Our Year so far...

It's hard to believe we've been doing school for 7 weeks already!! Today is day one of week 8. Here's how Elizabeth is learning:

Art:
-her drawing is getting really good. At the beginning of the year she was still drawing stick figures etc.. and afraid to try anything she didn't know how to do. Now she is following directions in books by herself and drawing the cutest things, and then improvising with things too. On Friday we were at homeschool group and she drew a picture of her sleeping in bed and it was really good!! the perspective of the bed is how she would see it when she walks into her room. (grandma jeri has it on her fridge because Elizabeth gave it to her).
-she is also enjoying her clay class once a week, as well as playing with modeling clay and playdough at home.

Religion:
-she is very good at memorization, and has memorized the Angel of God prayer, and the Morning Offering. (she already knows the Our Father, Hail Mary, Glory Be, Mealtime prayer and the Sign of the Cross).
-she has a beautiful childlike faith and adores her guardian angel (sherbet).
-she has learned about angels, the trinity, saint Francis, Moses.
-we have read bibel stories each day and are up to Samson.

Handwriting:
-she has progressed very well so far with her writing. She can print all of the Upper-case letters very well and we are slowly working through the lowercase letters one at a time with proper strokes. The book we are using, Handwriting without tears, is excellent and will prepare her for later cursive writing, in how the letters are written. She is very neat in her letters now and can write MUCH faster than she could at the beginning of the year. (she used to take 10 minutes to write her name... and now she can do it very quickly).

Phonics/reading:
-she is still on 3 letter short-vowel words, because we are working very slowly in 10 minute time slots. I want her to love reading so we aren't pushing this too fast. She is gaining in fluency from 2 months ago, but is still quite slow.
-she is very good at listening to the sounds in words though. Today we did an exercise where she had a picture of a word and had to write down the first letter and the last letter of the word. She didn't even hesitate on this exercise and did it quite quickly. This is a great precursor to spelling next year and in grade 2.
-she is also learning Right/Left and is still a bit shaky, but then so am I LOL.
-her comprehension is improving drastically though... For both things she reads herself, as well as books that I read to her.

Math:
-She has progressed very far in math in these last 2 months as well. She can now write all of her numbers 0-9 and can write and read numbers up to 999. She has learned about the 10s place and the hundreds place (in kindergarten terms) and is progressing slowly into addition in the next 2 weeks. She really enjoys math, and this program, Math-U-See has been an excellent choice for us.

Music:
-she has a beautiful voice and a very good sense of rhythm. She can memorize any song very quickly and sings all day long. She has learned about Tchaikovsky (who wrote swan lake, the nutcracker and sleeping beauty), and Handel (who wrote the messiah). She asks for these by name to listen to at home. :-)

Science and the rest of learning:
she is curious about everything and this is a joy to be a part of. She has learned about:
-carnivores, omnivores, and herbavores
-dinosaurs
-fall: leaves (leaf rubbings)
-how to make an apple pie
-how we get salt from salt water
-how to make hot chocolate
and many many more things each day...

Now we are off to the library to get some books on dogs so she can draw a dog picture and learn more about them.