Sunday was Promotion Sunday at church. Siena is moving up from (preK) 3 & 4 year old class to K-1st class. Lilli is moving up from Cradle Roll to preK 3 & 4 year old class. There are a few songs that the kids sang before the certificates were handed out. I didn't get a picture of Siena receiving hers because I was taking pictures for someone else. I did get a picture of both them afterwards though.
For those of you that are wondering what Classical Conversations is: here is an example of our review. We meet every Friday and learn all of this stuff that we are supposed to review during the next week. Most of this information changes each week. There is a timeline that begins with creation and will go all the way through to Sept 11, 2001. There are 7 cards each week. Siena will learn hand motions to help her rememeber these events. Next there is a history sentence each week which also has hand motions. She also learns Latin, Grammar, Science, Math facts, Geography, Art, and this year she will memorize Ephesians 6. The video is of Siena reviewing all of the this weeks memory work. We just learned this on Friday and we reviewed it a little bit over the weekend and one time before we recorded it. I have an audio CD that we listen to in the car that reviews all of this as well. In the video Siena loves the part about the Tower of Babel (she cracks up every time). Lilli is also listening to all of this, and she will participate with the counting and has done a few of the hand motions as well.
I finally finished it (well, Stefano did actually). I've kept the girls crib all of this time to make this and we finally finished it this weekend. The girls love it. I got the idea from Pinterest.
August 22, 2013 was our first official day of homeschool. We started out with a nice breakfast of waffles with blueberries and bacon. Then we jumped right in. We started with a Bible lesson (we used the Bible that Siena received from Stepping Stones at VPK graduation) and I also read Psalm 139 to them. I don't think they enjoyed the selection from Psalms but it was recommended to me to make sure that I read that passage to my girls often (the basic theme that I reinforced to the girls is that God made them and is with them always). Next Siena worked on her math workbook for 30 minutes (it is a 1st grade math book because all she is missing from Kindergarten math is money and time, and I figured we could work on that as it comes up in this book). I'm eventually going to register for Khan Academy online, but I thought we would start with this. She helped me pick it out. Lilli colored and attempted to cut out a few shapes, but she got frustrated with cutting and just colored. I found dry erase boards at Target and the girls were so excited to finally start using them. Next Siena read a Bob book and completed on of her reading lessons from Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons (she just completed lesson 48, we've been slowly working on this book over the past year). We had to get up a few times and get the wiggles out. At the end I read to them for about 30 minutes. I used one book from our recommended reading list for Classical Conversations (CC). We read 4 short-stories and were able to fit in some Geography with that as well - we pointed out Switzerland, Scotland, and England. Siena also practiced some writing on the dry erase board. Tomorrow Siena goes for her first day at the CC group (Lilli will spend her Fridays with Gramma & Grampa). We'll post more pics on how this goes. Thank you all for your love, support, and most importantly prayers.
Kayla hosted a tea party. Abbey, Maddie, Siena, Lilli, Kylie, and Presleigh were all invited. There was hot chocolate and apple juice, PB&J and turkey tea sandwichs, mints, and cupcakes. The girls played dress-up and makeover. They all had so much fun. Amy did a great job setting up a special day for these sweet girls.
Siena was sitting in the very back seat in the van and found a plastic floor protector and decided to turn it into a dress. The last 2 pictures are the girls helping me clean. They each have their own broom and had their own room to sweep.
Siena has been missing her preschool friends all summer. We finally made arrangements for a play date and it turned into a Stepping Stones reunion (Siena, Lilyana, Sophia, Addison, Kaley, Max, Caleb, Turner, & Nicholas, and siblings). We couldn't get all of the kids together for a picture though. We went to Pump it Up (an indoor bounce house place). It was great to see them all together again. They will all pretty much be going to different schools.
We had VBS the first week of August. The girls had a great time. The first night was a fun family night with booths, snacks, balloon lady, face painting, and petting zoo. The videos are of the group of kids singing the VBS songs. Siena and Lilli are both up there on the stage singing.
