Our First Lapbook

As most new homeschoolers do, I've been reading about lapbooking and drooling over the cool things you can do with them, though I was scared of the amount of work for Mom. Finally, I decided to give one a try and see how it goes. As I suspected, it's cool, and it's a lot of work for Mom. :P

Our first attempt is the free Multiplication Facts Lapbook at Homeschoolshare.com. I did not use a legal size file folder. I just used what I had, and made an extension per the instructions in the Hands of a Child lapbooks (click on the freebie one for instructions).

A friend had texted me to show off the lapbook she and her DD had just done (with fancy color folders and colored paper), and she asked me how mine was going. This was my reply.

Then I started cutting...

... and cutting...

... and cutting...

... and cutting...

You see, I have a 7 year old boy whose fine motor skills are NOT his strong point. There is no way he's cutting any of this.

Next we started gluing. I let Tornado Boy do most of the gluing. After he washed his hands between 3 things he was gluing, I gave him a paper towel to wipe his hands on. He did most of the gluing, then he lost interest after a while. I did the inside flap myself. Oh well. Results:

I cut the 100s chart in half and stuck it on the front flaps:

The inside:

Lift the flap:

He started filling in the numbers. I think he did a couple sets so far. He likes his lapbook! We'll plan to do the SOTW2 lapbook this year for history, since it's just one little booklet a week. I can handle that much cutting.

Homeschool Tracker Plus Referral

This weekend, someone PM'd me on the Well Trained Mind to ask if I had a referral code for Homeschool Tracker Plus. I had answered a lot of questions on the forum, so they figured maybe I had a code. Well, I didn't. I had never even thought of it. Didn't really realize they had a referral program.

Well, since I do refer a lot of people, I figured why not? I got a code. It's now on the right side of my blog. So if you feel like I helped you with HST+, feel free to use my referral code and earn me $5. :) Of course, I'll answer questions whether you go through my referral or not. I just really love HST+ and enjoy helping other people!

Progress and Adding One

Progress:

Today, we were practicing our cursive italic letters 'j' and 'p'. Tornado Boy held his pencil with a perfect tripod grip!!!!! I am over the moon! He usually has a thumb wrap! That thumb wrap makes me cringe to look at it. I don't know how he can write like that! But he's starting to build up the strength to write properly. Woohoo! He did this on his own. I hadn't told him to do it. I've been working with him using it on the white board with dry erase crayons, but not with pencil and paper yet.

Adding One:

The Brute told me last week that he wants to start Kindergarten when he turns 5 (November). I have been eying My Father's World Kindergarten for a while now, but thought it'd be too easy for him when he's actually "K" next year. It'd be perfect for him right now though. Well, since I was no longer using AAS, I decided to sell that and some diaper making fabric (I'm no longer making cloth diapers), and that was plenty to purchase MFW K. :) So we'll start that probably the first week of October. I'm quite excited about it! It looks fun, and I think The Brute will enjoy it. I got the Basic kit, but with some of the Deluxe items. I already have C-rods, I'm borrowing a butterfly garden, and I don't think we really need to do the ant farm (there are PLENTY of ants outside to watch). So I got the Basic kit plus the orchestra CD and the Cuisenaire Rods Alphabet Book, and then from Amazon I'll get the lowercase textured letters puzzle and the What Really Happened to the Dinosaurs? book. My library has all but 2 of the books from the lit package, so I'll probably buy one and substitute the other. Not a big deal.

Weekly Report - Year 2 Week 12

This was a bit of a lazy week, and we ended up taking off Thursday and Friday. The weather is so nice right now!

Tornado Boy

Math: We did the chapter 1 review and skipped the test. It was clear he knew what he was doing, as it was mostly review. We then started in on the place value chapter, learning about thousands. This is also review, but he's enjoying it because he likes big numbers. :)

Reading: Still reading the Book of Greek Myths.

Grammar: Learned articles and started memorizing a new poem, "The Tragic Story", which was quite funny. I had him act it out, and he liked that! His acting is horrible, but he had fun anyway, since he got to spin around and around. :)

Writing: We did week 6, which included some poetry. He did very well with all parts of this. He also was excited when the copywork/dictation for the week was half of a lesson from Wheeler's slated for this week, so he got to skip that part in Wheeler's. ;)

Handwriting: We did m, n, r, and x.

Spelling: We did lessons 9-10 in Wheeler's.

Read-Aloud: None.

Bible: We learned about Jesus as a boy, Jesus' baptism, and the beginning of his ministry.

History: We learned about the end of the ancient Jewish nation. Tornado Boy then decided to start reading Revelation, since I told him (as the early dater that I am) that Revelation foretells the destruction of Jerusalem. He read one chapter. LOL. Major points for trying! He also studied about Nero and how the Christians hid in the Catacombs.

Science: None.

Art: None.

Spanish: None.

The Brute

Again, I don't remember what we did, if we did anything. I did answer a LOT of "why" and "what happens if" questions though. This stage is difficult!!!!

Mischief

This one started the "why" stage this week also. I think he's mimicking his big brother, as he really doesn't understand the answers to the questions yet. But he does ask "why". I'm not sure if I should be glad they're both going through the stage at once, or scared. :P

Weekly Report - Year 2 Week 11

Updating late. Whoops! Quick run down...

Tornado Boy

Math: We did bar graphs, line graphs, rounding, estimating, and a review of money. This was all pretty easy.

Reading: We've taken a break from Phantom Tollbooth, and he's been reading D'Aulaire's Book of Greek Myths.

Grammar: We learned about adjectives and how to diagram them.

Writing: We did week 5 of WWE2. The passages were from Misty of Chincoteague. Since we read this aloud several months ago, it was a bit more interesting to him. :) He did very well with the dictation!

Handwriting: We did a, d, h, i, k, and l in cursive italic.

Spelling: We did lessons 4-8 in Wheeler's. It's going well!

Read-Aloud: None.

Bible: John the Baptist was born, and then Jesus was born. :)

History: We did chapter 36, which discussed the birth and crucifixion of Jesus. We also read the account of Jesus' crucifixion in the Bible, since it differs from the way it's told in SOTW1. We discussed the differences.

Science: We started learning about plants this week.

Art: None.

Spanish: We learned our colors! This was mostly review.

The Brute

I don't remember if he did anything... Probably did some math. It's been 2 weeks now. :P

Weekly Report - Year 2 Week 10

We did pretty well this week, getting in most subjects. Hooray!

Tornado Boy

Math: We worked this week on some mental math review, using bar models in word problems (we know this from CWP, but it was good to review the MM way), order of operations, and he worked ahead a little bit doing bar graphs because he wanted to. I had originally planned to do just 2 pages a day of MM4, but yeah, that's just not happening. He's continuing to do a full section (2-3 pages). We may slow down when we hit long division, but I don't see anything else between now and then that would likely slow him down.

Other math done this week... Tornado Boy picked up a book his Grandpa gave him called You Can Count on Monsters by Richard Evan Schwartz. It talks about factoring numbers and has a section on how to find all the prime numbers 1-100. Tornado Boy then asked for a sheet of paper - he wanted to find all the prime numbers 1-100. :)

We also got a sample chapter of Beast Academy this week. It's a new elementary curriculum coming for grades 2-5 from Art of Problem Solving. So far, we're both in love! I will post a full review separately when we finish the chapter. We've read it and started on the workbook. I learned some things myself reading the text, and this is a 3rd grade math book!

Reading: Still plugging through The Phantom Tollbooth. We were scheduled to finish it this week, but we didn't do 2 chapters each day as intended, so we'll just move it into next week. That's fine.

Grammar: We did lessons 10-13 this week. We were supposed to do through lesson 12, but we accidentally did an extra lesson on Thursday. :) We practiced the "Land of Nod" poem some more, and he has about 3 of the 4 stanzas memorized.

Writing: We completed week 4 (and the remaining lesson of week 3) in WWE2. The passages this week were from Dr. Dolittle. I'll have to put that on our "to read" list.

Handwriting: We practiced a little bit in the salt this week, but didn't focus on it as much as I would have liked.

Spelling: I'm playing "Musical Spelling Programs" right now. :P We did some WRTR the first few days, then Thursday and Friday, I printed out Wheeler's Elementary Speller, free on Google books. We did a couple lessons and will continue trying this out for a bit. WRTR lacked dictation of sentences, and I think that is what he really needs at this point. Wheeler's has a mix of everything - sometimes a lesson will be a word list that they copy, sometimes it will be copywork of part of a poem or general good literature. Sometimes it will be dictation or writing from memory. It's usually NOT word lists, but when it is, they have them mark certain things in the word lists. Very cool.

Read-Aloud: I should just take this label off until Mischief is 3...

Bible: We finished the Old Testament this week!

History: This actually was accidentally done independently this week. The Brute had speech therapy Tuesday, so I told Tornado Boy to bring SOTW1 with him and read it in the van. He did. I didn't get around to doing anything with it the rest of the day. The next day, I asked him the leading questions from the 2 sections he'd read. He answered all of them! So he just had to do the map work after that. I've made a history notebook that he can do somewhat independently, and we're going to see how that goes.

Science: We did the two lessons I had planned. Way to go me! I have changed the way I'm doing science. I'm now having him read the student text for the lesson, then tell me 3 things he learned. Then he does the activity manual. He liked this method, so we'll keep it up for now.

Art: We did two lessons this week! Woohoo! The first one was drawing pictures with markers on square pieces of white paper. One was to use lines and angles, while the other was to use curves only. The second lesson involved me making a simple line design, such as a diagonal line and a jagged line, with a black marker, then we would form that design into a picture of something. I think Tornado Boy did well!

Top two are Tornado Boy's, bottom two are mine. Tornado Boy's involved bombs...

These are both Tornado Boy's. The one on the left is buildings... maybe on fire?

These are mine.

Spanish: Skipped it again.

The Brute

Math: We did a little bit of EM book B this week... I think maybe 3 pages? It was working on determining which number is one more. I used C-rods to demonstrate.

Reading: I don't think we did anything formal here this week.

Handwriting: Did some more salt box practice.

Mischief

Terrorized the house as normal, but also read some Apologia books with The Brute. :)

So cute with their little thumbs...