Dark Thirty

I know, I know. It's not THAT early. But it is dark. That should count for something.

We've been busy these past few weeks. After reading this post, I decided to check out Kid's Island, the new reading site from PBS. It's very well done, DD loves it, and it's free. One drawback is that players, as far as I can tell, are forced to start at level 1. These games are geared toward the very littles, although DD enjoyed playing them. She did have difficulty understanding Elmo and that caused some frustration. She finished two levels yesterday, so I'm curious to see the games level 3 contains.

We've been practicing counting by 10s. I made 10 paper squares labeled 10 through 100 and covered them with contact paper AFTER they had been hopped on. The squares are slightly more durable now. At first, we called out the numbers and DD hopped to them. Now she is calling out the numbers to us. Sometimes we time each other to see how quickly we can hop from 10 to 100 in the proper order. Once we master 10s, we'll make more squares to practice counting by 5s.

At night, we're reading a terrific book called A Lion to Guard Us, by Clyde Robert Bulla. It's about two sisters and a brother who travel from England to Virginia in search of their father, who left for Virginia three years earlier to make a better life for his family. I'm also looking for some good Thanksgiving books. Do you have any favorites?

Soccer season ended last week and we went to an "important deal" Monday night: the end of the year celebration. Soccer was a big success for her. It was so neat to see her confidence grow. By the end of the season, she was going after the ball and she even scored a few goals.

And phase one of operation Build Homeschool Community started last night. We actually had friends over for dinner. Get out!