Chicken Mummy - Part 1

Since we are doing Story of  the World Ancients, we just HAD to do the chicken mummy project that goes along with ancient Egypt. I've been told that this is a rite of passage for a homeschooler. Many homeschoolers are afraid to try it. I'm not so squeamish about working with chicken, so I decided to give this project a try. Is Tornado Boy learning much from it? Probably not. But we can say "We did the chicken mummy!" Maybe we need a T-shirt...

First, we assembled the ingredients... Chicken, check... Salt, check... Baking soda, check... Baking powder, check... Random spices to make it smell better, check. Now the Activity Guide suggests getting 3 boxes each of baking soda and baking powder, but it just says "several boxes" of salt, which really isn't helpful. I got 6 boxes. I needed more. I got more at Sam's the next week. Thankfully, you don't use it all at once, so the initial purchase got us through the first week of mummifying.

Next, we put our food service gloves on...

Then we washed the chicken first with water, then with rubbing alcohol (not pictured in our list of ingredients above - oops). I've since heard that some people soak their chicken in a rubbing alcohol/water mixture for a few hours. We just dumped most of a bottle over the chicken and inside the chicken and rinsed it out really well. Seems to have worked ok. After washing and sterilizing the chicken, you then dry it with lots of paper towels.

Here's our nice, clean chicken, ready to get really dried out!

Now time to mix our ingredients...

Then stuff the chicken with salt mixture...

Now stick it in a bag, add salt mixture, and then put that bag inside a bag...

We change the salt now and then, more often in the beginning. I have since transferred the chicken to a BOWL with a plastic lid (air tight), and I think that will work better than the bag, which the chicken barely fit in.

So there's the start of our chicken mummy!

Weekly Report - Week 4

This has been a very productive week! I'm so happy with Tornado Boy's progress this week. Incredibly happy.

Math: We did 3 sections of MM1B chapter 7 this week. The third section still has a few problems remaining since we were slackers Friday, but given that we're ahead in math, I wasn't worried about it. Of course, Tornado Boy comes up to me yesterday afternoon and says "Mama! We didn't do homeschool yet!" So much for taking the day off. :) So I let him do the math as planned, but since it was late afternoon/early evening instead of first thing in the morning, his hand just couldn't handle it. It wasn't even that much, as he had less than a page and a half assigned. I'm glad we usually do math in the morning. So anyway, we have been working on addition, going over 10, and subtraction, going below 10. We are using mental math tricks to add 8 + 4 by taking 2 from the 4 and making it (8 + 2) + 2 = 10 + 2 = 12. Likewise, we're taking 12-4 and changing it to (12 - 2) - 2 = 10 - 2 = 8. Both of these concepts took a little explaining with the base 10 blocks at first, but once we'd done a few problems, he clearly understood and was able to drop the blocks and just do it in his head. We have 2 sections left in this chapter, and then we'll be done with 1B. I will give him the end of chapter and end of year tests, partly because he likes to take tests, and partly because I like to use them as review and make sure he's retained what he's supposed to have learned so far. The week after next, we'll be ready to start grade 2 math.

Reading: I dropped CLE Reading this week and went a totally different direction. I pulled out The Boxcar Children #1 (a good chapter book), and I had him read 1 chapter aloud to me each day. The first two days, I had questions prepared that led him into a narration, and I wrote down the narration for those chapters. After those two days, I didn't bother with questions or narrations. We'll do a couple narrations next week, but probably split them up. He did very well with this method! I did tell him the questions before we read, so he'd know what to listen for (as they are fairly long chapters), but his narrations were excellent for his age and this stage of narration development. What really made me happy though... On day 2, he read the chapter aloud, and it ended a bit on a cliff hanger, so I said "You can read the next chapter to yourself if you want.", and I left him alone. He read TWO more chapters!!!!! This is a boy who normally won't read more than one chapter of anything in a sitting, and he read 3 chapters that morning. I was so surprised! The next day, he read 2 chapters, and the fourth day he also read 2 chapters. So while I was expecting to get 4 chapters total read this week, he read 8 chapters! We will continue with our "reading program" in this manner - picking a good chapter book with a little challenge to it, and narrating a chapter a couple times a week. When he gets to the logic stage, we'll worry about literary devices and such.

Grammar: We did 4 lessons from grammar, as we didn't get to the review lesson during our slacker Friday (I should note that we had a doctor appointment in the morning and were gone most of the day). This week focused on answering questions, using words from the question to form a sentence to answer, and also noting the change in word order sometimes. This week, I could tell where the narrations are helping him and also where doing grammar orally is beneficial. We had a sentence that he needed to fill in the answer for: The moon ______. Instead of saying something like "is white" or "is round", as he would do if he had been writing this himself, he said "reflects light from the sun". I was not expecting that answer! He certainly wouldn't have answered that if he'd been writing. I am so glad I chose to do grammar orally. We are making more and more progress with coming up with good thoughts and making complete sentences out of them (as he does in his narrations), and later when his hand has caught up with his brain, he'll be able to put the two skills together and write down his thoughts. I love that I can see how the two skills are being worked separately and will later come together.

Independent Reading:  I did not assign anything specific this week. He just had to read for about 30 minutes from the library book shelf, though he did take some books from the regular shelf - Star Wars. Sigh. The good news is, those books are fairly advanced due to the weird names. So it's twaddle, but it's challenging twaddle.

Writing:  I forgot to update writing last week, and started to forget this week! Whoops! Last week, our passages were from Rumpelstiltzken, which was a bit above Tornado Boy's head. Some of the language used was not what he's used to hearing (old style), so his mind focused on trying to figure out what the words meant instead of figuring out the storyline. Understandable. This week was a bit better, but still a little above his head at times. The passages this week were from Alice in Wonderland. We did well until day 4, when he got hung up on the word "juror", as he'd never heard that word (ironically, the passage talks about Alice being proud of herself for figuring out who the jury was, because most little girls her age don't know the word "juror"... She's apparently correct!). Once we got past that issue, we got a decent narration, and he got to copy this narration as his copywork. This is the first time he's copied his narration. One more step toward coming up with his own thoughts and putting them down on paper!

Handwriting:  We did 4 pages in the HWT book and started copywork - the judges of Israel. The copywork is 6 lines, so I had broken it up into 2 lines per day over 3 days. Unfortunately, we forgot to do it one day, and another day was scheduled Friday, where we slacked off. So we'll either do this over the weekend or just do some of it next week. Not a big deal. His handwriting is definitely improving. His pencil grip is more often correct than not, so I'm having to remind him of that less and less. He is also forming most of his letters correctly, though he still sometimes goes back to his old ways and does the circle first on a 'p', then ends up making it backward. If he "dives down and swims back up and around" like he's supposed to, the 'p' will go the correct direction. I wish I'd used HWT to teach letter formation to begin with! I'm glad the next two children will learn it in this manner and can probably avoid some of the common letter reversals.

I've been thinking ahead to second grade and cursive. I was originally thinking I wanted to do a traditional cursive and go with Pentime, but after thinking some more and looking at my own horrible cursive, which looks juvenile even if I try to write it neatly, I'm thinking maybe Getty-Dubay Italic Cursive would be a better fit for Tornado Boy (and me!). His handwriting is a LOT like mine. Mine is neater, but our style is very similar. I could easily see his cursive ending up like mine too, and it'd be nice to have a useful connected style that can be written quickly, as GD Cursive is. So at the moment, that's the plan for next year. We'll get book C and dive on in!

Spelling: Lots of progress here! We got through step 17 this week (of 24 in level 1). I'm glad I got level 2 when ordering level 1!!! It's only taken about 3 weeks to go through level 1. We did the lesson about when to use 'c' vs. 'k' at the beginning of a word. This is stuff I never knew - I'd just memorized the words. Tornado Boy had not been exposed to this rule, but he quickly picked it up and started applying it to the spelling words I called out. We also dictated some phrases this week. I was so pleased Tuesday when we got done with our spelling and he'd filled out an entire HWT lined paper with words and phrases from that day! That was a lot of writing for him, and he didn't complain during any of it. I was thrilled! He is enjoying AAS a lot, although sometimes when using the spelling tiles, I have to urge him to move a little quicker. He has to play games with each word as I'm ready to call out the next word. Oh well. He's enjoying spelling, is learning rules and how to apply them, and I'm enjoying it too!

Read-Aloud: I've really slacked on Little House in the Big Woods! I need to break down and get the audio for the van. :P We did read a couple cases from Encyclopedia Brown #1, but didn't do much other reading aloud, besides our normal school readings (history and such).

Bible: We studied the judges Abimilech (who made himself a judge, killing his 70 brothers), Tola, and Jair. The Bible doesn't say much about Tola or Jair.

History: We learned about the first writing - hieroglyphics in Egypt and cuneiform in Sumer. The Egyptians carved their writing on stone, which took weeks. The Sumerians carved in wet clay, which is clearly much quicker. The Egyptians then developed Papyrus, so finally they were able to make a grocery list. Ok, that last part isn't true. ;) We also learned about Sargon and how he killed the king of the city-state he lived in, then he took over all the neighboring city-states in Mesopotamia and set up a military dictatorship.

We didn't get to this week's planned project, but last Saturday, we started the chicken mummy! King Cluck of Eggypt has passed away and is now drying in a bowl of salt, baking soda, and baking powder. There will be a blog post at some point (maybe soon) on this project. :)

Science: Slacker mom. We skipped science. :( We were supposed to freeze various objects. We'll maybe do that sometime today (Saturday).

Art: We drew the pig from Draw Write Now #1. I did all 4 lines of copywork. Tornado Boy did one line. I need to present him with some basic, small shapes and teach him to color with color pencil properly - ie, outlining it dark and then filling in with straight strokes that go all one direction. We might practice that this weekend if we get a chance.

 

I should also add that The Brute, who hasn't been talked about much yet, decided he wanted to do a "reading lesson" one day this week. I made some basic CVC words on the white board, using the AAS tiles. He did very well decoding the words and blending the sounds together to figure them out! I will want to practice with the CVC words some more before we move to something new, but I was happy with his reading progress, given that he's only 4 years 2 months old. :) I am not doing formal preschool stuff with him right now, since the focus is on the first grader. At some point, we'll throw in some regular reading lessons and maybe a bit of math and handwriting. I'm just trying to hold off a bit, as he isn't supposed to start K until fall of 2012, and that's a ways off! I would like him to read early, but I don't really want him doing "first grade work" too early. So far, we're doing ok, as he's been content to play during school time and not ask for his own lessons. That might change though!

Weekly Report - Week 3

Another good week here at Kinderbauernhof Academy! We accomplished a lot and did some new things. We had our occasional little issues, but got everything done and learned a lot.

Math:  We completed 4 sections of MM 1A Chapter 7. We have 5 sections left, and we'll be done with first grade math! I also pulled out the RightStart Card Games book and we played "Corners", though it seems to say you should stop when someone gets a corner? We got a corner early on (Tornado Boy did), and I decided to just keep going until we ran out of cards. I won, but it was pretty close through much of the game. In this game, you match numbers together for which the sum is 5, 10, 15, or 20 OR you can match same numbers together. The color has to be the same regardless. So you can put a green 7 with a green 7 or a green 3 or a green 8. Matching a corner means you have to match all sides of that corner, which gets harder. Here's the results of our game!

Reading: We did two stories from CLE Reading. I decided to skip one story that I just wasn't crazy about, based on differing religious views. I am looking to find something else for reading next year. We'll finish this book, but it's just not my favorite. I also have scrapped the phonics work in the Light Unit, and what's left is pretty much busywork, so I'm figuring out what we'll use when we're done with this level.

Grammar: We did another 5 lessons from R&S English 2. This week's lessons focused on making complete sentences - thinking of a word that will complete a sentence, turning a phrase into a complete sentence, etc.

Independent Reading: Tornado Boy finished The Chalkbox Kid and started Encyclopedia Brown #1, but we were hitting a bit of a wall with the reading. I think it's the 4th grade slump that is often talked about in phonics vs. whole word method debates. He is hitting those 4th grade words that he needs phonics to sound out, and he doesn't have the phonics background to do it. He'll get there though. We are remedying that. ;)

Handwriting: We did a mixture of workbook and plain old copywork this week. When I downloaded the StartWrite demo a couple months ago, I kept it open for about a week and made something like 50 copywork pages of various things. I do plan to purchase the software when I order second grade materials. Anyway, we did the letter 'q' in his workbook and copied Bible verses Ephesians 6:10 and James 5:16. Handwriting was a bit light this week.

Spelling: All About Spelling arrived Tuesday! Hooray!!! It is as awesome as I thought it would be for us. :) We did steps 1-4 that day, and Tornado Boy really enjoyed learning the phonograms! He knew most of them already, but he didn't know all the sounds of some of the vowels. That was to be expected, of course. I didn't know all the sounds of the vowels. :P On the second day, we did steps 5-6, and the third day we did steps 7-8. So he knows the first 26 phonograms (basically, each sound a letter can make), and he learned that every word must have a vowel. He did some basic short vowel sound CVC words involving 'a', 'i' and 'o'. They were easy and he already knew them, but that's ok! He is learning to listen for each phonogram of a word. He is enjoying the program so far, and so am I! It is completely scripted and easy to teach. I went ahead and got the box to hold all the cards and also the nice laminated dividers for the box. Both are very nice! I'm glad I got them. I purchased levels 1 and 2, and I figure we'll probably be in level 2 within a few weeks. Level 1 was worth getting though, as there are some foundational concepts taught. I must say, spelling is one subject I look forward to teaching each day right now!

Read-Aloud: Still working through Little House in the Big Woods. We've kind of slacked this week in our reading. I did read a couple cases from Encyclopedia Brown (and boy is Tornado Boy not ready for that kind of logic yet!), but that's about it. We started to listen to The Wind in the Willows in the van, but I'm sorry... I cannot take 6 hours of that story. Tornado Boy didn't care for it either. I'll have to find something a little more interesting for our van rides.

Bible: We did week 19 of our workbook. We learned about Gideon leading an army of 300 to defeat the Midianites by sneaking up at night with pitchers over their torches, then sounding trumpets as they break the pitchers. In all the confusion, the Midianites were afraid and started killing each other and tried to run away.

History: We did chapters 2 and 4 in SOTW this week. Chapter 2 discussed Egypt and how Lower Egypt is in the north (the Nile Delta) and Upper Egypt is in the south. They had their directions mixed up because the Nile flows north from the mountains to the Mediterranean Sea. We learned about how the Nile floods every year and how the ancient farmers would dig canals to save some of the flood water for the dry season. We learned about King Narmer defeating the other king and becoming king of all of Egypt. He wore a double crown after that - the white crown he'd already been wearing, and the red crown that the defeated king had worn. We learned about some of the Egyptian gods - Isis, Osiris, and Set, as well as Ra being mentioned. Chapter 4 discussed the mummification process. We have purchased our own King Cluck, King of Eggypt, along with supplies to turn him into a mummy. We will hopefully start that Saturday.

At the beginning of the week, we did our project from last week's readings. We did a cave painting.

A hunter shooting an arrow at a bear

We did some narrations for the SOTW chapters, and on the narration pages, there was a spot to draw the double crown of Egypt. To my surprise, Tornado Boy willingly drew it! Hooray! I think this narration process will be very good for him. We're working up to drawing pictures more often.


Science: First, we took a look at last week's crystal project. It's supposed to make rock candy, and basically, it did, but you couldn't get it out of the jar. I think we used way too much sugar.

Our topic this week was colors and how you can mix them to make new ones. This was old hat for Tornado Boy, but he had fun playing with food coloring and water anyway.

Art: Yes, we actually did art! I've seen on WTM forums that people sometimes have "We Did Science! Friday", but I need "We did art! Friday". :) Besides the above cave painting and also painting a rainbow with water colors for science (not pictured), we did the first animal in Draw Write Now book #1 - a hen. I printed out story paper from the Startwrite demo, and we both drew a hen and did some copywork. I did all of the copywork, but Tornado Boy only had to do one sentence. I think we did very well!

Overall, it's been a great week. We also got together with a homeschool group for the first time today, and Tornado Boy got to make some new friends there. There were several boys close to his age. I enjoyed talking with some moms that have BTDT for a while, including some that had homeschooled all the way through high school already.

Wordless Wednesday: Doing School Together

Weekly Report - Week 2

This week went well also! We had to squish things into 4 days because Tornado Boy is going on a trip on Friday with his daddy. It was very easy to move things around, and none of our days felt like we were doing extra work, despite starting history and science this week.

Math: On Monday, we briefly discussed clocks and took the Chapter 5 test on clocks. He aced it. He fully understands time to the half hour. He's not as well versed in minutes, but that is in grade 2. Grade 1 (of MM) just talks about hours and half hours. We moved on. We skipped Chapter 6, which is shapes and measuring. He has done plenty of first grade level shapes and measuring in school, and again, he'll hit the same stuff in grade 2. So we started Chapter 7 - Addition and Subtraction 0-100. He pretty much knows this too (there is no regrouping yet), but I'm having him do this whole chapter for the most part, because it does introduce some concepts that will be necessary to know later on. He has enjoyed this chapter more. He even made explosive noises as he wrote numbers the first day, and he kept pointing out the patterns on the page ("It's an AABC pattern!") He has always loved patterns, even when there really is no pattern - he'll make one up! :)

We continued with MEP2A. Some of the topics actually coincided with MM work this week, so that was nifty.

Reading: He completed two stories in CLE Reading. I have decided that the schwa has got to go. We'll just be skipping the phonics-related things from now on. They will put a schwa in just about any word, it seems like! The suffix -ed ends up schwa-d. Huh? I actually say a short 'e' or maybe a short 'i' when using an -ed suffix. And today, they put a schwa in the first 'o' of hippopotamus! So when they shorten it, do they say "hippah?" I actually say a long 'o' in hippopotamus. There are just too many of these schwa things where saying the word with the schwa was just totally different from how we actually speak, and our way of speaking was more phonetically correct. Bye-bye, schwa!

Grammar: We did 5 lessons (4 lessons plus a review lesson) in R&S English. We discussed starting and ending sentences, plus how to turn a phrase into a sentence. Tornado Boy seems to enjoy these lessons. They also have good morals involved, like picking the sentences that are kind - "She looks funny." would not be a kind sentence.

Independent Reading: Tornado Boy finished Tornado by Betsy Byars. Now he is working on The Chalk Box Kid by Clyde Bulla. I had him read 2 chapters per day this week. I think he only has one chapter left. Next week, I'll have him start reading Encyclopedia Brown. He also read a couple Fly Guy books, a Nate the Great book, and whatever else was on the library book shelf. He likes the Fly Guy books.

Writing: We did copywork and narration passages from Pinocchio this week. This went very well. I am definitely seeing improvement in the narrations now. On day 4, I didn't have to ask for a complete sentence a single time. He automatically answered in complete sentences. Yay!

Handwriting: We did the letters 'y', 'p', 'r', and 'n', plus the copywork on the facing page for each letter. I really like how HWT forms their letters. Tornado Boy is starting to pick up correct letter formation habits. He still needs some reminders here and there, but some letters are starting to become automatic. Not bad for 2 weeks! Pencil grip is also improving, though I have to remind him most times he picks up the pencil. He knows how to fix it quickly though.

Spelling: Oh boy... When I first started researching curriculum, my first pick was All About Spelling. I really liked the samples and thought Tornado Boy and I would both enjoy it. This was the one thing that was set, while every other subject choice changed 2-3 times. Then as we got closer to making purchases, somehow I ended up deciding we didn't need AAS. I chose Sequential Spelling, since it works patterns and such. Then after purchasing that, I changed my mind and chose Rod & Staff Spelling 2. So last week, we used R&S Spelling and it was just too easy. This week, we used Sequential Spelling. It went ok, but during each lesson, Tornado Boy would ask "why". For example, when we did the word "pinning", he asked why we double the 'n'. I tried to explain it as best I could, but since I don't know all the spelling rules myself, it's hard to explain on the fly. So after doing SS all week, I have decided that we should just go ahead with AAS as originally planned! I have levels 1 and 2 on the way to me now. We'll hold off on spelling until they get here next week. I really think Tornado Boy will love AAS. It's magnetic letters on a white board! (and we already have the letters on magnets, which btw, was a lot of work to put on).

Phonics: We did the next 5 lessons of OPGTR, then on the second day that we normally do phonics, I decided since we start AAS next week, and it pretty much takes care of phonics instruction, we'll just put OPGTR away and wait until AAS comes in. Streamlining our homeschool is good!

Read-Aloud: Over the weekend, we listened to Socks by Beverly Cleary in the van. It was performed by Neil Patrick Harris, which after watching Malcolm in the Middle all those years, really made me laugh. :) We also plugged away on Little House in the Big Woods. We're over halfway through the book now. Tornado Boy likes it when we snuggle up in the big recliner chair under a blanket to read.

Bible: We completed week 18 of ABS Bible Workbook. This week talked about Deborah and Barak chasing Sisera in battle. Sisera hides in Jael's tent, and while he's sleeping, Jael runs a spike through his temples, into the ground. Gross! Tornado Boy likes this story, of course.

History: We started history this week! Since we had already read the corresponding Genesis chapters last week during our morning Bible reading, we didn't read them again. We did read SOTW1 Introduction and Chapter 1, learning about historians, archaeologists, and nomads. We also learned that Jericho is the oldest known city. We did some map work, looking at the continents and finding the Fertile Crescent. We did narrations for each section of SOTW that we had read. We also did a Cool History page about the topics we studied.

Science: We also started science this week! We did week 4 of Elemental Science Intro to Science (afterschooled weeks 1-3). This week was crystals. We tried to grow crystals (rock candy), but the recipe we used called for way too much sugar, I think. Yes, we got crystals... completely attached to the jar. We'll see how it is next week when all the water has evaporated.

This week was special in that we got snow! We don't typically get much snow here, and certainly not 8+"! So while all the schools around us were closed all or most of the week, we did school as usual and still got to play in the snow every day. Best of both worlds! And I seem to be one of the few parents on Facebook not going insane with the snow days. My kid had something to do everyday. :)

Wordless Wednesday: The Abominable Snow Blob

Mischief Helps with Math

Weekly Report - Week 1

We have had a great first week of homeschool!!!

Math: We did the first 4 sections of MM1B chapter 4 (place value). We had a few tears the second day because he was supposed to write number words - a LOT of them... on spaces big enough to fit the typed words. So I got the scratch paper out and had him write them on there, and severely cut down the number of problems he needed to do. All was well. By the 4th day, it was obvious to me that he fully understood the place value (ones/tens) that was being studied, and he also fully understood the number words - he just can't do that much writing, nor does he know how to spell them all yet. I'm ok with my first grader not being able to write "twenty-three" off the top of his head quite yet. So I made the executive decision to give him the Chapter 4 Test on Friday. If he did well, we'd move on to the next chapter (Clocks). For the test, he did have to write 4 number words, and I made a list of number words (one to fifteen, then the tens from twenty to ninety) for him to use as spelling help. He still had to put the words together, like "twenty-three". To my surprise, he even remembered the hyphen! He got 100 on the test. We're moving on to clocks. We'll probably finish clocks up next week and move on to the next chapter. I suspect we'll be starting MM 2A sometime in February.

Alongside MM, we are also doing MEP 2A. I have been giving him one page a day. It's different and interesting. Right now it's mostly easy (as 2A is early first grade level), but he's learning the different ways that MEP does math. We have seen some new things along with the easy stuff he already knows. It's been a good supplement.

Reading: We did the first 4 lessons of CLE Reading 100. Tornado Boy reads above a first grade level, but this reader is good for him. I'm happy with this level for now. We are doing 4 lessons per week. Each story has 2 lessons. The first two lessons were the schwa and schwa-r sounds. Those were new to Tornado Boy. Then he read Who's Afraid of Funder? and answered the questions in the workbook. It was pretty simple, and he seemed to like the story.

Grammar: I initially had planned to use R&S English 2 at a slow pace to last through second grade, but at the beginning of the week, after seeing how much writing Tornado Boy was actually capable of, I decided it was best to do it orally. Well, doing it orally, we might as well stick with the suggested schedule. It's easy enough and only takes 5 minutes or so to go through a 2-page spread. So this week, we learned about sentences, phrases, telling sentences, and asking sentences. Today was a review section, and Tornado Boy seemed to be enjoying the exercises. Yay!

Independent Reading: This week, Tornado Boy was to read one chapter each day from Tornado by Betsy Byars. He should finish it up Monday, and then we'll start a new book (to be determined after we go to the library today). He reads this while I put littles down for a nap. At the end of the chapter, he is to read anything he wants from the library book shelf until I come back down. I try to make this time last about 30 minutes (thank you smart phone that I can surf on while nursing baby). This routine has worked so well that he is starting to pull library books off the shelf on his own for fun during the downtime of our school day. Yay! He is not allowed any screen time (computer, video games, TV) until all school work is finished for the day.


Writing: We did week 1 of WWE1, which is 4 days of work. The first day was copywork - "There were no roads." The second day was a narration on a passage that involved that sentence. Tornado Boy's narration ("What is one thing you remember from this passage?") was "There were no roads." LOL. I told him that was cheating and asked for one more thing he remembered. :) He said "There were no people." Good enough. He did copywork on day 3 and then another narration on day 4. The narration on day 4 was much better! It even had a comma in it! He said "The bear was reaching into the pen, trying to get the pig." Narrations at this point are written by me. He just has to think of what to say. I write it down. He is learning to put thoughts into complete sentences. Questions about each passage on narration day are also to be answered in complete sentences. He is doing well with this new concept, and it tied in nicely with our grammar studies - sentences vs. phrases.

Handwriting: We worked through the HWT grade 1 book, hitting the letters that he was especially having issues with, such as 'e' and 'f'. We are now at the point where I can remind him of the little saying from HWT and he will write the letter correctly. He loves the "magic c", and that has really helped a lot of his letters that he was forming strangely.

Spelling: We did week 1 of R&S Spelling 2. It was pretty easy this week - words like "cap, hat, cake, rain, word, days" and others. We did the first page Monday, the second page Wednesday, and the test on Friday. I kept it simple this week. Later on, I might add in a dictation sentence using his words. He already knew how to spell all of these words, but he got to see how this program works. I'm ok with keeping spelling a bit easy this year. We're still working on phonics.

Phonics: We did 7 lessons from OPGTR this week - various digraphs, including /sh/, /ng/, /ch/, /tch/, and /nch/. We fly through these lessons right now, as he knows how to read these words, but it is good for him because they make him stop and read the word rather than sight reading based on shape. For example, he might think "Chip" is "Clip", and I will point at the word and he'll read it again correctly. He's starting to make less of those types of mistakes, as he needs to really look at the letters in these passages.

Read-Aloud: We have been reading a chapter a day from Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder. Tornado Boy seems to be enjoying this book, at least some of the time. :)

Bible: We finished week 17 of ABS Bible workbook. Tornado Boy knows all his judges of Israel. I still need to learn several of them. This week we learned about Othniel, Ehud, and Shamgar. Tornado Boy enjoyed the story of how Ehud killed Eglon by hiding the dagger under his robe and telling Eglon he needed to give him a secret message from God, so the doors were locked and he killed him, then hopped out the back and ran away before the servants ever realized anything was wrong.

All in all, this has been a wonderful week. I was well prepared, having put all my lesson plans into HST+, assigned lessons to the individual days, and printed out assignment sheets. I did make some changes mid-week in handwriting and phonics, as well as changing Friday's math to a test instead of the next section of work, but those were easy changes to pencil in and quickly change in HST+ so next week I'll know where we are. Our basic day goes like this:

7:30ish - Read from the Bible and sing some hymns while the boys finish breakfast
8:00ish - Start math, then follow up with reading (CLE) and grammar
9:00ish - long break - either go run errands or play outside
11:00ish - lunch
11:30ish - put littles down for nap, Tornado Boy does independent reading
12:00ish - WWE, HWT, ABS Bible, Spelling/Phonics

We were done by 1pm every day this week! Of course, we haven't started history or science yet, which will add another 30-60 minutes each day, depending on whether we're doing a project or not. We might start history and science next week. I'm still undecided. I'll make that decision sometime this weekend, I guess! :)

Wordless Wednesday: At the Library

First Day of Homeschool!

We had our first day today! It went great. :) We started partway through breakfast with Bible reading, then sang a couple hymns and said a prayer.

Next, we did one section of Math Mammoth 1B, where we learned how to use the abacus, a funny way of naming numbers greater than 10 (1 ten 1, 2 ten 3, etc.), and learned how to count objects by grouping in 10s first. After that, he did a MEP 2A worksheet, which was easy, but he learned a little bit different way of doing less than and greater than symbols (MEP has you put a number in the symbol to show how much less than or greater than).

After math, we worked on CLE Reading 100 lesson 1. We talked about the schwa and Mama made many "May the schwa be with you." jokes, which really don't make sense to Tornado Boy, as he's never seen Space Balls (schwa/schwartz). He laughed anyway and enjoyed the lesson. It was a pretty quick lesson.

Next, we did Rod & Staff English 2, lesson 1. I decided since his writing is S-L-O-W, I would do it orally. I know a lot of people do this book orally in first or second grade, and it's fairly common to do first grade grammar orally. The writing will come later. This text is very easy to use orally or written, and it took us about 5 minutes to talk about how a sentence is a complete thought. He even remembered later in the van when I asked him what a sentence was. :)

At this point, we took a break and went to Walmart for groceries. This took about 30 minutes to get everyone ready. The Brute was having focus issues, as 4 year olds often do. :P Spent about an hour on our errands, came back home and did "recess" while Mama made lunch. Halfway through lunch, I read a chapter of Little House in the Big Woods.

Now it was time to put The Brute and Mischief down for their naps. The Brute has not had a nap in weeks and really, really, really needed one. What a difference it made too! While I was working on naps, I had Tornado Boy read a chapter from the book Tornado (ha!) by Betsy Byers. His instructions were to then read any book on the library book shelf until I came back down. He probably got about 20 minutes of indepedent reading in.

Once everyone was down for naps, I returned and we worked on our Handwriting Without Tears pages, learning the letter 'd' and copying two sentences involving the letters worked on so far. Note that Tornado Boy knows how to write all his letters. His problem is that he forms many of them "weird". I am correcting that. He did very well today. The "magic c" used in HWT has been really good for him, and he likes it. His handwriting is improving already.

After that, we did Writing With Ease. The copywork today was "There were no roads." I briefly went over how to form a proper 'e' on the back of the page, as that is one he forms weird. He did some beautiful 'e's today! I was impressed.

Finally, we had "ABS Bible", which is the curriculum he used at school. It's a story per week, and it is all in a workbook. He corrected me on the pronunciations of Ehud and Eglon. We'll see if I remember them the rest of the week. I'm not really up on my early judges, so this is good for me too!

We finished "school" by 1pm and played with Snap Circuits for the next 2 hours. That was FUN! I highly recommend them. Tornado Boy absolutely loved them and did 16 projects. He started getting pretty good at doing the projects on his own without my help. That's my little engineer!!!

Hopefully we'll have a good rest of the week. I'm sure the littles will try my patience a bit. We'll survive though. :)