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!
The chicken mummuy sounds fun. I am looking forward to when we do one.
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