core a

On Wednesday Evalana finished her Core A (kindergarten) curriculum, which included reading through that whole Bible (one of her favorite parts of school time).
 

We learned some great stuff during our school time this past year. Core A is Sonlight's kindergarten curriculum. I guess Evalana would be the age to start kindergarten either this August or next, but, since we're homeschooling, we just get to do what's at her interest and level. She was really wanting to learn to read and write, so we started Sonlight's Core A this past June. Evalana really loved reading her Bible. We got to do a quick overview of all history and geography. Evalana liked the history, especially Ancient Egypt and around 1900 America. And we both liked the stories of Christians sharing Jesus. We read some great books together. A few of her favorites this year were the Little House on the Prairie books, Boxcar Children, and stories about animals. For her language arts we worked on learning the letters' sounds and writing each letter, along with some creative writing. And she got to read 27 books all on her own.
Here she is in her first read through of book #23 about a month ago. She usually won't let me record her reading, so i don't have any more recent ones, even though i can tell her reading's even improved quite a bit in the last month. Reading was challenging for her just because she wanted to be able to read like she does now when she first started out. She would read the same book for a full week, so by the end of each week, she had it down, but, to start with, she worked so hard on sounding out the words that she didn't get to catch much of the story.

For her handwriting, we just practiced on how to write the letters. I don't expect a four-year-old to have great handwriting, but i'd rather she learn how to write them correctly, and we'll work on making them look nice as she keeps practicing. And she loved her Explode the Code workbooks.
For science we learned about biology, Earth science, and physics. Evalana really liked her encyclopedia that includes internet links for some additional online learning for each topic. She loves that part. Daddy was in charge of science experiments with her, and they still have quite a few more to go, but they have fun with those, too.
Evalana flew through her Primer math book and finished it in November since she enjoyed doing it so much, so she's already started on her Alpha Math-U-See book. Most recently she's learned how to add 8s and 9s. Here's a video of her working on math a month ago--not the greatest video, but it's the most recent I have of her math time.

Evalana uses Rosetta Stone to do her Spanish, and she enjoys that, too. I know I have a video of her doing Spanish for a couple months ago, but i'm not sure where it is right now. She likes to let Lazarus help her with Spanish, too. We also continue to use Signing Time videos, but we don't really make sign language part of our school time.
Both kids love our music time, too. We use Piano Wizard for learning piano. And we also read about composers and instruments and listen to classical music, which they have a lot of fun with.
For our art appreciation, we're using the Come Look With Me books, which i think work well. Evalana likes them. And Joshua does art with the kids. They have a lot of lessons left to go, but they have a great time with it. Here's evalana learning a new piano song about a month ago.

I think that's all the school stuff we did for the past 36 weeks of lessons. We really had a lot of fun. Today we got all our next 36 weeks worth of stuff all set up, and we're ready and excited to get started.
Our 3/9 celebration at Fritz's


And then we stopped by Aunt Michelle's to say hi to her and wish her happy birthday, and she always sends stuffed animals home with the kids.