Starting "Tendergarden"...

Before you judge me inept to educate my children from the gross misspelling of my title, I am quoting my daughter Lillie Anna. She woke up Monday morning and said, "Mom, do I start tendergarden today?" Thus with that, our tendergarden adventure began. I got my ducks all lined up, thanks to my ever clever sister and her idea to use index cards instead of a planner. Hopefully she'll blog the nuts and bolts of this concept soon as it has been an amazing help for my planning. I decided to school year round, which I feel gives us more flexibility. We'll go 10 weeks on (the 10th week being used for review and testing) and 1 to 2 weeks off as needed and dictated by our busy schedule. I really would like to take Thanksgiving through New Years off to focus on the holiday, not to mention relieve some of the stress of the holiday season. So, five days a week we will do reading, writing, rithmetic, and bible. Mondays and Wednesdays will add science and nature study into the mix with Friday being our day to go on nature walks. Tuesday and Thursday we'll do history. Friday will also be an elective day where the kids can do crafts, paint, sew, music (and I use that term loosely) whatever they want as long as it's not illegal and is beneficial.
So, yesterday Lillie did reading from McGuffey's Primer, a dandy little book. I write her new words on index cards and we do what Karen Andreola called a "3 Period Lesson". Writing was a worksheet from The Learning Page.

Math was learning to count from 0-50 (which, unknown to me, Lillie could already do.)using a printable hundreds chart.
I decided to start helping Lillie memorize the books of the Bible. We have started with the Old Testament. I made some nifty little flashcards shaped like leather bound books using my Printshop program. We used the 3 Period Lesson strategy here as well. I started out with the first five books of the Law and (call me cruel) I just got a kick out of Lillie trying to say Leviticus and Deuteronomy. I ordered the First Catechism from Christian Liberty Press and we covered question number one.
For science, I read a segment from the Christian Liberty Nature Reader Book K called "A is for Alligator". We learned that baby alligators are about 8 inches long and come out of a 3 inch egg. And that alligators lay their eggs on land and cover them with grass to incubate them. The mother's often can be seen carrying their babies in their mouths if they become a target of some hungry animal. We took our tape measure outside to see just how long alligators could get. I didn't realize that alligators can't stick out their tongue and can grow to be 16 FEET LONG! You don't really think about how long 16 feet is.
I found a neat little sewing project for Lillie off of Family Fun. It was an alligator sewing kit made out of felt. This is what it was supposed to look like...

I cut my ovals too small , so ours ended up looking like a frog with teeth...oh well...Lillie thought it was a puppet anyway.



I read the first chapter from Felix Salten's version of "Bambi" off the Rosetta Project at bedtime , so all our work was completed. Here's some cute pictures of Lillie playing beauty salon with a very patient Chloe...

Pretty successful school day. Even got my bathrooms cleaned...whoo hoo!