Oh they are growing up. This is the first year we are going to really “do school,” in a formal way—we’ve been kind of sporadic up until now, thanks to pregnancy and such major life changes. 
But now we’re on!
Ellie is four. So not legally allowed to begin kindergarten in our state… yes, I actually wrote to the Department of Education and asked! And that REALLY frustrated me because we’ve been doing kindergarten math texts and first grade science, so what am I supposed to do next year?!?! So I am waiting to formally enroll until next year, and then we’ll just start with first grade. It makes it less stressful, anyway, because if kindergarten doesn’t work out the way I think it will, we still have a whole extra year if we need it. But my intention is to formally enroll as first grade next fall, if we get through all the state kindergarten standards before then.
We’ve settled on Essential Math Kindergarten A & B by Singapore Math for our math curriculum, which we started working through eight months ago (and then stopped when I found out about six months ago that we wouldn’t be allowed to start kindergarten this year) and will now begin again; and Explode the Code for English/phonics. We had been doing the preschool Code books but they weren’t very hard and were a bit boring for her, so I bumped her up to book 1. So far so good! We’re actually doing the online version now. There are some other books I am testing out for other English supplemental skills, and we have also been doing the BOB Books, which Ellie has really enjoyed. We’re also doing Beginning Geography and Everyday Literacy: Science for science.
It was really exciting today (day two) to begin on the online version of Explode the Code and see Ellie actually READING words, all by herself, without hints! She was typing and spelling and – it was a happy thing to see… just totally basic words and not without mistakes, but it was neat to be kind of removed from the situation a little bit myself and see what she actually knows on her own, and I was surprised! She totally hides what she knows until she knows it really, really well, so it’s often hard for me to gauge how well she’s doing. That said, I can tell she’s going to get bored with the program (at least I think she will) so I need to come up with some kind of reward system. It gives her virtual “stickers” so it should be easy to translate that to something in the real world.
Rowan is two and wants to do everything her sister does, so she does school too! Hers is really a mismash of various preschool workbooks, including lots of skill books and the Rod & Staff Pre-K3 workbooks and Pre-K4 workbooks. The Pre-K3 books, as an aside, are the first textbooks I’ve found at all that are genuinely doable by a two-year-old. She’s been able to do them for a while. We’re also going to do the A Beka Pre-K 4 curriculum, which Ellie did not have the patience for at all but I think Rowan will do well.
For both girls we have manipulative/toys (like tangrams, counting objects, letter tiles, etc.) but I tend not to incorporate those into technical “schooltime!” and instead we do them throughout the day. I want to start doing more science experiments too—we did a little impromptu experiment on displacement this week and it was a ton of fun! Ellie just soaks it all up and I love explaining how things work.
We do Bible stories and Bible coloring for Bible—all three crayoning munchkins participate. During the rest of schooltime so far, Liam wanders around and makes messes. 
I seriously need to figure out what to do with him while I help the girls!
