Weekly Report - Week 19

Almost done with school for the year! Though we'll be schooling year round, so we're just taking a short break soon. :)

This week involved a Father/son trip out of town Friday/Saturday, so we did 5 days in 4 days, which once again, didn't seem to take any longer than doing 5 days in 5 days. Weird.

Next week will be our last week for "first grade", and then we'll take a break for 2-3 weeks, then start "second grade" (though nothing he'll be doing at that time will have a "2" on it).

One big change this week:

Missing something

Tornado Boy

Math: We continued with multiplication this week and finally hit one page that slowed him down at least a tiny bit (ie, I had to walk him through a few problems before he could do it on his own). It was word problems where you have one group of so many plus one group of so many (ie, 5 cows and 3 humans - how many legs are there?). He can do them now, but I think it was the first time I've seen him have to work to figure out how to do it. We've found where he's at! At least, at the moment...

Besides the 5 sections in MM3A that he did, he also did somewhat random pages in SM IP 2A and SM CWP 2. One of them was length, and one involved adding/subtracting with renaming, so that's good review.

Multiplication facts seem to be coming along quite nicely. I'm surprised at how many he has memorized already, and it's only been 2 weeks!

Oh, and we did math Monday during a thunderstorm, and the dog was scared... and looked a bit demon possessed...

Reading: He's still working on Boxcar Children #3. I had him read 2 chapters per day later in the week, so he's over halfway through the book now. I need to have him speed read since we have Elmer and the Dragon ready to go, and it will have to be returned in a couple weeks (though that one will be read quickly).

Grammar: We did 4 sections of R&S English 2 Unit 5, which introduces paragraphs. Even more amazing... He copied the paragraphs (which are about 3 sentences in length). They took up half a page of HWT 3rd grade paper, so they were a good length. I couldn't believe he wrote them... without complaint!!! Huge improvement in writing over here. I look forward to starting R&S English 3 after our break, and we'll be doing it as written (though I won't assign all exercises).

Writing: Just for grins, I gave him the end of year evaluation for WWE1. He did well, although he couldn't remember Aunt Em's name... He said "Aunt Ed?" That was close. He also couldn't remember what building Uncle Henry ran to. He knew what it was, but couldn't remember that it was called a shed. He said "shelter", which is probably because our goats use goat shelters during storms, so he was probably picturing something along those lines. I'm going to keep plugging away at WWE1, but... I've decided to cut out the copywork (since we'll be doing R&S English which includes copying properly formed sentences from a book, and I'll also be adding in some literature copywork from what he's reading), and we'll just do the narration days everyday. He'll still be copying his narrations on the day #4 of each "week". So our plan will be each week to do 2 "weeks", days #2 and #4 of each of those. He really likes narrations, so this will work well, I think.

I believe he's just about ready to move on to the next step in narrations, but given how he did on the evaluation, we'll practice a bit more first. He definitely passes the copywork section of the evaluation. I didn't even give it to him. He's copying 3 sentences in paragraph form from a grammar textbook without error, so I'm not worried about his copywork abilities. He could probably handle starting dictation now, but it won't hurt to wait a bit longer and get his spelling more solid so he'll have more confidence.

Handwriting: We did a couple days' worth in the GDI book. I need to put it on our assignment sheet, as I keep forgetting to do it!

Spelling: We completed up through step 6 of level 3. We're now starting to hit a point where we will probably need to slow down and actually do review.

Read-Aloud: I've been reading out of a children's storybook that I picked up at the library. It has some stories I know well, such as the "Three Little Pigs", "Goldilocks", and "Little Red Hen". It also has some really strange stories such as "Titty Mouse and Tatty Mouse", which make me wonder what kind of drugs the authors were on. I'm sure it probably has some deep meaning, but on the surface, it's a strange story.

Bible: Elijah has told King Ahab that it won't rain until Elijah announces that it will. Elijah then goes into hiding, staying near a brook and being fed daily by ravens. When the brook dries up, he stays with the widow whose flour and oil didn't run out. Finally, Obadiah finds Elijah and tells King Ahab to come meet with him.

History: We finished Cyrus the Great from last week, getting a great narration on that one (main topic sentence followed by supporting sentences - woohoo!). We learned about Sparta and Athens, and had a good discussion on why Tornado Boy is being educated, thanks to some of the statements made in the section on Athens. :) We also squeezed in the chapter on Greek gods, since it only had one section. The mapwork for that chapter was a test to see how many places he could find on an unlabeled map. He was to get a chocolate chip for each one he found. He got them all. :)

Science: We did lessons 2 and 3 of BJU Science 3, studying vertebrates and invertebrates, warm- and cold-blooded animals, and going a little deeper into fish. Thursday afternoon, as we were closing a gate, we found a frog (toad?) and did more science, talking about how he's a vertebrate, cold-blooded, etc.

Art: We did art! We did art! I also have last week's art to show. Tornado Boy's pieces are on the left, and The Brute's are on the right.

 

The Brute

The Brute had his last day of speech therapy this week, and his beloved therapist is moving away, so he won't see her again. The Brute drew a picture for her and wrote his name. The funny part? The biggest thing he was working on in speech was getting him to say 'm' instead of 'n' (like "milk" was being said "nolk"). We were successful, but maybe a little too successful... He wrote his name, but the 'n' in his name was an 'm', and he drew 3 more m's above it. :)

Math: The Brute worked on writing numbers this week. Most of them are fairly legible. We got all the way through writing "10".

Reading: I think we only had one lesson this week, but it was a good one! He copied a whole sentence!!! Then finally he read it. After that one sentence, we stopped. I was happy with that. :)

Mischief

Mischief turned 2 this week!!!

Weekly Report - Week 18

This week, we changed up some things, started some new stuff, and slacked off, yet still got most things done somehow. Still not sure how that happened...

Everyone getting to work Monday morning at their new desks

Tornado Boy

Math: So last week we finished 2A. This week, I pulled out the shapes chapter of 2B, my son looked at it and said "Shapes?" Yes, he knew the shapes. He didn't need to work on it. We did a page on area (counting the squares, as multiplication hasn't been introduced yet), and he figured out that multiplying would get him the area, and thus he multiplied all the rest. :P So then I started looking ahead at what all is in 2B. We needed to hit fractions, as some of that was newish. The 3-digit addition/subtraction really didn't need to be done, as he's shown mastery of that in his IP books already. Teaching him 2-digit just carried over to 3-digit quite easily. The other chapter in 2B is an introduction to the concept of multiplication, which he didn't need (he understands the concept - just hasn't worked on it enough to learn all his facts yet). Then I looked at 3A and decided to do the fractions in 2B, then skip ahead to the multiplication chapter (2) in 3A. We'll do chapters 2 and 3, then come back to chapter 1 (addition/subtraction review) as review, then continue on in 3A and 3B. Tornado Boy loved doing fractions this week, and he also loved starting multiplication this week. And to my surprise, he has several of his multiplication facts memorized after just doing a few sections of that chapter.

We also continued some more in Primary Challenge Math. He loves this book so much. We've been going straight through. I think we're in the money chapter now. We've done all levels, including Einstein level. I usually have to help him with that level, of course, but I have him lead us through how to solve the problem. I ask him what to do first, what operation we should use, etc. If it involves long division, I do that and show him what I'm doing. He's learning a lot this way.

Reading: Um... I think we may have forgotten to do "reading". Oops. Though he was "reading" all week long. He's several chapters ahead of where we are officially in SOTW, for example. He has a book with him much of the day. So we're still in Boxcar Children #3, and he may have only read one or two chapters this week, but that's ok.

Grammar: Ok, time to flip-flop again. I feel like a politician. :P We've been going through FLL2, and I got to thinking about R&S English again, looked through the 2nd grade book I still have on my shelf, and decided that it isn't so bad in the later chapters (and looking at samples online of later grades - they don't look so bad either). What got me thinking about this was the fact that I would like him to be doing more writing during his grammar lessons - not composition, but just writing down the usage of a particular grammar topic being learned. Afterall, he has excellent grammar when speaking already. He really doesn't need to work on it orally. He needs to work on writing it. So I had him do a couple lessons in R&S 2 (I just picked random lessons that backed up things we've done in FLL2 recently), and he did very well copying the sentences, filling in the words, etc. I think it was good for him - both to improve his writing stamina, but also to get him using that grammar. He seemed to like it a little better than FLL. I would like to do the last couple units of R&S 2, and I'm planning to order R&S English 3 for next year... or this summer. I don't know yet. I'll probably finish FLL2, maybe going at a quicker pace (because we can), and then hop into R&S 3 and see what happens. He's ready for the grade 3 grammar work. I do want the foundation of the parts of speech definitions that FLL gives though. That has been very beneficial.

Also, thinking ahead to when I have The Brute and Mischief schooling, R&S would probably be easier to use. I can go over the lesson, then have them do their written work. That was actually pretty nice the two days we tried it this week. I didn't have him do all the exercises, but I had him do every other one if it was an exercise where you write a whole sentence, and I had him do all of the ones where it was just write one or two words from the sentence. He could NOT have done this in January when we started homeschooling. It would have been too much writing. I'm so happy that we've gotten to this point where writing isn't so bad. :) I even had him do an exercise where he was to come up with a sentence about himself (actually it was 3 sentences, but I said to just do one). He wrote "I am writing". :)

Some grammar done this week:

The Year poem copywork from FLL2

Two days of R&S

Writing: This week's passages came from Hillyer's A Child's Geography of the World. I can tell you right now that I will never use that book. I had a hard time reading it. How convoluted can you make the atmosphere? I think telling kids the scientific terms would be more understandable. :P

Handwriting: We did not do any official handwriting this week, however... We were going to visit Mr. Joe, who just had hip replacement surgery. I decided to have the two older boys draw pictures for him and had Tornado Boy write a letter. I cannot believe the nice, neat handwriting my son did! I was also pleased that he used his AAS knowledge to spell the words (I did tell him that "better" had two 't's before he started writing it, as we haven't gotten to that yet - but he remembered "feel" and "soon" on his own - yay!). Here is the letter:

Spelling: We did spelling 2 days this week, I think? I know we did one step each day. They were fairly simple, so they didn't take very long. We'll get more done next week.

Read-Aloud: We finished Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh! I really, really enjoyed that book... except the end. :P I like a little more closure. Yes, I'm sure we can guess who the two rats are that died, but Mrs. Frisby is left to guess too. I don't know. I just hated the ending.

Bible: We continued to learn about Jeroboam and Rehoboam, and the fact that they both had sons named Abijah. One died as a child, and the other became a king. I had to look back and see who we had talked about previously when it started talking about Abijah the king. :)

History: We finished last week's chapter, talking about the Olympics. We did the first section this week, but didn't get to the second section yet. It's ok, we'll catch up! Tornado Boy has been reading ahead, so he's well into the Romans, while I'm still hanging out with the Greeks.

Science: We discussed the sun in Apologia Astronomy. Then Friday (since we were slackers and skipped science Thursday), we did the first lesson in BJU Science 3. It is an intro lesson, so not much to it. Next week we'll do two actual lessons where you learn stuff. :)

Art: We did art! We drew geese. I didn't take pictures yet. Doh!

The Brute

Math: We did several pages of our math book this week. He was really into math! He colored a certain number of blocks, made graphs of various objects, etc. He also started writing numbers 1-5.

I got a new toy this week, the ProClick binding machine. Here is The Brute's new math book:

Reading: We didn't do any reading this week.

Weekly Report - Week 17

We had a busy week with multiple appointments - vet, dentist, doctor, speech. Somehow, we still managed to get most of our stuff done, even if we didn't start school until 2pm most days. :)

So here is the result of our vet visit:

The Cone of Shame, after initiating a dog fight and getting her ear sliced.

And after speech Friday, we went to an auction place that gets the public school's discards. Now I know why the public schools in that county are running out of money. :P We picked up 3 adjustable school desks, 2 preschool chairs, and 3 elementary chairs (should have gotten 3 preschool chairs, as Tornado Boy fits in those perfectly). Plus we also got a nice 16" globe! It doesn't have a stand, but it's a really nice, expensive type of globe - free! All the desks and chairs ended up being $40 total. They'd been outside, but they're the metal kind, so they cleaned up really well. Now each child has a place to put his books (or toys, in Mischief's case). I gave Mischief an elementary chair, since it doesn't really matter what height he's at yet, as he's no where near writing. Tornado Boy and The Brute have the preschool chairs, and their desks are adjusted properly for that.

He's not really in pain. :)

Lots of books fit in here!!!

Tornado Boy

Math: We finished MM 2A this week! This last chapter was money, which he loves doing math with. I also had him calculate how much change we'd get back at Sonic yesterday, which he did correctly. We did the cumulative review and chapter test. He did great on the review, and missed only one problem on the test, which he easily corrected once I pointed out it was wrong. It was one of those careless mistakes, not an issue with knowing what to do.

We did a few pages here and there from our "extra" books (IP, CWP, and PCM). I had to look up the answer to one IP problem, and this is only 2A. I'm in for it! :)

Reading: He finished Stone Fox this week and started Boxcar Children #3. We were supposed to start the 2nd book of the My Father's Dragon trilogy, but the trilogy book (had all 3 in it) we had checked out got put on hold by someone else, so I had to take it back. I've put just the second book on hold, as it has more copies at the library. We'll pick it up next week.

Grammar: We did 2 of the 3 grammar lessons for the week. Thankfully, these are easy to make up. :)

Writing: We completed week 19, with passages from The Light Princess by George McDonald.

Handwriting: Besides are regular copywork and such, we only did one letter family in GDI book C. Hopefully next week we'll have more time to focus on this, as Tornado Boy is looking forward to learning more italic letters!

Spelling: We spent the whole week on the review step 1 of Level 3. I am shocked at how well he remembers everything. We had only 2-3 phonograms to put in the "review" section and a couple key cards. Going through all 20 dictation sentences, he only misspelled about 3 words, and when I said "Does that look right?", he said "No" and fixed it right away.

Read-Aloud: We're still going in Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh. We have 6 chapters left. The boys have both been so interested in this book. I need to start thinking about our next read-aloud!

Bible: We learned about Solomon's reign and how he fell away from God when he married wives that worshiped idols. He began to worship them too. This gave us a good discussion about what to look for in a future wife. Solomon died, and Rehoboam, his son, reigned over 1 tribe of Israel. Jeroboam took 10 tribes. The kingdom was now divided. Jeroboam didn't want people to worship in Jerusalem, fearing they would want Rehoboam as king, so he built temples at Bethel and Dan, with golden calves to worship. A prophet talked to him and gave him a a warning. The altar there crumbled to show proof of the warning.

History: We've been learning about Greece getting civilized again. They're learning to write, Homer writes down some great stories, and they start the Olympics. Tornado Boy enjoyed the story of Odysseus and the Cyclops.

Science: This week we continued Apologia Astronomy. We'll intersperse it with other science. We completed all of lesson 1. We didn't get to science on Thursday, or we would have started learning about the sun.

I bought a used copy of BJU Science 3 to try out. It arrived this week. I'm itching to try it out, but should probably save it for fall. That's the problem with shiny new curricula. You just want to use it NOW! :) It looks good. I only saw one paragraph that we'll have to discuss religious doctrinal differences. It should be easy to deal with. The rest looks fine, as far as I've read so far. I think Tornado Boy will like this.

Art: As busy as we were this week... Yeah, no art.

The Brute

The Brute took naps this week. He really needed them. We also just didn't have time to do school, though he did ask Friday. I promised to do school with him Saturday. I actually said "a little school", and he said "I want to do a lot of school!" We'll see, kid.

Mischief

Normally, Mischief doesn't get a spot in this update, as he's not even 2 yet (11 more days!), but this week, he was stacking, and I thought it was cute. :)

  

Weekly Report - Week 16

Tornado Boy

Math: We finished chapter 4, did the cumulative review and chapter test, and started chapter 5 - money. He loves this chapter! I let him work with real money, of course. That's the fun of it! This morning while playing "store" (doing some of the problems where you are purchasing some items and give the clerk an amount of money and have to get change back), he said "I have a Euro! I have a Euro! I love Euros!" That was the clerk. Yes, there is a 5 cent Euro coin in the box of change. There are also a few Canadian coins. :)

We also did several pages from Singapore CWP and IP, as well as Primary Challenge Math. He did all of chapter 1 and levels 1 and 2 of chapter 2 in PCM so far. He is almost done with the regular section of the first CWP unit, and he's about halfway through the first section of IP. I usually have him do a bit from 2 of the 3 supplements each day, though today he asked to do all 3! These are great for adding a little challenge (especially PCM!) and just giving us something "different" to do.

Reading: He's been reading Stone Fox this week, and should be done pretty soon.

Grammar: We had to make up 2 of last week's lessons, then do the 3 scheduled for this week. That wasn't a problem, as FLL is so quick and easy. We learned about linking verbs and played some games making sentences with them. We did the "Camel's Nose" story narration (he liked that one). We also started our poetry book for "The Year", copying the title and the first "month" of the poem (2 lines).

Writing: This week's passages were from Winnie-the-Pooh. My husband and I can't stand Winnie-the-Pooh, so of course Tornado Boy liked the passages and wants to read the actual books. :P

Handwriting:  It's back! I got Getty-Dubay Italics book C for Tornado Boy, and he is really excited about learning it. He keeps trying the letters that he hasn't done in the book yet, and asking if that's how you do it in italics. It's very cute! He loves the 't' and the 'y'. I've been working through the adult book myself - Write Now. I've started the cursive section, after getting pretty decent at the print section (though I'll still need to practice more). It's definitely different from what I learned as a child, but I think it will be much more readable! My cursive is awful.

Spelling: We finished level 2 of AAS this week!!! I got level 3 ready to use, and it looks great! I think level 3 will be where we finally slow down a bit and go at a reasonable pace (slower than a step per day). I plan to do step 1 over the course of a week, since it has a lot of review and 20 dictation sentences that review the previous levels. I'd like to do all 20 sentences, so I figure 4 per day will be a reasonable amount done on the white board. That's no different from the 10 words + 2 sentences we often do on regular days.

Read-Aloud: We've been reading Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh. I was somewhat dreading reading this, because I don't care for the movie that much, but upon reading it out loud, I've realized that a) It's a really well written book - great sentences for analyzing grammar and good structure and such, and b) The storyline is very well done. Basically, I am loving this book! I don't know if I've ever actually read it before. I may have just seen the movie. The boys are enjoying it too. We've been reading about 2 chapters before bed each night, so we're not quite halfway through.

Bible: Solomon is now king, and he asked God to make him wise, so God made him wise AND gave him the riches and power that most people would have normally asked for. The Queen of Sheba came to visit and learned that he was even wiser than she'd heard.

History: We studied the early Greeks today, and learned about how the Barbarians around them took over and they had the Greek "Dark Ages", due to the Barbarians not writing, and thus having no written record of the time period. We also watched the video Ancient Aegean, which goes with last week's lesson. It was good!

Science: We completed our study of wolves, working through the dog/wolf sections of Apologia Zoology 3, and completing our "Weekly Wag" for our notebook. It's cute! We picked out some pictures to paste in it. I was quite disturbed when searching for "dog nose". One picture had a dog's nose... without the dog. The Brute wanted to use that one. Sigh. We chose a German Shepherd nose (dog attached!) that was much more appropriate. :)

Art: We did art! We did art! We all drew ducks this week, and they turned out great!

The Brute

Math: We got Singapore Essential Math K books A and B this week! Hooray! He did the first 5 pages of A in one sitting and loved it. It was very easy - just finding things that are the same, matching, etc. I suspect most of book A will be easy for him, but it's good for him to practice with the fine motor skills of circling, drawing, coloring, etc. As of Friday, he has done 31 pages, and it was interesting when they got into the sets... some of them had multiple possible answers, so it was neat to see how HE grouped them. It was often completely different from how I would group them, but he wasn't wrong! For example, when there were 3 aliens and one little boy, he picked one of the aliens as not being part of the set - it had spots! The others didn't have spots. that was completely valid!

Reading: I threw in a bit of spelling this week... The first day, we spelled some syllables (BA, DE, IF) and some CVC words (BAG, BED, NUT). I had to laugh when he finished reading "nut" and said "Dax drives you nuts!" Dax is the dog. He does drive me nuts when he runs down the street. :P We also read some short sentences involving "qu" - "quit" and "quiz". We worked on some sentences from OPGTR, mostly containing CVC words. He really liked one we did involving a pig in a big pig pen, and then he drew the pig in the pig pen. :)

Here's a picture taken during our reading lesson. Dax is the one closest to the door. Nana is the "bonus dog" staying for a week while her family is at a homeschool camp.

Box Day! (part 2)

I forgot to post on the actual Box Day, but... It was the day after I posted last time. ;) We got All About Spelling levels 3 and 4, as well as the Singapore Intensive Practice books for levels 2A, 2B, 3A, and 3B.

We haven't started using AAS yet (next week!), but the IP book 2A has been used so far, and it's a hit! Tornado Boy likes CWP a bit better, because of all the word problems (totally loves them), but he's enjoying the IP as well. So far, it's mostly been place value things - 0-1000, so pretty easy. We haven't had anything challenging quite yet, but it will come.

My AAS level 3 is filed and ready to use. I need to laminate a few things, but that's it. I will definitely have to remove level 1 cards in order to get level 4 in that box. We shouldn't need level 1 cards by then anyway (we haven't used them thus far), so the trick will just be to not LOSE the cards before level 1 gets used again.

Box Day! (part 1)

I ordered from Adoremus Books and Rainbow Resource. The Rainbow Resource order came first (I ordered it a day later). The other order has shipped, but it's coming USPS, so who knows when it will be here.

The RR order included:

Getty-Dubay Italics books A, C, and Write Now (the adult book)
Singapore Essential Math K books A and B
Singapore Challenging Word Problems 2
Zaccaro's Primary Challenge Math
Apologia Zoology 1
Apologia Zoology 2
Apologia Astronomy

The Brute was thrilled to get the Apologia books. He calls them the "Animals on Green Mountain books" because when we walked on Green Mountain, they had a poster of various animals (most of them not on Green Mountain). Sometimes the things he says are too cute to correct. ;) He was so happy to find the "flying dinosaurs" (pterosaurs) in Zoo 1 and the sharks in Zoo 2. Tornado Boy was enthralled by the Astronomy book. We'll need to do a lesson from that soon!

Tornado Boy and I are both looking forward to learning italics with our new handwriting books. The Brute will wait a bit to start his book, as he's not quite ready yet. We need to do some zig-zag practice first.

The Brute can finally start math again, now that we have a book that will likely work better for us than Rightstart A did. He liked the 5 pages he did so far this afternoon. :)

Tornado Boy got to do one problem from CWP this afternoon and enjoyed that. He LOVES word problems. Seriously loves them. Hopefully these will give him the little extra challenge he needs.