Family Fridays: Learning

Nate started up classes again this week. This semester he has class in the late morning, although this could change if they need to move classes or students around.

This means that he is around and can sometimes participate in our morning breakfast/school routine of reading the Bible and Bible stories, doing memory verses, practicing a few Chinese and English flashcards, and a word book or two mixed in with our weekday granola and yogurt/milk breakfast. Aaron currently cannot function civilly without granola and daily readings. Even if the rest of us wanted to take a day off or do something different, he has to have those two things to start the day off right. He is a boy who loves his routine.

Since daddy comes back later, and therefore lunch is later, we're trying out a snack-'n'-school time also. This week I have been just been reading books to them while they have a snack. We've read English, Chinese, number books, word books, simple funny stories (Pooh, Clifford, etc.), anything we pull out of the book bins for the day. Aaron asked today if we could do snack-'n'-school a second time. He has been having so much fun.

After that I've been having the boys sit at my new desk with me and listen to some ChinesePod lessons. This has been helping me make sure that the boys and I are getting more time studying Chinese in our day. Then we do some computer flashcards (mostly for Andrew who is still just starting to learn how to read). We've been doing the flashcards while listening to some classical music, picked from recommendations by my brilliant mother, who has a Masters in Music Education. Andrew loves the music and likes to dance and bounce along as we do the flashcards. He will focus for much longer periods of time while the music is playing. He has be getting more and more interested in learning lately, but the addition of music playing in the background while we do the computer flashcards seems to make it even more fun for him.

The boys have also been having lots of fun learning about dinosaurs in August and have been super excited to start a train unit for September. They like to use their reusable preschool workbooks all the time, so they don't have any particular set time to use them. I am sure our schedule will continue to change over time, but we're enjoying this new routine for the moment.