Weekly Report - Year 2 Week 19

I'm not even going to try to catch up on weekly reports that I didn't do the last couple months! Just know that we have done quite a bit. :)

This week was a bit hectic with appointments and errands and the whole Christmas season and all, so we got horribly behind and then caught up magically. Strange how that happens.

Tornado Boy

Math: After we learned long division in MM 4B, I switched Tornado Boy over to Singapore Standards Edition 4A. Why? After reading threads on the WTM forum about how Singapore makes more conceptual leaps, I was thinking, "That's exactly what Tornado Boy needs!" He also likes the presentation a lot better, and he's a bit bored of MM. MM was the best choice for us in the last year because he was accelerating to "where he is". Now that we have found where he is, we can use Singapore without having to go through 3-4 grade levels in a calendar year. :P We started a couple lessons Thanksgiving week (our week off, but Tornado Boy wanted to start, and so did I!), and then this week we got through Order of Operations and started the Negative Numbers section. We skipped the first chapter on Place Value, since he's already done that in MM4A and has no trouble whatsoever with place value. Order of Operations is review from MM4A, but it was good to practice it again. We also got into some divisibility rules. I love the Singapore HIG (Home Instructor's Guide). It gives extra information for the teacher, including the "why" of the divisibility rules. I always knew that if the digit sum was divisible by 9, then the whole number is divisible by 9, but I never knew why that worked. The HIG explained it very well in a way that I wouldn't have thought of myself. Very cool!

We were only supposed to do through Order of Operations this week, but Tornado Boy saw the Negative Numbers section and just had to do that one too. He loves negative numbers. There was nothing new to him in that lesson, so we were able to quickly go through it and do the workbook pages.

We did some IP 3A and CWP 3 this week, reviewing a bit of long division, since he's only learned how to do that a month ago. Surprisingly, long division was very easy for him to pick up. I taught him the standard algorithm one day (via MM4B), and the next day he remembered how to do it. I haven't had to review how the algorithm works at all. He remembers and does it without problem. Very strange. I expected it to be a bit harder than that!

Reading: He has been reading 101 Dalmatians by Dodie Smith. I think he's around chapter 6 or 7 now.

Grammar: We did lessons 40 and 41 this week. I looked ahead and decided to do lesson 42 next week and skip lesson 43 (a review of poetry memorization that we haven't been doing anyway <bag>). FLL3 is still going very well. He's learning from it and understanding. He seems to like the book pretty well.

Writing: We did week 12 of WWE2 this week, with passages  from Pilgrim's Progress. Tornado Boy really liked these passages! His narrations were excellent. We also talked a little bit about the allegory involved and what things symbolized what. He was able to catch on to that pretty easily.

Spelling: We did Lesson 6 of R&S 3, which is a review of the words from Lessons 1-5. He got a 100 on the test, as he has on all the tests so far. I am liking R&S because it's fairly independent, yet he's still learning how to spell the words. I will probably add in some HTTS... maybe alternating between them. He might be able to do some of book 3 now.

Read-Aloud: We are still reading The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. A couple days this week, I even read 3 chapters at a time. Go me! We have just gotten to the point where the group is going to find the Good Witch Glinda. Oz has flown away in a balloon, and the Winged Monkeys can't take Dorothy across the desert. We'll need to watch the movie when done reading this book, as I can't even remember how the movie goes. I do notice that the movie has her wearing red shoes from the Wicked Witch, and in the book, the shoes are silver.

Bible: We're currently in the middle of Jesus' ministry.

History: This week we have done chapter 6 of SOTW2 - the Rise of Islam. We actually only did the first section, but I'll probably have Tornado Boy do the next 2 sections Sunday afternoon to catch up. He read The Three Princes to go along with this chapter and really enjoyed that book. He said he's read it 3 times. :)

To get more writing in, and to give him a little bit of original writing, I had Tornado Boy start notebooking in history the last few weeks. He is enjoying this and doing very well with it! I made some sheets in Startwrite that have 2 spaces for drawing pictures and 2 spaces for writing something about a section of his history. He likes drawing a picture, though they are always stick figures. The funniest one was when he did "Monks in Caves" and he drew a cave with a statue of Buddha and a Buddhist monk. The statue was a stick figure! I have him write one sentence about what he read - all on his own, not dictated or copied or anything. He thinks of a sentence and writes it down. I help him with spelling if necessary. He has done so well with this. His first sentence even had a comma in it, so it was a decent length. Yay!

Science: WE DID SCIENCE!!!!! That's right, we actually got out BJU Science and did TWO lessons! Woohoo! I also had him write 3 things he remembered from what he read, and he did the activity book for the lessons. This week's lessons were about ecosystems.

The Brute

We have not done much school the last few weeks, but we have read some books and answered a LOT of questions... Oh, the questions just never end! This week, he asked, "When is the last day?" and I said, "Last day of what?" He replied, "The last day of the world!" This kid thinks too much. :P

As far as learning goes, we've been doing I See Sam readers (first 52 are free online), and he really likes those! We have done through book 5, I believe. In book 4, Sam (a lion) is reading a book and doesn't notice a hole in front of him. he falls right in. At the end of the story, the Brute asked where the book was. He was talking about Sam's book. Once he falls in the hole, you don't see the book anymore.

Math knowledge is certainly increasing by leaps and bounds. We're still working on basic counting to 20, yet one day he asked what 4+4 was. I asked the question back, and he said 8. Then he asked what 8+2 was, and I again asked the question back to him. He said 10. Then he said, "Hey, that's the same as 5+5!" We haven't worked on ANY of those facts at all in our math, so he has picked them up on his own somehow, possibly from big brother drilling him, and possibly from C-rod play. I don't know. It's just a bit scary, because again, he's still working on counting to 20!

We haven't worked on handwriting at all. I'm still waffling on whether to start him on cursive or do print and then cursive very soon. I don't want to wait until 2nd or 3rd grade to do cursive. I'm finding that that's a really bad time to do it because the kids are just then getting used to writing in print, and writing is finally starting to get easier, and then you throw cursive at them and set them back completely! Why? 5 year olds can learn cursive. So I'd like to do cursive either this year or next year.

I had an IEP meeting with the local school recently about the Brute. He is in speech therapy right now, and I had some other concerns. They have decided to test his language soon, which I'm anxiously awaiting. I think language is what holds him back. They also had me fill out the C.A.R.S. (Childhood Autism Rating Scale) sheet, but I don't think he is autistic. Sensory issues, yes. Language issues, yes. Incredibly imaginative, yes. Autistic, doubtful. I couldn't answer one question on the scale (the one about intelligence). I honestly can't say whether he is as smart as his peers, less smart than his peers, or more smart than his peers. He's a bit of all 3 all at once! That's the big thing I can't figure out. His intellectual ability is very nebulous to me. He seems very VSL, and they are often late bloomers. So that could be part of it. I just don't know how his brain works, how much he knows, what he's capable of learning. I just don't know! He's doing great with K level work - not speeding ahead, not going too slow. He's technically doing this a year early, but he doesn't act or seem academically gifted. It's his questions that make him sound gifted. The things he thinks about and the connections he makes sometimes blow me away, yet the very basics sometimes take him a while to figure out (like counting). So that's where we are. I look forward to the language testing to see where he is and what they can do for him in that realm. That's the biggest barrier to us understanding his speech right now. He uses strange word order!

Mischief

Every day, when I get ready to teach Tornado Boy's math lesson at the white board, Mischief pulls up a chair and the Singapore EM K book A (that the Brute already completed) and a pencil, and he "does maf" with his big brother. Very cute. He can count a little bit past 10 and knows several letters and colors now. I'm not doing anything formal with him, of course. Not for a long time yet. I suspect he'll be like Tornado Boy, teaching himself before K.

How to Spell Book 3 Samples

There are very poor samples available for the How to Spell workbooks (that go with How to Teach Spelling), so I've decided to post a few samples from book 3. This book is meant for grades 4-6. I'm having trouble linking the actual pictures, so I'll link words below the pictures.

Sample 1

 

Sample 2

 

Sample 3

Sample 4

Weekly Report - Year 2 Week 14

We took a break last week to go on family vacation to Pensacola, Florida. It was really fun! We saw the U.S.S. Alabama (Mobile, AL area), which Tornado Boy LOVED. He actually wanted to go back on the ship again later. He had so much fun! We also did the Gulf Coast Zoo, the Naval Aviation Museum (Pensacola) - getting to see the Blue Angels practice (very cool!!!), and the Montgomery Zoo (AL) on the way home. The Brute loves zoos.

When we got back, we had one day off, then Friday we dropped the kids off at Grandma and Grandpa's for the night so DH and I could go to a Weird Al concert out of town. I managed to fit 3 car seats in Grandpa's CR-V, though I had to forward face Mischief (I can't find the rear facing base for the Radian):

This week, we were back to school and we had a new semi-official (though not reporting yet) student! We'll get to him in a minute. ;) We also got a new family member, a 2 year old female Maine Coon mix named Padmé (Tornado Boy named her). She should be a great distraction during school, as she insists on being pet constantly. :)

Tornado Boy

Math: We finished chapter 2 and started working on chapter 3 (Multiplication). It starts out easy, so we breezed through some of it - multiplying by 10s, 100s, 1000s is stuff he's done since he was 5 during a van math conversation. So we did a few practice problems and moved on. The hardest thing this week was the balance scales problems. They were really algebra in scale form with shapes instead of letters. He did very well with them until we got to a hard one that had 2 balance scales and as far as I can tell, you have to multiply one scale by 2 to solve it. He didn't think to do that (or know he could do that). There is no solution for the problem (just the answer), so I had to figure it out myself, and that was the only way I could find to do it. It was pretty hard! The others he was able to do though, even with two scales and two unknown shapes involved. He really liked this section, as it was something new. Plus I figure he'll like algebra anyway. :)

Reading: He did library books and the Greek Myths book.

Grammar: We learned about adverbs that tell how often and did some review lessons. Lesson 24 had to be split up over 2 days. That was just too much for one sitting!

Writing: We did day 4 of week 7, and then took the rest of the week off.

Handwriting: Didn't practice this this week.

Spelling: Slacker.

Read-Aloud: Oh! Oh! Thanks to a read-aloud thread on the WTM forum, I got the motivation to start a read-aloud again. Friday night, we sat on the couch close to bedtime and read two chapters of Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. I have this on my phone via Google Books, and it has the pictures and everything. The kids enjoyed it. Even Mischief sat on the couch and listened (while sucking his thumb).

Bible: We only did The Brute's Bible this week, but next week I'll add Egermeier's back in. I have to retrieve it from the van, since Tornado Boy took it in there to read through it.

History: We started SOTW2! This time, we're doing a SOTW Lapbook. I wish I'd known about this earlier for SOTW1! It's quite doable, as you only do one mini-booklet per week. We did chapter 1 and started chapter 2 this week, learning about Barbarians and early Britain.

Science: Skipped it this week, though Tornado Boy has been reading some science books this week in the van. :)

Art: Skipped it, but did some "art" via The Brute's K stuff, so that counts, right?

The Brute

First, our official first day of K picture:

Math: We did 1 page of Singapore EM K book B per day. This is a very nice pace for right now. I also have been using the Cuisenaire Rods to help us. It is amazing how much those help! We were mostly doing how many more or how many less - eg, "5 is ___ more than 2". Instead of counting, I have him use the C-rods as pictured below.

Reading: We worked a bit through Webster's Speller. I expected to do 2-3 lines, but he insisted on doing whole lessons. So I think we got through Lesson 9, and also went back to do the r-controlled syllables each day to review, as those will take longer to sink in.

Other: We are using My Father's World Kindergarten this year. It's a very gentle K program, and should be just right for starting a bit early and being easy about it. I found an All About Me booklet in the MFW K yahoogroup, so we started with that. Here is The Brute's self-portrait, complete with mustache... This kid is going to be fun to teach...

He said he was drawing a picture of himself drawing the picture. LOL.

For Bible, we did the Creation Unit at double speed. The Brute has the days of creation well memorized and recently did it in Bible class anyway, so we're anxious to get to the actual lessons next week!

The Brute has wanted to paint for a while, so we got the paints out to do hand prints for the All About Me booklet, plus we just did some random painting on paper plates.

The paint setup...

Fun with hand prints :)

Tornado Boy colored Earth and Neptune (recently read Apologia Astronomy)

Tornado Boy's random Star Wars picture

The Brute's attempt at making planets

I also got some Kumon cutting books for the boys to practice. They're easy at first, but the boys need it!

 

Mischief

Reading Magic Treehouse! ;)

(no, he isn't reading yet:)

Weekly Report - Year 2 Week 13

Yet again, a little late posting this, but here goes...

Tornado Boy

Math: We worked this week on place value in the thousands and adding/subtracting large numbers. Tornado Boy is good at this, so we didn't dwell on it very long.

Reading: I just had him read library books this week. I need to pull out Phantom Tollbooth again.

Grammar: We learned about adverbs that tell how, when, and where.

Writing: We did 3 of the 4 days for Week 7.

Spelling: We did Lesson 11 in Wheeler's.

Read-Aloud: We got to read one day this week at bed time! I read the Lang's Blue Fairy Book version of "Cinderella". It was excellent!

Bible: I can't remember what we did (this was 2 weeks ago at the time of writing), and the Bible story book is in the van. :p I believe we learned about some of Jesus' early miracles, calling apostles, etc.

History: We finished SOTW1!!! And as we learned about Constantine, I played the youtube video "Istanbul Not Constantinople".

Science: Skipped it.

Art: Skipped it.

Spanish: Skipped it, and I'm thinking I'll just drop this for now. We don't get to it often enough, and learning Spanish just isn't a high priority right now when it's so NICE outside!

The Brute

I have no clue what, if anything, we did this week. :)

Our First Lapbook

As most new homeschoolers do, I've been reading about lapbooking and drooling over the cool things you can do with them, though I was scared of the amount of work for Mom. Finally, I decided to give one a try and see how it goes. As I suspected, it's cool, and it's a lot of work for Mom. :P

Our first attempt is the free Multiplication Facts Lapbook at Homeschoolshare.com. I did not use a legal size file folder. I just used what I had, and made an extension per the instructions in the Hands of a Child lapbooks (click on the freebie one for instructions).

A friend had texted me to show off the lapbook she and her DD had just done (with fancy color folders and colored paper), and she asked me how mine was going. This was my reply.

Then I started cutting...

... and cutting...

... and cutting...

... and cutting...

You see, I have a 7 year old boy whose fine motor skills are NOT his strong point. There is no way he's cutting any of this.

Next we started gluing. I let Tornado Boy do most of the gluing. After he washed his hands between 3 things he was gluing, I gave him a paper towel to wipe his hands on. He did most of the gluing, then he lost interest after a while. I did the inside flap myself. Oh well. Results:

I cut the 100s chart in half and stuck it on the front flaps:

The inside:

Lift the flap:

He started filling in the numbers. I think he did a couple sets so far. He likes his lapbook! We'll plan to do the SOTW2 lapbook this year for history, since it's just one little booklet a week. I can handle that much cutting.

Homeschool Tracker Plus Referral

This weekend, someone PM'd me on the Well Trained Mind to ask if I had a referral code for Homeschool Tracker Plus. I had answered a lot of questions on the forum, so they figured maybe I had a code. Well, I didn't. I had never even thought of it. Didn't really realize they had a referral program.

Well, since I do refer a lot of people, I figured why not? I got a code. It's now on the right side of my blog. So if you feel like I helped you with HST+, feel free to use my referral code and earn me $5. :) Of course, I'll answer questions whether you go through my referral or not. I just really love HST+ and enjoy helping other people!

Progress and Adding One

Progress:

Today, we were practicing our cursive italic letters 'j' and 'p'. Tornado Boy held his pencil with a perfect tripod grip!!!!! I am over the moon! He usually has a thumb wrap! That thumb wrap makes me cringe to look at it. I don't know how he can write like that! But he's starting to build up the strength to write properly. Woohoo! He did this on his own. I hadn't told him to do it. I've been working with him using it on the white board with dry erase crayons, but not with pencil and paper yet.

Adding One:

The Brute told me last week that he wants to start Kindergarten when he turns 5 (November). I have been eying My Father's World Kindergarten for a while now, but thought it'd be too easy for him when he's actually "K" next year. It'd be perfect for him right now though. Well, since I was no longer using AAS, I decided to sell that and some diaper making fabric (I'm no longer making cloth diapers), and that was plenty to purchase MFW K. :) So we'll start that probably the first week of October. I'm quite excited about it! It looks fun, and I think The Brute will enjoy it. I got the Basic kit, but with some of the Deluxe items. I already have C-rods, I'm borrowing a butterfly garden, and I don't think we really need to do the ant farm (there are PLENTY of ants outside to watch). So I got the Basic kit plus the orchestra CD and the Cuisenaire Rods Alphabet Book, and then from Amazon I'll get the lowercase textured letters puzzle and the What Really Happened to the Dinosaurs? book. My library has all but 2 of the books from the lit package, so I'll probably buy one and substitute the other. Not a big deal.

Weekly Report - Year 2 Week 12

This was a bit of a lazy week, and we ended up taking off Thursday and Friday. The weather is so nice right now!

Tornado Boy

Math: We did the chapter 1 review and skipped the test. It was clear he knew what he was doing, as it was mostly review. We then started in on the place value chapter, learning about thousands. This is also review, but he's enjoying it because he likes big numbers. :)

Reading: Still reading the Book of Greek Myths.

Grammar: Learned articles and started memorizing a new poem, "The Tragic Story", which was quite funny. I had him act it out, and he liked that! His acting is horrible, but he had fun anyway, since he got to spin around and around. :)

Writing: We did week 6, which included some poetry. He did very well with all parts of this. He also was excited when the copywork/dictation for the week was half of a lesson from Wheeler's slated for this week, so he got to skip that part in Wheeler's. ;)

Handwriting: We did m, n, r, and x.

Spelling: We did lessons 9-10 in Wheeler's.

Read-Aloud: None.

Bible: We learned about Jesus as a boy, Jesus' baptism, and the beginning of his ministry.

History: We learned about the end of the ancient Jewish nation. Tornado Boy then decided to start reading Revelation, since I told him (as the early dater that I am) that Revelation foretells the destruction of Jerusalem. He read one chapter. LOL. Major points for trying! He also studied about Nero and how the Christians hid in the Catacombs.

Science: None.

Art: None.

Spanish: None.

The Brute

Again, I don't remember what we did, if we did anything. I did answer a LOT of "why" and "what happens if" questions though. This stage is difficult!!!!

Mischief

This one started the "why" stage this week also. I think he's mimicking his big brother, as he really doesn't understand the answers to the questions yet. But he does ask "why". I'm not sure if I should be glad they're both going through the stage at once, or scared. :P

Weekly Report - Year 2 Week 11

Updating late. Whoops! Quick run down...

Tornado Boy

Math: We did bar graphs, line graphs, rounding, estimating, and a review of money. This was all pretty easy.

Reading: We've taken a break from Phantom Tollbooth, and he's been reading D'Aulaire's Book of Greek Myths.

Grammar: We learned about adjectives and how to diagram them.

Writing: We did week 5 of WWE2. The passages were from Misty of Chincoteague. Since we read this aloud several months ago, it was a bit more interesting to him. :) He did very well with the dictation!

Handwriting: We did a, d, h, i, k, and l in cursive italic.

Spelling: We did lessons 4-8 in Wheeler's. It's going well!

Read-Aloud: None.

Bible: John the Baptist was born, and then Jesus was born. :)

History: We did chapter 36, which discussed the birth and crucifixion of Jesus. We also read the account of Jesus' crucifixion in the Bible, since it differs from the way it's told in SOTW1. We discussed the differences.

Science: We started learning about plants this week.

Art: None.

Spanish: We learned our colors! This was mostly review.

The Brute

I don't remember if he did anything... Probably did some math. It's been 2 weeks now. :P

Weekly Report - Year 2 Week 10

We did pretty well this week, getting in most subjects. Hooray!

Tornado Boy

Math: We worked this week on some mental math review, using bar models in word problems (we know this from CWP, but it was good to review the MM way), order of operations, and he worked ahead a little bit doing bar graphs because he wanted to. I had originally planned to do just 2 pages a day of MM4, but yeah, that's just not happening. He's continuing to do a full section (2-3 pages). We may slow down when we hit long division, but I don't see anything else between now and then that would likely slow him down.

Other math done this week... Tornado Boy picked up a book his Grandpa gave him called You Can Count on Monsters by Richard Evan Schwartz. It talks about factoring numbers and has a section on how to find all the prime numbers 1-100. Tornado Boy then asked for a sheet of paper - he wanted to find all the prime numbers 1-100. :)

We also got a sample chapter of Beast Academy this week. It's a new elementary curriculum coming for grades 2-5 from Art of Problem Solving. So far, we're both in love! I will post a full review separately when we finish the chapter. We've read it and started on the workbook. I learned some things myself reading the text, and this is a 3rd grade math book!

Reading: Still plugging through The Phantom Tollbooth. We were scheduled to finish it this week, but we didn't do 2 chapters each day as intended, so we'll just move it into next week. That's fine.

Grammar: We did lessons 10-13 this week. We were supposed to do through lesson 12, but we accidentally did an extra lesson on Thursday. :) We practiced the "Land of Nod" poem some more, and he has about 3 of the 4 stanzas memorized.

Writing: We completed week 4 (and the remaining lesson of week 3) in WWE2. The passages this week were from Dr. Dolittle. I'll have to put that on our "to read" list.

Handwriting: We practiced a little bit in the salt this week, but didn't focus on it as much as I would have liked.

Spelling: I'm playing "Musical Spelling Programs" right now. :P We did some WRTR the first few days, then Thursday and Friday, I printed out Wheeler's Elementary Speller, free on Google books. We did a couple lessons and will continue trying this out for a bit. WRTR lacked dictation of sentences, and I think that is what he really needs at this point. Wheeler's has a mix of everything - sometimes a lesson will be a word list that they copy, sometimes it will be copywork of part of a poem or general good literature. Sometimes it will be dictation or writing from memory. It's usually NOT word lists, but when it is, they have them mark certain things in the word lists. Very cool.

Read-Aloud: I should just take this label off until Mischief is 3...

Bible: We finished the Old Testament this week!

History: This actually was accidentally done independently this week. The Brute had speech therapy Tuesday, so I told Tornado Boy to bring SOTW1 with him and read it in the van. He did. I didn't get around to doing anything with it the rest of the day. The next day, I asked him the leading questions from the 2 sections he'd read. He answered all of them! So he just had to do the map work after that. I've made a history notebook that he can do somewhat independently, and we're going to see how that goes.

Science: We did the two lessons I had planned. Way to go me! I have changed the way I'm doing science. I'm now having him read the student text for the lesson, then tell me 3 things he learned. Then he does the activity manual. He liked this method, so we'll keep it up for now.

Art: We did two lessons this week! Woohoo! The first one was drawing pictures with markers on square pieces of white paper. One was to use lines and angles, while the other was to use curves only. The second lesson involved me making a simple line design, such as a diagonal line and a jagged line, with a black marker, then we would form that design into a picture of something. I think Tornado Boy did well!

Top two are Tornado Boy's, bottom two are mine. Tornado Boy's involved bombs...

These are both Tornado Boy's. The one on the left is buildings... maybe on fire?

These are mine.

Spanish: Skipped it again.

The Brute

Math: We did a little bit of EM book B this week... I think maybe 3 pages? It was working on determining which number is one more. I used C-rods to demonstrate.

Reading: I don't think we did anything formal here this week.

Handwriting: Did some more salt box practice.

Mischief

Terrorized the house as normal, but also read some Apologia books with The Brute. :)

So cute with their little thumbs...

Weekly Report - Year 2 Week 9

This has been a bit of a lazy week. We got enough done though, so it's ok. Just have quite a bit of rescheduling done in HST+. :)

Tornado Boy

Math: We started MM4A this week. I had plans to just do 2 pages a day, but the sections with 3 pages were so simple (review), and he kept seeing fun things on the 3rd page that he wanted to do, so I let him have at it. So while we only did math 4 days this week, we still did everything we were supposed to in MM. I didn't get to IP or CWP this week, but that's ok. We'll get to those next week. We're still working on the grade 3 end of year test. We have a couple pages left to go. He's done well so far. There are a few things that we skipped and he doesn't know, but they'll be hit again in the grade 4 chapter on that topic, so I had decided I'd rather just do the grade 4 material rather than grade 3 and skipping through grade 4.

Reading: He started The Phantom Tollbooth this week and is enjoying it! He's into jokes and such right now, so some of the puns are right up his alley (like the "watch dog").

Grammar: We did lessons 7-9 in FLL3. Less 7 involved going through a list of common and proper nouns. If I said a common noun, he was to stay seated. If I said a proper noun, he was to stand up. He LOVED this lesson! In fact, the next day, he asked if we could do it again. :) We also started working on memorizing the poem "The Land of Nod". He enjoyed that poem, and we talked about dreams. I had had a weird dream about a tiger/dog cross (yes, I know, that's impossible). He said he usually dreams about Star Wars.

Writing: We did days 1-3 of week 3 in WWE2. I'll try to catch day 4 over the weekend sometime (narration/dictation).

Handwriting: I made a salt box this week! Both boys loved it. We've been practicing 'a' and 'd' this week, along with 'ad' (which he points out is the TV ad, not the add and subtract type add).

Spelling: We started working on WRTR word lists. He tests into list M, but I backed up to list K, because I saw several words there that he didn't know how to spell. He knows most of them, and we're using those to help get used to the process. I didn't quiz or test him on any words yet. I'll probably start that next week. I plan to make some dictation sentences to practice also.

Read-Aloud: I have a cold. That's my excuse this week!

Bible: This week we learned about Esther.

History: We only got to one day of history this week, learning about Caesar becoming a consul of Rome - the Triumvirate.

Science: Skipped it.

Art: Skipped it.

Spanish: Skipped it.

The Brute

Math: The only math we did was living math - "We need 4 plates. There are 2 on the counter. How many more do we need?" He answered correctly. :)

Reading: We worked on phonograms briefly one day. To my surprise, he knew the phonogram "er" already? I think I've mentioned it once a long time ago, and we hadn't practiced words with it. We also learned "ar" and looked at the word "car".

Handwriting: We practiced various cursive letters in the salt box. He had fun and did VERY well. His letters are quite legible in the salt!

Mischief

He practiced making circles on the magnadoodle this week. He's very good at circles and slow, deliberate lines. He's also played with the white board markers a lot. I need to hairspray one of his shirts. :P He did lots of "maf", coloring in the used math workbooks from his brothers. :)

Weekly Report - Year 2 Week 8

This was an interesting week! We had a little delay early in the week due to a friend's emergency. Thankfully, we were able to go out and help as needed without worrying about getting back in time to pick someone up from school. Love it. ;) We were a bit slacking toward the end of the week, especially with a multi-store shopping trip on Thursday, but that's ok.

Tornado Boy

Math: We finished grade 3 MM!!! Well, he's still working on the end of year test, technically. It's 8 pages! We're about halfway done with it. I'd like him to finish it so I can see any glaring holes, since we have skipped some things here and there.

Reading: He finished Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Next week is The Phantom Tollbooth!

Grammar: We did lessons 4-6 in FLL3. This early stuff is mostly review, so it's still easy right now. :) We are skipping the "optional dictation", since we're doing dictation in WWE2.

Writing: We completed week 2 of WWE2. So far, this has been easier than WWE1. I suspect that this will change. It's lulling us into a sense of comfort and ease, and then suddenly we'll get a passage that we have no clue what it's talking about. Just waiting for it now... :)

Handwriting: This week, we went out in the sand and drew 'a' and 'd', plus the combination 'ad'. I had to convince Tornado Boy not to press so hard in the sand. Light touches are fine! He's getting there. He has some nice letters in the sand.

Spelling: We skipped spelling this week, and I'm contemplating some changes, after doing some more research on Writing Road to Reading (Spalding) and Spell to Write and Read (Spalding-spinoff). Now that I have used AAS, I understand WRTR/SWR and think it might be better for Tornado Boy, since more phonograms are learned up front.

Read-Aloud: <hangs head in shame>

Bible: This week we learned about Daniel's prophecies, some of the Jews returning to Jerusalem, and how there was trouble rebuilding the temple.

History: We learned about the first emperor of China's grave (with thousands of clay soldiers), Confucius, and then we went back to Rome and learned about Julius Caesar being kidnapped by pirates!

Science: Skipped this week.

Art: Skipped this week.

Spanish: We finished most of Chapter One Part B. Not quite done yet.

The Brute

Math: We did a little bit of Book B, but not much yet.

Reading: We worked on some phonograms (Spalding style) and started learning how to read some cursive letters. We'll start some pre-writing activities next week (salt box and such).

Mischief

Mischief sat in on our phonogram  lesson, and while he was doodling on his Magnadoodle, he suddenly said "A says /a/!" and I saw this:

Weekly Report - Year 2 Week 7

Last week I didn't update, but we were on break anyway. I got the boys' rooms cleaned up, and they've kept them clean since then - yay! This week we got back into school with a new schedule, and it went well!

Tornado Boy

Math: We are almost finished with multiplication in parts (2 or 3-digit times 1-digit). Next we do fractions, and then we'll be done with MM3B! We've also worked in IP 2B and CWP3 this week, doing addition/subtraction in both. Keeps it fresh! Tornado Boy is also doing XtraMath.org daily to work on memorizing his facts. He's pretty good with his addition/subtraction and is getting better at entering them quickly on the computer. Once he masters those, he'll work on mastering multiplication/division, which he's not very quick with yet (though he knows most of them - still has to skip count to find a few here and there). Luckily, MM4A starts out with addition/subtraction, and long division is in 4B, so we should have the facts memorized well by time we hit long division.

Reading: We did Charlie and the Chocolate Factory this week. He was supposed to read 3 chapters per day, making it 15 chapters for the week. He read ahead some days, so he's on chapter 22 instead. :) We discussed last week how boring the book would be if Charlie didn't find the golden ticket.

Grammar: We started FLL3 this week! The first lesson was on parts of the book (title, author, TOC), the next lesson was reviewing nouns, and the 3rd lesson was making plurals for simple words. I told him going in that the first week would be super easy. It was. He seemed to like it pretty well though. Not too much writing, and the lessons were short.

Writing: We started WWE2 this week! He did great. I typed up his narrations instead of writing them, so that is helping immensely. His dictation both days went great. I'm so proud of him! There were some new words in his first dictation that we haven't gotten to in spelling, so I helped him with those during the dictation, but he didn't freak out or get upset. Phew! Thank you AAS for getting him used to dictation with words he was confident with! :) His second dictation was one sentence of his last narration, and that also went well. I just gave him part of the sentence, because he tends to give me good length sentences. His first sentence was "The Fox played a trick on the Stork, and the Stork did the same to the Fox." I gave him "The Fox played a trick on the Stork." as his dictation sentence. It's a good length for non-spelling word dictation at this point, and we haven't gone into comma usage in a sentence like that.

Handwriting: We started really working cursive this week, and it's in the HST+ schedule, so I can't skip it. :P I'm making my own cursive sheets. We started with a couple letters, one on each line. He traces 3 of them, then writes one of his own, then traces one, then writes one, then traces one, then writes one or more. I also did some simple 2-3 letter words with joins. So each sheet is done over 2 days - the first day working on letters, and the second day working on a word. So for example, we did 'a', 'n', then the word "an". We've gotten some really nice letters this week, and I'm very pleased with his progress!

Spelling: We are now doing spelling only 2 days a week for the moment, so we just did one step this week - Step 19 of level 3. We did a word sort on the words with an /ee/ sound (spelled 'e', 'e-e', 'ee', 'ea', or 'y'). We also dictated 3 sentences.

Read-Aloud: No read-aloud this week. Mischief has not tolerated bed time books lately. :/

Bible: We learned about Daniel interpreting King Nebuchadnezzar's dream, the fiery furnace, Nebuchadnezzar losing his mind, the handwriting on the wall, and Daniel and the lion's den.

History: This week we studied ancient China, including the origin of the country's name and the building of the Great Wall of China. Very interesting!

Science: This week we learned about birds and mammals. No activities.

Art: WE DID ART! TWICE! Can you believe it? I still can't. We did both of the lessons I had planned. I changed the order, but we did both. I'm so happy! Of course, Tornado Boy says "I love art!" :P

Top one is Tornado Boy's, Bottom one is Mama's

Tornado Boy - tornado, telephone poles, cars, road, secrete language, lightening

The Brute

Mama

 

Both of these lessons came from Evan-Moor's How to Teach Art to Children. Great little book! We're learning to use lines, curves, and angles.

Spanish: We got about halfway through Chapter 1 Part B of R.E.A.L. Homeschool Spanish. We are working on more basic conversation (how are you type things).

The Brute

Math: The Brute finished his first math book this week! We're now moving on to Book B of Singapore Essential Math K. We have done a few lessons so far. I expect this book to take us all year.

Reading: We worked on some words in Word Mastery this week, and he did very well. We also read one Bob book.

Weekly Report - Year 2 Weeks 3-6

Apparently, I was a slacker the last 4 weeks! Whoops!

Well, we've gotten a lot done... except in art. One day we'll get back to that. We've done a lot in other areas though, and Tornado Boy is happy. :) Let's see what I can recap (thanks to HST+ telling me what we've done!)...

Tornado Boy

Math: We've finished up through chapter 9 of MM3B - Division. The last 2 chapters are multiplication in parts (eg, 23 x 7) and fractions. He LOVES fractions, so I can't wait to do that chapter! I've set up the lesson plan in HST+ for MM4, and I printed out 4A so far, so we're ready to go with that around mid-September. I also scheduled out Singapore IP 2B and 3A, plus Singapore CWP 3. I'm going to try to do one of those each day.

I started having Tornado Boy do a program on the computer called XtraMath.org. It's free, and it basically drills them on math facts. I set him up to do all 4 operations, so a week later, he's still in the initial assessment phase. His addition score was 35, subtraction score was 43, and multiplication is not quite done yet. Then he'll do division. Once he's done with the assessments, he'll start practicing each one daily. It will show a fact, and they have to type it within 3 seconds to achieve mastery. If they type it within 10 seconds, they get a check mark. If they get it wrong, they have to type the correct answer. So the scores above are "mastery" within 3 seconds. He did better on subtraction because he had gotten used to where the numbers are on the keyboard by that point. :) I expect his multiplication score will be low, as he hasn't been doing multiplication tables long enough to have them all mastered. He can figure them out, but doesn't have every one memorized. He has his addition/subtraction facts all memorized, but typing them in 3 seconds is harder. He seems to enjoy the program, and I think it will be good for him to get his multiplication and division facts down pat before we hit long division in MM4B.

Reading: He finished Detectives in Togas a couple weeks ago, and started Mr. Popper's Penguins. That is such a fun book! He especially liked the chapter where they made an ice rink in their living room. That was my favorite chapter too. :) I think he has one or two chapters left to read because we didn't do reading Friday. I'll have him read it sometime during our break this week. I think we'll do Charlie and the Chocolate Factory next.

Grammar: We have almost completed unit 1 in R&S English 3, and me being the curriculum hopper that I apparently am... I've decided to switch to First Language Lessons 3. It will be here tomorrow. :) I think Tornado Boy will enjoy it more. He loves the poems and such, plus the diagramming gets more in-depth than R&S 3. He is his mother's child - loves diagramming. And even better, FLL3 has the diagrams already drawn for him!

Writing: We finished Writing With Ease 1!!! I was originally thinking I'd do WWE2 from the text (choosing our own passages), but I chickened out at the last minute and ordered it - thank you Amazon Prime. :P So that is entered into HST+ and we will begin it next Monday. I'm not sure how dictation will go... I might have to have a pep talk with him before we begin. He's used to doing dictation with spelling words, but some of these words he won't know how to spell already, though he will be doing them as copywork the day before. I'll just be sure to point out the spellings so he'll study them a bit and remember them. I can help him with spelling during the dictation, so it shouldn't be TOO bad... I hope. :) He's ready for the narrations totally, so I'm excited to get to that - pulling the main idea out of the story.

Handwriting: We've really slacked off on this, but last week I made my own cursive sheets in Startwrite and tried them out. I actually made one version for Tornado Boy and one version for The Brute. :) The Brute isn't quite ready for pencil writing though. He's still pretty wobbly with it, though he has beautiful numbers with crayon. I need to do the sand/salt/shaving cream stuff with him. Anyway, back to Tornado Boy... He did very well with the cursive. I had him tracing light, solid lines, and then there was space to write it himself. We kept it simple... 'a', 'm', 'n', 'an', 'man'. I actually took this from Word Mastery, which is a learning-to-read program from many years ago, but I thought it might be fun to use it for cursive, and that way The Brute can join in as it progresses through the phonics. Fun, eh?

I still need to put my lessons into HST+, so I can officially make them on the schedule. If they're on the schedule, it will get done. I just hadn't been scheduling handwriting, so it wasn't getting done.

Spelling: We got through whatever step gets into words with /ee/ spelled "ea". Spelling continues to go well. He's very good at remembering rules and rule breakers.

Read-Aloud: We've read some Aesop's Fables and some fairy tales from Lang's Blue Fairy Book.

Bible: We just finished learning about Jeremiah. Tornado Boy has decided to read ahead, as usual. I don't know where he is in the book.

History: We've learned about the rise of Rome, the Roman Gladiators, the Punic Wars, the Indian caste system, and Siddhartha.

Science: Slackers that we are... We finally made bird feeders per our next science lesson. We took toilet paper rolls, spread peanut butter on them, rolled them in bird seed, and hung them (with dental floss) from trees. We're supposed to be watching the birds at our feeders. Ha! I haven't seen a single bird anywhere near the feeders. Oh well. We'll just need to observe birds everywhere else.

Art: No art the last 4 weeks... Oops.

Spanish: We finished Unit 1 Part A, but haven't gotten around to Part B yet. We'll pick that back up next week.

The Brute

Math: We're getting close to finishing book A of his Singapore Essential Math K! I also had him play with some Cuisenaire Rods a bit last week. I printed out a Cuisenaire Discovery Book, and he got to build some creatures with rods, so that was fun. Tornado Boy likes playing the games in the book too (despite it being a PRESCHOOL book :P ).

Reading: We read the 5th Bob book in set 1, and are almost done with lesson 2 in ETC1. He's really been in more of a math mood recently, so that's what we've done. At church, he likes me to point out words in the songs as we sing, so he may be getting closer to making a leap in reading. We'll see. ETC is definitely helping him get a little faster with reading the words instead of sounding them all out, but we are probably sounding out 90% of the words still. That's ok. It will come. :)

Weekly report - Year 2 Week 2

Second week of school was much more normal! We're getting back in the groove. I've added in everything except handwriting, only because I completely forgot about it. :P

Oh, and it was someone's birthday... Tornado Boy turned 7 on Monday!!!

Tornado Boy

Math: Continued with multiplication facts, doing tables of 6, 11, 9, 7, and 8. We also did almost an entire fraction chapter in Primary Challenge Math. Love that book! We're almost done with the multiplication chapter in 3A. Then we'll move on to division! Strangely, Tornado Boy seems to be better at the missing factor problems than the regular multiplication problems. If you ask him __ x 3 = 24, he'll immediately say 8, but if you ask him 8 x 3, he might have to think. Most facts he pretty well has memorized though. He just needs time using them to get them solid, and I think he'll easily do that in the 3B chapters of MM. I'll also pull out the RS card games for multiplication.

Reading: Continued Detectives in Togas. He is enjoying the book.

Grammar: This week we learned to diagram! I love diagramming! When I showed my son how to do compound subjects/predicates, he said, "Cool!" Big smile from Mom there! I guess he loves diagramming as much as I do. It is very mathematical, I think.

When doing a worksheet later this week, I wondered what the publishers of Rod & Staff would think of my son's sentences...

one simple subject, one simple predicate: A bomb exploded.
two simple subjects, one simple predicate: A tornado shelter and bunker are in my ship.
one simple subject, two simple predicates: I killed his people and destroyed his ship.

Love it. The last sentence is referring to his brother's ship (they had made ships out of the base-10 blocks, which we don't use for math, so might as well build with them!).

Writing: We did narrations on passages from The Tale of Benjamin Bunny and A Christmas Carol.

Handwriting: Again, forgot. I need to enter the lessons in HST+ so I will have it officially on the schedule. :P

Spelling: We started spelling back up this week. We did two steps in AAS level 3, and also did some syllable work and went over the Sight Word List 1 in How to Teach Spelling (HTTS). Of 30 sight words, Tornado Boy didn't know 7 of them. Not bad. We just went over those, studied them a bit, then "tested" on them. I'll go over them again next week. Not all of the list was really "sight words", as some were easy enough to phonetically spell (a, the, he, she, we, go...). Some were actual "rule breakers" though. He knew some of the ruler breakers from AAS. The others we just haven't gotten to yet in that program.

I'm basically planning to do half AAS and half HTTS for a bit to see how HTTS is. It has harder words and sentences, but AAS is easier to use and a bit more thorough, I think. Combining the two just makes sense to me at this point (since I own through level 4 of AAS). I'll reevaluate when we're done with level 4 whether I'll get levels 5 and 6 or just stick with HTTS. I'm likely to just finish AAS, since Tornado Boy enjoys it, and it holds my hand in teaching different strategies. HTTS is nice to have though, as I can add in harder words and sentences to move things along a bit.

Read-Aloud: Still reading Aesop's Fables, and I also read "The Bronze Ring" from Lang's Blue Fairy Book.

Bible: We continued to learn stories about Elisha this week, including Naaman's healing from leprosy by dipping in the Jordan River 7 times.

History: This week, we studied a bit about the ancient Americas. We learned about the Nazca drawings, which are pretty cool. Amazing that they did those drawings without being able to see what they looked like. We learned about the Olmecs and the huge head statues they built. We also learned about what North Americans ate in different regions (cold vs. warm) and the story "Rabbit Shoots the Sun".

Meanwhile, Tornado Boy picked up SOTW2 and read straight through the entire book in about 5 days! I decided I better go ahead and get 3 and 4. SOTW4 came yesterday, and 3 came today. He's read a bit in 4 about World War II (which he's interested in), and he's read in 3 about some of the states that used to be part of Mexico.

Reading SOTW4

Science: We did our "Leaping Lizards" activity this week. We stuck thermometers outside with lizards taped to them. The one in the shade ranged from 120-130F! It was next to the gravel driveway, and it was very sunny out, though I wasn't expecting a temp that high. The one in the shade was around 82F, which is to be expected. Clearly, the lizard in the shade was much happier and much more active. :)

Art: We never got around to doing art this week.

Spanish: New subject this week! I took part in the Homeschool Buyer's Co-op for R.E.A.L. Homeschool Spanish, which is a downloadable Spanish curriculum for the whole family. It includes PDF text, PDF activity book, and audio files for the text and the activity book. We started it Wednesday as soon as I downloaded it! We've learned this week how to do some simple greetings, ask how someone is, and ask someone's name. We'll spend next week learning the rest of the vocabulary for Unit 1 Part A. The boys have really enjoyed this. We take turns all having little canned conversations, and I try to use the phrases throughout the day for practice. We haven't tried the activity book yet. So far, I've just been writing vocabulary on the white board, going over what it means, then having conversations with the boys.

The Brute

Math: The Brute was in math mode this week. He did some pages in EM, but also pulled out the R&S Counting With Numbers book and did some in there as well. We also started a 100 chart, since he's been wanting to count to 100. he can get up to almost 30, skipping 14 and 15, so he's close. One day in the van, he had me count to 100, so I did. I then told him to do it. He then counted to 20, then said, "80, 90, ooooone hundred!" I told him he skipped a few numbers. He said, "I counted to 100 the short way!" This kid is going to be so much fun to teach...

Reading: We did about half of lesson 2 in ETC1, and we did some spelling at the white board one day when he asked to do it ("cat", "dog", and a few other words). He's quite a good speller so far!

Weekly Report - Year 2 Week 1

A little behind updating, so I'll do weeks 1 and 2 today. :)

We had a good start to our second grade year! Just a few little meltdowns early in the week, but all in all, not so bad. I'm so glad I only took 2 weeks off!!!!

Tornado Boy

Math: I had intended to go back and do chapter 1 of MM 3A, however Tornado Boy decided he wanted to do chapter 3, so I let him move on. We'll hit the materials in chapter 1 informally at the white board or something, I guess. This week, he learned the multiplication tables of 4, 5, 3, and 10, plus did a mid-chapter review page.

Reading: He started reading Detectives in Togas this week, which ties in nicely to the fact that we're about to get into ancient Roman history. I read this book out loud to the boys last summer, but they don't at all remember that, nor did they really understand it at that point, as they weren't used to read-alouds. Tornado Boy is enjoying the book and doing well with it. He just needs help remembering how to pronounce the Latin names. ;) We are not doing anything formal with the book. I sometimes informally ask him what happened in the chapter he just read, and he tells me some brief bit about it. I can see clearly that he comprehends what he is reading, so that's good! I was a little concerned, as the book is reading level 7.3!

Grammar: We started R&S English 3 this week, and it went very well! I'm doing textbook lessons 3 days per week, then doing worksheets the other 2 days. So far, this is working well, as there isn't a worksheet for every lesson. We are doing the oral reviews, then teaching the new lesson on the white board, then I assign some of the written work. I try to keep sentence writing to 2-3 at the most. So far, so good. This week, we learned how to use a dictionary, how to put words in alphabetical order, and reviewed what a sentence is (which thankfully, the grade 3 book only spends one lesson on this and then moves on - grade 2 spent a whole unit on this topic!).

Writing: Since we are doing some "copying" in English, and since Tornado Boy is ready to do the WWE2 level work, we are finishing WWE1 in the next 6 weeks by just doing the narrations each day and skipping the copywork days, so we do 2 WWE weeks in a physical week. This week, we did selections from The Happy Hollisters and Polyanna. I'm glad we have Happy Hollisters in the literature line-up for this year!

Handwriting: We didn't start handwriting this week.

Spelling: We didn't start spelling this week.

Read-Aloud: During our break, we began reading Aesop's Fables. We are continuing to read a couple pages per night at bedtime. The boys are enjoying these stories.

Bible: This week we learned about Naboth's Vineyard; Ahab's son Ahaziah becoming king, getting injured, and dying; Elijah going to heaven in a chariot of fire; and Elisha saving two boys from slavery. Let the Elijah/Elisha confusion begin! :)

History: We learned about Alexander the Great this week.

Science: This week we did an experiment that basically just showed how you do an experiment. We took paper towels from two different brands, measured out the same amount of water for two cups, then dipped the paper towels in the cups for 30 seconds. We then pulled the paper towels out and measured the water that was left in the cups. Our paper towels were Members Mark brand and Scott brand (from Dollar General). The Member's Mark towel was probably 3/4 the size of the Scott towel, yet the Scott towel did not hold nearly as much as the Member's Mark. I'm glad I use Member's Mark regularly! :)

Art: We did the first lesson in How to Teach Art to Children. The lesson was on lines. We learned about horizontal, vertical, and diagonal lines.

Tornado Boy on the left, Mama in the middle, The Brute on the right

The Brute

Math: I don't think we did any math this week.

Reading: We did one lesson of ETC1. He totally loves it! He's also able to do the writing in it with no problem. Phew! I'm actually quite surprised at how well he can write his letters already.

Weekly Report - Summer Break

We're taking a summer break... for 2 weeks most likely. I don't think I could break much longer than that. :P This week, Tornado Boy has had Cub Scout Day Camp, so he's been busy, dirty, and tired. :)

I have been making lesson plans, making narration pages, etc. I have SOTW1 completely planned out and entered into HST+. Phew! Now to start SOTW2. Ha! We won't be there until October, so I can do it a little bit at a time. :) I have made narration pages for the rest of WWE1 also. I still need to make lesson plans for art and literature/poetry. I have purchased several books for literature, and I'm going to plan them out this time around. I hope to do some narrations on the lit each week. I'm adding in poetry, since Tornado Boy said he likes poetry. I am using the recommendations from the Core Knowledge Sequence. They have lesson plans available on the Baldwin Project, so I can do a few things with the poetry. I think he'll like my plans.

For art, I've purchased Usborne Art Treasury and Evan Moor's How to Teach Art to Children. I plan to make some lessons using those, and still intermix the Draw Write Now book we have. That should give us enough to do for the years.

Next week, I have planned to declutter the house some, as well as finish working on lesson plans. I'll have all the kids home, so we'll see how all that goes. The following week, we're planning to start school back up, but we're also going to have swim lessons for 4 days, so we may be doing half school that week. I just don't want to take too much time off, or getting started again will be a bear!

Weekly Report - Week 20

Our last week of first grade! This has been such a great semester!!!! We did everything we had planned this week, even if a couple things got pushed off a day. We were able to make it up easily without stress.

Tornado Boy

Math: We finished Chapter 2 of 3A, aced the chapter test, and got started on Chapter 1 (Addition review).

Reading: He finished Boxcar Children #3 last Sunday, and read Elmer and the Dragon this week... twice. He read the book all the way through Sunday afternoon, then did 2 chapters each day through the week. We did some copywork from the book and a few narrations. We also discussed each set of 2 chapters. His comprehension is excellent. I just have to laugh when I say "So what was your favorite part of the story?" and he says "I liked every part!"

Grammar: We worked a bit on finding the subject of a paragraph this week, and also learned to use the dictionary in the back of the English book. That's all we'll do from R&S English 2. We'll start the grade 3 book when we start back up in a couple weeks.

Writing: Since we did copywork out of our literature this week, we did 2 weeks of WWE narrations. We'll just continue this route until we finish the book. I'm still undecided about getting the workbook for WWE2 or winging it with the instructor text. I'm inclined to get the workbook at least one more year. We'll see. I'll continue to pull copywork out of our literature as we speed through the narrations in WWE1 (one per day).

Handwriting: Copywork was handwriting this week. I used Startwrite to make lightly shaded sentences to trace. This really helped him get a feel for the shape of the print italic letters.

Spelling: We got through Step 9 this week, though didn't do spelling at all Thursday and Friday.

Read-Aloud: I'm still reading through that children's story book that is really weird. I NEED to pick up a new read-aloud. Really need to. I can't... take... much... more. :P

Bible: We talked about Elijah and King Ahab this week. Elijah called upon God to burn up an altar, and fire came down from heaven, while Baal didn't send fire. All of the prophets of Baal were killed. Jezebel was angry, so Elijah hid again. Elijah didn't think there were any God-worshipers left, but then God told him there were 7000 men who had never worshiped Baal. Elijah then went back and anointed Elisha to take his place.

History: Sparta and Athens were at war this week! Sparta attacked Athens. Athens was inside their city, but someone led them out to fight against Sparta. They lost horribly, and that guy led Sparta back into the city via a secret passageway. Sparta won!

We played the game in the SOTW AG for this chapter, which is basically a game of Sorry. Sparta won there too! I was Sparta. :)

Science: We studied amphibians and reptiles this week, discussing the similarities and differences

Art: We did art yet again!!! This time we made a girl, and the cool thing is that you start out by writing "girl", then using that to draw the girl. The Brute didn't quite follow those directions, so he wrote "girl" on the lines, but just drew a girl on his own in the picture, which is totally fine. :)

The Brute

Math: We've learned to write all our numbers, and are getting pretty good at it too! Some of his numbers look like I wrote them. This week's lessons were mostly on number order in both directions (0 to 10, and 10 down to 0).

Reading: We did a few sentences from OPGTR this week. Nothing really fancy. We also worked on some writing a bit.

Mischief

Dogback Riding

Weekly Report - Week 19

Almost done with school for the year! Though we'll be schooling year round, so we're just taking a short break soon. :)

This week involved a Father/son trip out of town Friday/Saturday, so we did 5 days in 4 days, which once again, didn't seem to take any longer than doing 5 days in 5 days. Weird.

Next week will be our last week for "first grade", and then we'll take a break for 2-3 weeks, then start "second grade" (though nothing he'll be doing at that time will have a "2" on it).

One big change this week:

Missing something

Tornado Boy

Math: We continued with multiplication this week and finally hit one page that slowed him down at least a tiny bit (ie, I had to walk him through a few problems before he could do it on his own). It was word problems where you have one group of so many plus one group of so many (ie, 5 cows and 3 humans - how many legs are there?). He can do them now, but I think it was the first time I've seen him have to work to figure out how to do it. We've found where he's at! At least, at the moment...

Besides the 5 sections in MM3A that he did, he also did somewhat random pages in SM IP 2A and SM CWP 2. One of them was length, and one involved adding/subtracting with renaming, so that's good review.

Multiplication facts seem to be coming along quite nicely. I'm surprised at how many he has memorized already, and it's only been 2 weeks!

Oh, and we did math Monday during a thunderstorm, and the dog was scared... and looked a bit demon possessed...

Reading: He's still working on Boxcar Children #3. I had him read 2 chapters per day later in the week, so he's over halfway through the book now. I need to have him speed read since we have Elmer and the Dragon ready to go, and it will have to be returned in a couple weeks (though that one will be read quickly).

Grammar: We did 4 sections of R&S English 2 Unit 5, which introduces paragraphs. Even more amazing... He copied the paragraphs (which are about 3 sentences in length). They took up half a page of HWT 3rd grade paper, so they were a good length. I couldn't believe he wrote them... without complaint!!! Huge improvement in writing over here. I look forward to starting R&S English 3 after our break, and we'll be doing it as written (though I won't assign all exercises).

Writing: Just for grins, I gave him the end of year evaluation for WWE1. He did well, although he couldn't remember Aunt Em's name... He said "Aunt Ed?" That was close. He also couldn't remember what building Uncle Henry ran to. He knew what it was, but couldn't remember that it was called a shed. He said "shelter", which is probably because our goats use goat shelters during storms, so he was probably picturing something along those lines. I'm going to keep plugging away at WWE1, but... I've decided to cut out the copywork (since we'll be doing R&S English which includes copying properly formed sentences from a book, and I'll also be adding in some literature copywork from what he's reading), and we'll just do the narration days everyday. He'll still be copying his narrations on the day #4 of each "week". So our plan will be each week to do 2 "weeks", days #2 and #4 of each of those. He really likes narrations, so this will work well, I think.

I believe he's just about ready to move on to the next step in narrations, but given how he did on the evaluation, we'll practice a bit more first. He definitely passes the copywork section of the evaluation. I didn't even give it to him. He's copying 3 sentences in paragraph form from a grammar textbook without error, so I'm not worried about his copywork abilities. He could probably handle starting dictation now, but it won't hurt to wait a bit longer and get his spelling more solid so he'll have more confidence.

Handwriting: We did a couple days' worth in the GDI book. I need to put it on our assignment sheet, as I keep forgetting to do it!

Spelling: We completed up through step 6 of level 3. We're now starting to hit a point where we will probably need to slow down and actually do review.

Read-Aloud: I've been reading out of a children's storybook that I picked up at the library. It has some stories I know well, such as the "Three Little Pigs", "Goldilocks", and "Little Red Hen". It also has some really strange stories such as "Titty Mouse and Tatty Mouse", which make me wonder what kind of drugs the authors were on. I'm sure it probably has some deep meaning, but on the surface, it's a strange story.

Bible: Elijah has told King Ahab that it won't rain until Elijah announces that it will. Elijah then goes into hiding, staying near a brook and being fed daily by ravens. When the brook dries up, he stays with the widow whose flour and oil didn't run out. Finally, Obadiah finds Elijah and tells King Ahab to come meet with him.

History: We finished Cyrus the Great from last week, getting a great narration on that one (main topic sentence followed by supporting sentences - woohoo!). We learned about Sparta and Athens, and had a good discussion on why Tornado Boy is being educated, thanks to some of the statements made in the section on Athens. :) We also squeezed in the chapter on Greek gods, since it only had one section. The mapwork for that chapter was a test to see how many places he could find on an unlabeled map. He was to get a chocolate chip for each one he found. He got them all. :)

Science: We did lessons 2 and 3 of BJU Science 3, studying vertebrates and invertebrates, warm- and cold-blooded animals, and going a little deeper into fish. Thursday afternoon, as we were closing a gate, we found a frog (toad?) and did more science, talking about how he's a vertebrate, cold-blooded, etc.

Art: We did art! We did art! I also have last week's art to show. Tornado Boy's pieces are on the left, and The Brute's are on the right.

 

The Brute

The Brute had his last day of speech therapy this week, and his beloved therapist is moving away, so he won't see her again. The Brute drew a picture for her and wrote his name. The funny part? The biggest thing he was working on in speech was getting him to say 'm' instead of 'n' (like "milk" was being said "nolk"). We were successful, but maybe a little too successful... He wrote his name, but the 'n' in his name was an 'm', and he drew 3 more m's above it. :)

Math: The Brute worked on writing numbers this week. Most of them are fairly legible. We got all the way through writing "10".

Reading: I think we only had one lesson this week, but it was a good one! He copied a whole sentence!!! Then finally he read it. After that one sentence, we stopped. I was happy with that. :)

Mischief

Mischief turned 2 this week!!!