning at the kitchen table (calendar, math, handwriting and sometimes phonics) on M,T,W, and less than an hour in the afternoon on the couch (reading, history and science) five days a week.  His favorite subject is handwriting, probably because he gets to color a picture to go along with each day's letter.  But he enjoys pretty much everything we do.

Here are a handful of pictures that have been taken over the last few months.  The first picture is noticeably from a season other than Winter. =)

Reading about the first most primitive houses/shelters out in our bean teepee

Phonics time!

Handwriting

Putting a story in order

When we got our 'snow' a few weeks ago, it was only natural to do school fort-style!

Claire has gotten quite good at occupying herself while I am with Matthew.  What does she do?  Here are a few snapshots...

She finally started enjoying the activities that I had bought her specifically to do during schooltime

Looking at photos of course demands proper headwear

Caught!  Fortunately, this is an exception, not the norm...

There is always time to break and see how the world looks upside-down!

Both of the grandmas usually take Claire for an hour weekly, so that is helpful, too.  =)

I found Matthew the other day writing out the lyrics to one of our favorite family songs, "Glorious Day" by Casting Crowns.  He had done it all by himself, although I told him how to write the word 'glorious' at the end.  (This mommy will try to ignore his generous use of capital letters.)

This week we are studying trees in science and one of the suggestions was to go out and look at various kinds of trees to compare their bark, leaves, etc.  Hmmm....I wonder where we could find some good variety of trees...looks like we might just have to take a field trip to Daddy's work, and what better day to do it then on Dan's birthday this Thursday!
Here's to eighteen more weeks of learning with Matthew!