Mom's Learning a LOT!

Well we have officially been at this homeschooling thing now for 2 weeks and 2 days.  I can say with 100% certainty that Mom is DEFINITELY learning a TON!  Ha!  I know that the girls are learning a lot as well, but I'm pretty surprised at home much I am learning/re-learning!  This is Kindergarten!  I thought, oh, Kindergarten will be a breeze...NOT!  :)  So far this is what we have learned about:

Math:
Patterns, Shapes, Colors, Sorting, Graphing, Counting and making Designs with Pattern Blocks.  Amazingly this is all VERY easy for Katherine as she should probably be in 1st Grade Math, but at the rate we are moving, we will probably be purchasing 1st Grade Math Curriculum shortly after our Christmas break.  She's SUPER excited about that.  Also stunning to me is that amount of knowledge Caroline has with this!  She sits in on our math lessons most days of her own choice and does pretty much exactly what Katherine does.  Now her patterns aren't quite as sophisticated, but she definitely gets it!  I have a feeling we will speed through K math with her as well when it's time to "officially" begin with her.  Good thing these girls like Math so much!  ;)  That's one subject I can handle...till we get to Calculus...then I hand off to Daddy!  Good thing he's an engineer!  ;)

Language Arts:
The Phonograms o,c,a,d,qu,s,b,e,f,h    Basically that means we have learned how to write the properly (Katherine already knew how to do that, but it's good review) and what sound or sounds each phonogram makes in a word.  Then we learned all about beginning, middle and ending sounds and have learned to spell a bunch of words such as bed, bad, bud, bid, bog, bag, bug, fog, had, etc.  Katherine can now read and spell these words in her head...amazing!  We are also reading a bunch of different books.  We read the Bob books which Katherine does the reading from on her own, then we incorporate harder books which I read to her while she looks on.  Some of the harder books we have read are "Green Eggs and Ham", "The Cat in the Hat", and all of the Felicity books from the American Girl Series.  We just went to the library today and picked up the Josephina collection.  We are reading them in order of date and talking about the history referenced in the books as we read them.  FUN!   Caroline is working on her alphabet and learning to write her letters properly.  She's super excited to finally be able to write her full name.  She has known how to spell it for quite a while verbally, and she recognizes it on paper, but writing it herself is a whole 'nother issue!  Luckily she's a LEFTY!!  I can teach her how to write!!  YIPPEE!!  Teaching Katherine was pure torture for both of us because I'm a lefty and she's a righty!

Classical Conversations:
Well let's see...this is where I am REALLY learning!  Because Classical Conversations is all about memorizing the "grammar" or basic knowledge and vocabulary of each subject we are focusing heavily on memorization.  Katherine memorizes a bunch of "grammar" each week for all of the subjects listed below and then stores it away in her brain for a time that she will actually delve into that subject in detail.  I love the idea of this!  Most of it is pretty self explanatory, but sometimes she will have questions about what she is memorizing and then we dig deeper into that particular subject to satisfy her curiosity.  She doesn't have to dig deeper if she doesn't want to, so this is really led by her.  Very cool! 

Here's what we have learned in two weeks...and yes she can actually rattle this stuff off from memory...shocks the socks off of me too!

History:  We have memorized the 10 Commandments (there are some big words in here too!)
English:  We have memorized the definition of a preposition and examples of 5 prepositions (we will get to more, but we do them 5 at a time) about, above, across, after, against.
Latin:  We have learned the Latin Noun Cases.  For example in Latin Nominative is the Subject, Genitive is the Possessive, etc.  I think this one and math are probably Katherine's favorites.  :)
Geography:  We have learned to identify the following areas on a map: Fertile Crescent, Mediterranean Sea, Mesopotamia, Euphrates and Tigris Rivers, Sumer, The Assyrian Empire, Red Sea, Persian Gulf, Caspian Sea, Black Sea and Babylon.  It was very neat to learn about this area since this is where Chris was stationed in Iraq!  Katherine enjoyed knowing that! :) 
Timeline: We have learned the following events Creation and the Fall, The Flood and the Tower of Babel, Mesopotamia and Sumer, The Egyptians, The Indus River Valley Civilization, The Minoans and Mycenaeans, 7 Wonders of the Ancient World, Patriarchs of Israel, Hittites, Canaanites, Kush, Assyrians, Babylonians, and China's Shang Dynasty.  Now for this Katherine really just memorizes the event names, because she will really dig in and learn more about this history later when we do this cycle again in 3rd Grade.  She does occasionally ask about them and we then look up information on them and are also starting to read "The Story of the World" which incorporates a lot of this history in more detail.  :)
Math: We have learned how to skip count the by 1s, 2s, 3s and 4s!  She LOVES this. 
Science: We have memorized the 7 Classifications of Living Things and the 5 Kingdoms of Living Things. 

Phew!  That makes me tired just thinking about cramming all of that knowledge into our little heads! 

The Timeline, History and Math (counting by 3s and 4s specifically) are definitely new memory work and even sometimes new information to me!  SAD! 

Caroline is picking up a lot of the memory work as well, although she's not as interested as Katherine.  :)  She will start on her own memory work next year, so she's got time.  :)  She already knows how to count by 2s!  She sort of floats in and out while we work on this and half does work with us and half plays with some other toys.  I have a feeling she's going to shock me one day and just start rattling stuff off when I thought she wasn't listening.  ;)

Well that about sums up our first two plus weeks!  I feel pretty good about what we have accomplished, especially considering in this time Chris has been hospitalized with kidney stones and I was hospitalized with pre-term contractions!  Nothing like a little life getting in the way.  ;) 

Until next time!!  Keep praying for us!  :)  I just keep reminding myself...it's a marathon, not a race!  :)