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.
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| A hunter shooting an arrow at a bear |
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.
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