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.