Weekly Report - Week 10

Tornado Boy had a field trip this week to "Let's Pretend Hospital" at the local nursing school. He had a good time, and now the boys play hospital and check for broken legs using a football as an x-ray machine. :) With the field trip, a new horse, and The Brute wanting to do school more often this week, we didn't get quite as much done as usual, but that's ok. We're not behind, so it doesn't matter!

Tornado Boy

Math: In math this week, we started Chapter 3 of MM 2A. It began with a review of making 10s to add across a 10. As I was going over the example, I said "You remember doing this a few weeks ago, right?" and he said "No." LOL. Life with a first grade boy. It's a good thing MM has review built in! So we did the review, and he did just fine doing everything. It all quickly came back. Though I have to wonder how his mental math worked... At one point, he said "8 + 7 is 12 + 3, so that's 15!" Um... yes, but that's not the easiest method... Whatever works though, right? :)

Reading: We finished Charlotte's Web! He read 3 chapters Friday, of his own choosing, so he could finish the book! We plan to start My Father's Dragon next week. I'll probably have him do 2 chapters at a time.

Grammar: We have continued in FLL1, doing 3 lessons per day up through Thursday, then we had completely gotten in sync with WWE, so next week we'll start doing 1 lesson 3 days a week, to be in sync with WWE and also to start FLL2 and WWE2 at the same time next year. FLL lessons are easy to get through, but he's also learning things, so it's all good. We're almost through the noun stuff (which can be tedious, but it's easy to go through it quickly if the child already understands it). I love the picture study, which we haven't done before. The story narrations have been great too - having a full story to read instead of just a passage.

Writing: The topic in WWE this week was Davy Crockett. Tornado Boy did well with his copywork and narrations. We did not do day 4 yet, since I had him narrate and do copywork in science instead. Normally I'd do both, but we were trying to get caught up in other subjects due to a field trip this week, so I let it slide. We'll do it eventually. :)

Handwriting: He had to do copywork of "I will pay attention to my work." earlier in the week... 2 sentences. You can guess why. :P

Spelling: We've mostly played with Webster's Speller this week, though we finished step 6 of AAS, doing the dictation phrases and sentences (about 4 or 5 throughout the week). We'll do step 7 next week and continue in Webster's.

Read-Aloud: We finished James Herriot's Treasury for Children. That is an excellent book. I have a couple choices for next week ready to go.

Bible: We learned about King David today, brief overview really. King David in one lesson isn't going very deep. :) I'm sure we'll go deeper as we get to that section in history later.

History: The Israelites left Egypt and are wandering through the wilderness, complaining about every little thing along the way. Moses gets the Ten Commandments, ends up breaking the first set out of anger since the people had built a golden calf to worship, and then he goes back and gets a second set. It's amazing to see history repeat itself over and over again in such a short timeframe, and yet it still happens even today!

Science: We've been studying horses this week, since we just got our horse Saturday. The boys have been having so much fun learning how to feed and take care of him!

Final investigating Wanagi (goat guardian dog)

As mentioned above, instead of doing day four of WWE this week, I made a narration and copywork from Apologia Zoology 3, the section on the horse's senses. I then had him draw a picture of a horse being aware of something in his surroundings. This idea first brought tears, but after some talking, he liked the idea. He was mostly afraid that he couldn't draw a horse, but then I reminded him that he's drawn a horse before in art. I even offered to let him look at that picture while he drew, and that made him feel a bit better. Then I suggested that maybe he could draw the horse being aware of Darth Vader. That brought a smile and started the brain working again! He decided to draw General Grievous riding the horse. I'm sure the horse would certainly be aware of him!

Art: No art this week, except the above science drawing... and lots of Playdough.

The Brute

Math: We did RS A lessons 5 and 6 this week. The Brute was really into school this week!!! He had no problems with these lessons, except trying to say "quadrilateral". :) He is in speech therapy, so I was impressed with his attempts!

Reading: All I can say here is WOW... We've continued with Webster's Speller this week and had great success! We did several rows - D's, F's, H's, M's, N's, and R's, plus we did AB EB IB OB UB. When we did the H's, he would see HA and say "/h/... /ay/... /bay/. No. /h/... /ay/... /bay/. No." It was really quite cute the way he said no so quickly after saying /bay/. He did figure out the correct syllable. Friday, he had no problem with the syllables we did. We went through N's and R's just sounding out once and saying the syllable immediately. I was impressed! We also did the short letters ending in B, as written above. He didn't have any problem going from long vowel sound to short vowel sound. Woohoo! His blending was great. Again, he just sounded it out once, then said the syllable right away. No repeating the sounding out a million times. So great progress here! He has also been writing letters on the white board as we do these lessons. He loves to write letters. He is very good at copying the way I write the letters. He has almost all of them down pat except the ones with sharp angles, like M, N, V, W. He makes them too rounded. We tried doing some horizontal zig-zag patterns across the white board to practice, but he had a hard time not making them curvy. He can draw straight lines just fine. It's just the angle that throws him. But that's ok, we'll get there! He's doing great for his age and stage. He already writes his letters better than Tornado Boy did at 5. :P