Weekly Report - Week 7

Tornado Boy

Math: We started Math Mammoth 2B this week. Since we just had a week long break, I only assigned one page each day. Pretty easy. I was surprised that this "review" was actually more challenging in some spots than 1B had been. Interesting! We had to go over 2 of the 4 word problems again, and talk about showing our work. He tries to do things in his head, and is very good at it, but these word problems had multiple steps and it started to catch up with him (though his issues were actually that he didn't read the problems fully).

Reading: Still reading Charlotte's Web. Charlotte has now made her first special web for Wilbur. :)

Grammar: We talked about nouns this week.

Independent Reading: We had a variety of books from the library - several science books (snakes, blizzards, cats, horses), Amelia Bedilia, and some other good books. He finished Grievous Attacks! (Clone Wars), which was a pretty advanced book for him!

Writing: This week's passages were from Peter Rabbit. I had to laugh when Tornado Boy did an excellent (for him) narration, complete with a comma. Then I said "Ok, now your turn to copy it.", and he had forgotten that it was narration & copywork day. I think he would have made a shorter sentence if he had remembered that. :P

Handwriting: The first copywork of the week was "Pencils are for writing, not poking holes." :) The other copywork was the 12 sons of Jacob, split over 2 days.

Spelling: We did 2 steps of level 2 this week. We only did spelling 3 days. So far, so good!

Read-Aloud: We listened to The Tale of Desperauex in the van. I also read several Clifford books today, chosen by Tornado Boy. The Brute liked them. :)

Bible: We studied about the birth and early life of Samuel, right up to Eli's death. We went over all the judges of Israel as memory work. He knows them all like the back of his hand. I'm still learning them.

History: We studied the Assyrians and the story of Gilgamesh. We also learned about Jacob and Esau, Jacob finding a wife, and Jacob and Esau meeting again later.

Science: We started our weather unit this week, using R.E.A.L. Science Odyssey's Earth & Space section on weather. The first weather lab was taking temperature in the shade, in the sun, and inside the house. There was a good 10 degree difference between sun and shade. Tuesday was a perfect day for this particular lab! Nice and sunny and warm, but cool in the shade. On Thursday, we built a rain gauge, just in time for a severe thunderstorm that night! Our rain gauge collected 1/4". I had to place it such that it wouldn't get blown over, so it probably didn't get quite as much rain as it normally would have, but it was close enough. :)

Rain gauge propped up for support during storm

Results!

I had to cut the tip off due to the shape of the bottle, but it still worked!

Art: This week, we drew horses! It was good timing, since we are getting a horse soon, and this horse we drew was the same color. The Brute kept saying we were drawing Final (the name of our horse). He's quite excited. :) I was impressed that The Brute tried to do copywork. See the 'H', 'f', and 'L'? Tornado Boy's copywork is not his best writing, but he did better copywork the rest of the week. I am trying out Getty-Dubay Italics style writing this week in my copywork, and I liked the results. :)

The Brute

I started The Brute on "school" this week, though it's very relaxed and on his terms still. I plan to do math and reading Monday, Wednesday, and Friday... IF he wants to. This week, he didn't want to on Friday, and that was fine! I told him that he can choose at this age, but when he's 5, he'll have to do school. ;)

Math: We started RightStart level A this week. We did lesson 1 on Monday and half of lesson 2 on Wednesday. Both lessons went very well. They were working on recognizing the objects of 1, 2, 3, and 4 without counting the objects. We also added and took away one object at a time, showing a little bit how addition and subtraction will work, though not naming those yet.

Reading: We started All About Spelling level 1, using it for reading. We did step 1 Monday, where you learn all the phonograms. He did very well with this! On Wednesday, we did step 2, where you say the first sound of several different words, and then later in the step you say the last sound of several different words. The Brute had trouble with this because he wanted to say the name of the letter instead of the sound, and being 4, it's like pulling teeth to get him to understand the directions and what I'm really asking for. But that's ok. He was clearly hearing the sounds and understanding those. It's an exercise we might come back to later if we need to. I moved on to pulling down tokens for each sound in a word, and this he did VERY well with. I was actually surprised. At the end, he went to the white board and spelled "cat" and "rat", just because he can. That wasn't part of AAS yet. :)