Weekly Report - Year 3 Week 17

And the holiday season begins! We took 2 weeks off for Thanksgiving, when I had intended to only take off that actual week. Oh well. We had to put our dog Kira to sleep the week before Thanksgiving. She was old and had had neurological problems for the last 3 years, so it was expected. She was a sweet girl.

Kira

So that derailed our school plans, and frankly, I just wasn't in the mood to teach the rest of the week. I declared it a week off. We then prepared for a new adoption... We got Keiko that Saturday. Her name in rescue was actually Kira, so of course we changed it. Keiko was dropped off at a shelter with 2 1-week old pups back in September. The pups are weaned now, and one has been adopted (yay!). The other is still waiting. Keiko has the BEST temperament! She's a really great dog. She is a dark sable German Shepherd.

Stalking Aerial, the cat

Ok, so after Thanksgiving, we got back to school work. We had a good week, and our main interruption was getting a piano - finally! We had been planning to get one last April, but then the garage fire happened literally within 2 weeks of our planned piano purchase date. DH had to set up his "office" in the space that the piano was going, so the piano had to wait until the garage office was fixed up again. The day before Thanksgiving, we stopped by a piano store and purchased a digital piano. It was delivered Monday. In the piano store, I taught Mischief where middle C is. He still remembered it on Monday! He proudly tells everyone where it is. :)

Mischief playing piano

Tornado Boy

Math: We covered multiplication and division of decimals by whole numbers and multiplication and division of decimals by 10, 100, and 1000. Most of this was review. We also did several pages of CWP, finishing up fractions and getting most of the way through area and perimeter. Tornado Boy loves CWP time.

Reading: He read Benjamin Franklin of Old Philadelphia two weeks ago when all this was originally assigned. It's a library book, so I had him read it on our way to get Keiko (4 hour drive). He finished it pretty quickly and liked the book, as I thought he would.

Grammar: We did some usage lessons in R&S this week: raise vs. rise, lay vs. lie, set vs. sit. These lessons were a good reminder to me as well. ;)

Writing: We started to do a rewrite of the Princess and the Pea for Unit 3 of IEW SWI-A. Unfortunately, the unit 3 thing just didn't make enough sense to me in this one. I pulled out the example outline and was thinking, "Huh?" So I've decided to shelve unit 3 until I get/watch Teaching the Classics. Perhaps that will help some. I think we will move on to Unit 4, which I can handle and Tornado Boy can handle. So in lieu of IEW this week, we did a R&S lesson on writing a report, which happened to use key words from multiple sources. He wrote a paragraph on Bobwhites (a type of quail). I didn't have him add any dressups or anything like that. He did ok.

Spelling: We did the review week 30 this week.

Latin: We did 2 lessons - puella (girl) and amo (love/like).

Read-Aloud: We started Johnny Tremain this week for Sonlight. We are at the part where he has just injured his hand very badly. We are also still working through I, Robot and should finish it this week. We're in the last "story". Tornado Boy is enjoying it, as am I. The little ones... not so much. They tend to fall asleep while reading. :)

Mischief during I, Robot

Bible: Still harmonizing the gospels. It's now the last week of Jesus' life. We also did Proverbs daily.

History: We read the Landmark book 2 weeks ago, so I can't remember the topic now. We also learned about the French and Indian war in the Story of the USA book.

Science: Skipped this week.

The Brute

Math: We practiced addition and subtraction within 20 this week, doing two exercises in the workbook and some mental math strips (the latter focused on facts within 10). We also finished Life of Fred Butterflies and started Cats.

Reading: We continued with Dancing Bears and did very well. We also worked on saying /ch/ properly, and his SLP also worked on that during speech therapy. He then told her toward the end, "Can we stop making that sound now?" :)

Writing: We did several new words in WRTR this week, writing them in print and cursive on a lap size white board.

Other: We finished Sonlight P4/5 week 13.

Mischief

Our biggest accomplishment was taking a NAP on Wednesday so he was pleasant in Bible class that night! :P I'm not really sure what Mischief did academically this week, as Tornado Boy was "teaching" him. He did join in on the WRTR lessons with The Brute, often saying the word before The Brute even tried. Sigh. I know at one point, he copied the word "stop", then sounded it out and told us it was "stop". Good job, kiddo!

Mischief writing/reading "stop"

Weekly Report - Year 3 Week 16

This week has gone very well! We used our brand new school room for the first time, and I can't believe how much that helped us stay on task and be productive.

The Brute and Mischief helping Daddy put shelves together

All moved in!

My husband plans to put a big white board on the wall those desks are facing. Currently, I just have my old 2'x3' on an easel in the corner by that wall.

The white shelves separate the "school area" from the "toy area". I wasn't sure how well that would work, but so far, it has been fine. Library books are on the back side of the shelving unit also, so sometimes the kid that isn't doing school can be back there reading. In fact, one day, Mischief was reading so quietly there that I forget he was back there! :)

Tornado Boy

Math: We did Exercises 3-7 in the decimals unit. They were pretty easy, but it was good to practice those concepts a bit. We also did 2 pages per day of CWP5. This week was Fractions, and those problems were mostly easy for Tornado Boy. He loves fraction word problems!

Reading: He finished reading The Matchlock Gun.

Grammar: We did 3 lessons in R&S English 4, including action verbs with and without direct objects and learning about predicate nouns. These are all review topics for Tornado Boy, but it had been a while since he diagrammed, and he likes diagramming. :)

Writing: I had intended to do IEW this week, but when I made the schedule, I forgot to put it on there, and I had already messed up the first printing of the schedule and reprinted once, so I decided to let it go one more week. We'll do the rewrite of the Princess and the Pea the next two weeks before our Thanksgiving break. I did not replace the writing this week, but I did have him do the exercises in R&S that included writing a couple original sentences based on a picture. He had those in two of the lessons and did them with ease, with all words spelled correctly! Hooray!

Spelling: We finished week 29 of R&S Spelling 3. 100% on the test. I had forgotten to test week 28, but I gave him one of the harder words from that list, and he got it correct also. Next week is a review lesson.

Latin: We did 2 lessons this week - tabula and aqua.

Vocab and Poetry: Just here for placeholders in case we ever get back to them. :P

Read-Aloud: We finished the 5th story in I, Robot and started the 6th.

Bible: Continued harmonizing the gospels. Our daily reading schedule has dates, and we finished September this week. Ha! We're a bit behind, but that's ok. I'm not in a hurry. We just plug along at our pace. :) We also read Proverbs each day.

History: We read a lot about the House of Burgesses and the Virginia Aristocracy this week in the Landmark book. It was interesting reading about some colonial times elections in Virginia while the US elections were going on for us. Some things haven't changed.

Science: I forgot to put this on the schedule also. :P

The Brute

Math: We did exercises 12 and 13, plus Mental Math 2 and 3. We are now adding and subtracting within 20 pretty well. My biggest challenge during math time is getting him to write numbers properly instead of big, scary numbers or numbers that are eating other numbers, etc. :)

Reading: We finished a whole page of Dancing Bears.

Writing: I started the WRTR word list this week, doing both print and cursive. The Brute sits at his desk with his lap size white board, and I write the words on the board and have him read and copy them in manuscript and then cursive. This is NOT how Spalding is supposed to be done, btw. So don't copy this and think it's Spalding. ;)

Other: We finished P4/5 week 12.

And we have bad news about our pet "Astronaut"... When you see a caterpillar make an upside down 'V' like this, it's a virus:

He stayed up there for a couple days, then finally died, hanging on by only one pair of legs in the middle. Dr. Google said virus, and sure enough, he didn't make it. :(

I still need to move some leaves around to see if Flower is still alive. I'm hoping he's in chrysalis form now.

Mischief

Tornado Boy worked with Mischief a few days this week, using a variety of preschool to first grade workbooks, including The Brute's Singapore 1A (no, Mischief is not actually ready for 1A :P ). He also joined in on The Brute's WRTR lesson, reading those words.

And the funny for the week... Thursday, Mischief came out saying, "Ok, I have my clothes on!" My reply was, "I wasn't planning to rob anyone's house today..."

He did change again before taking The Brute to speech therapy that day:

And later, I found another hat (or toque, for the Canadians) and put it on Tornado Boy, who was complaining that he was cold:

Doing school work so they don't have to have a life of crime...

Weekly Report - Year 3 Week 15

To contrast with last week, we hardly did anything this week. :) I've been busy cleaning house and planning for a big birthday party. We do a large party for 6th birthdays, and The Brute turned 6 on Thursday! So several families came over for a cookout Saturday, and I had to do errands two days this week, with cleaning the other days.

So...

Tornado Boy

Math: We did the first 2 exercises of Singapore 5B, and we also did all of the non-challenge problems in the first unit of CWP5, working them together at the white board. We'll do the challenge problems next week!

Read-Aloud: We finished The Witch of Blackbird Pond Friday, and we also finished the 3rd chapter of I, Robot - Reason and the 4th chapter - Catch That Rabbit.

The Brute and Mischief

No school work, but we did find another caterpillar in the flower bed, sitting on a piece of drift wood. It's an American Dagger Moth. I read that they eat maple leaves, so I stuck some in the habitat and caught him. He's doing well, and he's been climbing all over the sticks and leaves, chomping loudly on the leaves. Mischief named him Astronaut. Our other caterpillar, Flower (named by The Brute), is likely in chrysalis form now. I'm not completely sure. I know where he is, under some leaves, and I have seen some web-like stuff down there, so I'm hoping that's what he's doing. :)

Weekly Report - Year 3 Week 14

We had a productive week! Hooray! Not too many distractions either. We did spend one day visiting my parents across town, and then a cub scout meeting afterward, but we were able to get important school stuff done before we left, so it was all good!

Tornado Boy

Math: He finished Singapore 5A this week! He did the Review 6, then took the placement test. Passed it, even with a few silly mistakes. One thing we need to work on is reading the question carefully. ;)

Reading: He read a good chunk of The Skippack School.

Grammar: This week we did some R&S English 4, discussing present, past, and "helper form" of various verbs, both regular and irregular. I also explained present perfect and past perfect, since I like to use correct terms from the beginning. :P

Writing: We took another week off from IEW, but started to do an exercise in R&S where you make a list of steps, then write a paragraph explaining how to do something. At first, I thought this would be a doable thing. Then I realized that my son doesn't know how to do anything that involves multiple steps! Of the choices in the book, the only thing he knew how to do was clean a room, and his steps in cleaning the room = "put everything away". He doesn't do one thing first and then another. He just goes around the room, picking up everything he sees. So I had told him to think of something he knows steps for. He decided to tell how to build a hero from Smart Links (Wendy's kids meal toys that have actually been good). He dictated the steps to me. I looked at it and knew he wasn't going to be able to easily make a paragraph from that. It was too confusing. So I scrapped the how-to-do-something paragraph idea and told him to write a science narration instead. :) We'll get back to IEW next week.

Spelling: We finished week 28, and while he didn't study the words this week, he still got a 100 on the test. He was worried going in, actually near tears because he hadn't studied the words yet. And I said, "I think you can do it. Let's just give it a try." I know I shouldn't be encouraging him to not study before tests, but in this case, the test was Friday whether he studied or not, and really, he didn't need to study those words. They were compound words, so pretty easy.

Latin: We did 2 lessons in Latin this week, learning how to say "woman" and "always".

Vocab: Skipped.

Poetry: Skipped.

Read-Aloud: We finished the 2nd story from I, Robot. Some engineers on Mercury need selenium, but the robot they sent out to get it ("Speedy") is just going in circles around the selenium pool. Eventually, they figure out that 2 of the 3 Laws of Robots are in conflict with each other, so he can't go near the pool or leave the pool. They have to use logic to get out of this mess! ;)

Bible: Continuing through harmony of gospels. Jesus fed the 5000+ and walked on water this week. We noticed that after being fed miraculously from 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish the previous day (and having 12 baskets of crumbs left over), the people were asking him to show them a sign so they would believe. Didn't He just do that yesterday?

History: We read more of the Landmark book as well as one chapter of Story of the USA. SotU is rather skimpy sounding after reading things out of Landmark! We learned about the Georgia colony being set up to help poor people, but it failed because they were relying on silk worms that didn't like the trees in Georgia. We also learned about the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam (later becoming New York), Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and Connecticut. We studied Puritans and Quakers, plus the Catholics and Protestants settling Maryland.

I forgot to mention last week, but we are still reading The Witch of Blackbird Pond. I'm really enjoying this book more than Tornado Boy is, probably because it's part romance. We are learning some things about the way the people lived and thought though, and Tornado Boy is really glad he does not attend a Puritan school. ;)

Science: He read about a bird that eats bees and also about some weather related things.

Science narration

The Brute

Math: We started the Mental Math strips this week, and also did a couple lessons in the textbook/workbook. The Brute learned how to add numbers within 20 such as 12+5 and also learned how to subtract across 10, though I think that confused him a bit. Frankly, their method is not the easiest for me either. If they're doing 12-5, they'll subtract 5 from the 10, then add it to the 2. I have always subtracted 2 down to the 10, then subtract 3 more. Either way is the same amount of work mentally, but my method makes more sense to me, because if I'm subtracting, I want to keep subtracting. I presented both methods to The Brute so he could choose. We'll practice it more. He'll get it. :) He did great with the mental math strips. I gave him the first one, and he did it fairly quickly, and his numbers were pretty readable:

 

After doing the mental math sheet, The Brute decided to make a lapbook out of it. He actually thought the strip was meant for a lapbook, as he's seen me make a lapbook before.

Reading: We didn't get very far in the Dancing Bears book this week, but we did do a few lines, plus he re-read the "Tim the Dim Cop" stories that he has done so far. He loves those and is getting good at reading them.

Writing: I attempted to do the letter 'y' this week. I make my sheets in Startwrite, but I am using WRTR methods. I ran into an issue though. For 'y', Startwrite only has a 'y' made by two sticks, whereas WRTR teaches a 'u' with a curve under it. I showed him both and let him choose. Then he decided to make it cursive, so I showed him the cursive 'y'. He likes cursive. I need to give in and just do cursive with the child. I just have a hard time teaching cursive in general, since my own cursive is not great (I've been working on it, but it's never going to be "easy"). And his print is sooooo much more readable. I don't really have a handle on what a K child's cursive should look like.

Other: We finished Sonlight P4/5 week 11.

The other day, The Brute was in the backyard and found a caterpillar climbing up an oak tree. He brought me out to see it, and sure enough, there is was.

 

Then he asked if we could catch it and keep it. I remembered that I had a butterfly habitat that I've been borrowing from a friend and have just never gotten around to actually ordering the caterpillars for it. So I got that out, and we managed to catch him. It wasn't easy. Mischief had just knocked him off the tree with a stick (and we had a conversation about that), and the caterpillar was amongst some roots and hard to get to. He was flipping wildly back and forth, but finally grabbed onto the stick I was trying to get him with, and I flipped him into the habitat. Then I grabbed some fresh leaves from the tree he'd been climbing, as well as a couple sticks.

That first night, he climbed round and round and round the top. I felt bad for him. The next morning, he finally went down and ate some leaves. He climbed up a lot, but then went down to eat. I thought all was good. Now since yesterday morning, he's been in one spot under some leaves. I don't know if he's dead or if he's molting or getting ready to move to the pupa stage. He's been there for about 24 hours now. I'm just taking a wait and see approach. The Brute has named him "Flower". He is a cute little guy, in his caterpillary way...

Mischief

Mischief learned how to read the color "purple" this week, so he now knows "red", "green", "blue", "brown", "black", "yellow", and "purple". He also did some work on left and right in his workbook. He's good with left and right. I'm glad, because I can't just say that one is the "hand you write with" like I did with the other two. He is still ambidextrous!

Weekly Report - Year 3 Week 13

This week has kind of been a catchup week. We were starting to get a bit off with Sonlight, so I wanted to get us back on track, both cores on the same week (for my sanity). This was easy to do. We also have colds this week, so kids are feeling a bit blah. We still got some stuff done though, even if it was a light week.

Tornado Boy

Math: We finished all the material in 5A. Next week, we'll do Review 6 and then do the placement test. I feel pretty confident that he'll do well. He has enjoyed this book. This week, we learned about ratios, which are incredibly easy, so he did 2-3 exercises per day, taking about 15 minutes total. Yes, that easy.

Reading: We hadn't gotten to The Bears on Hemlock Mountain last week like we were supposed to, so I told him Monday to read it. He came back 15 minutes later and said he was done... with the whole book. He told me all about it, and yep, he'd read the whole thing. It is a short, easy book, but I wasn't expecting it to be quite that quick!

Grammar: We did some R&S English 4 this week again, talking about present, past, and future tense, and the "helping form", which lead to be explaining past perfect, present perfect, and future perfect. R&S doesn't introduce those terms yet, but I did. :) We did all of this orally, as it was pretty easy, but we have had some terminology that was new, so it was good to go through it.

Writing: Zip. Zilch. Nada. I'm sure Tornado Boy is happy about that too!

Spelling: We worked on week 27, though I didn't give him his test yet. I might do that this weekend.

Handwriting: He did the letters 'f' and 'o' this week.

Latin: We learned the verb "carry" this week.

Vocab: Skipped.

Poetry: Skipped.

Read-Aloud: We finished The One and Only Ivan. The ending is very good. The last 1/4 of the book was much less depressing. :) Overall, it was a good book, but I think it'd be more interesting to a middle school student maybe? Tornado Boy liked it ok, but I was kind of depressed through most of it. The depressing parts were probably lost on the kids, so I doubt they were as depressed as I was. :) We started I, Robot last night and have read "Introduction" and "Robbie".

Bible: Continuing our harmonizing of the gospels. Jesus has cast out demons, slipped away from people in his town wanting to throw him off a cliff, and healed more people. :) We have also continued studying Proverbs.

History: We finished the Landmark reading through chapter 2 this week. Tornado Boy is still enjoying the book, and he is having no problem understanding it.

Science: He read through an Usborne science encyclopedia and also some of The Way We Work.

The Brute

Math: This week we learned how to add within 20 (12+5, etc.). This was pretty easy. We also continued working through Ray's orally, which practiced the basic facts and the making tens concept learned last week.

Reading: We are oh so close to finishing the Decoding Power Page. We were going to finish it, but DH was off work today, and he told the kids if they cleaned up all the toys and paper from the whole house, they could help him test a video game he's been fixing. So we did one line of reading today, and now I have a clean house. <g>

Handwriting: We learned the letter 'x' and did "fox", "box", "sh", and "ee".

Drew his own on the back :)

Other: We did all of week 10 today.. in about 30 minutes. Go me! It wasn't that much this week, apparently. We also did chapter 9 of Life of Fred Butterflies.

I also gave him some story paper, since he wanted to draw a picture and write something like Tornado Boy had done after we went to Disney. He wrote something about hyperspace and monsters in Star Wars oceans. He had me write the big words so he could copy them.

Mischief

Mischief worked through some more of Adventures With Books. He knows his color words, and he is learning to outline, then fill in when coloring. It still looks like a 3 year old coloring, of course, but he has the concept. :) He also did some tracing pages. I've noticed that he starts with his left hand, then halfway through the page, he switches to his right hand. He's equally good with both hands, though he hooks his right hand a tad. When The Brute was doing handwriting, Mischief insisted on also doing handwriting, so I gave him a printout of the same 'x' page I'd made for The Brute. He liked that.

Weekly Report - Year 3 Week 12

Last week should have been week 12, but I got strep throat the first few days of the week, then Tornado Boy got it that Thursday and had to go to the doctor Friday. So I just called that week a wash and didn't worry about school. I needed to recover! We're all better this week, though I have been rather unmotivated, so we didn't do as much as I'd planned. Oh well.

Tornado Boy

Math: We finished up the fractions unit and started the area/perimeter/surface-area unit. I am amazed at how fast he could do some of the fraction word problems in his head. Scary. Of course, he still had to show his work. ;)

Friday, we watched a couple videos on finding area of acute and obtuse triangles from the Art of Problem Solving site. Those were good. Singapore technically wasn't teaching that yet - they expected us to count squares and break shapes up into right triangles that we could see the area of easily. He used that method some, but sometimes used the method he learned in AoPS, which is the actual formula for area of a triangle, and AoPS showed him how you derive that formula, so it's all good. :) Tornado Boy said he really liked the area exercises. He loves geometry. So not my child. I'm an algebra girl myself. I hate geometry.

Reading: He read the Courage of Sarah Noble this week.

Grammar: We did a few oral lessons from R&S English 4 in the unit on verbs.

Writing: He finished the rewrite of "The Boy Who Cried Wolf", which he changed to a droid crying "canon". :) I told him I'd type it up, though I haven't started that yet. I'm just amazed he wrote 3 paragraphs in the last 2 weeks! And he added in all the dressups as required in each paragraph.

Spelling: We took a test from a previous week we'd not gotten around to yet. We did not do any new lessons.

Handwriting: Didn't get to it this week.

Latin: Skipped.

Vocab: Skipped.

Poetry: Skipped.

Read-Aloud: Still reading The One and Only Ivan... Still kind of depressing. We're about halfway through the book. An elephant has died, and Ivan (a gorilla) is trying to figure out how to get a baby elephant to a zoo.

Bible: Continuing harmonizing the gospels. This week, Jesus sent a legion of demons into swine. :)

History: We finished reading the first chapter of the Landmark book, and Tornado Boy is still enjoying (and understanding) it. We also finished Sign of the Beaver and started The Witch of Blackbird Pond. I think he liked Sign of the Beaver better. The other book is a bit of a romance. I am enjoying it though. :P

Science: We have several weather-related library books this week, so he's been reading those.

The Brute

Math: This week, we finally got to the infamous "making tens" section of Singapore 1A. I was a bit scared going in, but much to my surprise, he got it immediately! The very next day, I was able to ask him "9+4", and he figured it out in his head using the making tens concept. He also figured out the pattern for adding 9's, noticing that the ones number is always one less than the original number you were adding. Woohoo!

I also added in a bit of oral drill this week, using Ray's Arithmetic. The Brute enjoyed that, plus it gave him a chance to practice his making tens concept outside of Singapore (since they always have pictures in Singapore).

Reading: We read the 2nd "Tim the Dim Cop" story all the way through.

Handwriting: We did not do any handwriting this week, though he did write out a recipe for "water muffins", which included 1 cup of water, 2 cups of flour, and 1 cup of milk. And he seriously wanted to make them like that. :P

Other: We kind of started week 10 of Sonlight, but didn't get to much. We listened to the Jim Weiss tall tales CD that he's been waiting and waiting and waiting to listen to. He asked to listen to it again, so yay! :)

It's been a REALLY nice week outside, so mostly, The Brute has played outside. At his age, outside imaginative play trumps doing lots of academics, so I'm good with it. :)

Last week, we went to a pumpkin patch, so here is a pic of The Brute (laying down) and Mischief (red shirt) in the corn crib:

Mischief

Mischief did a little bit of R&S Adventures with Books this week. He also... read the first 3 Bob books in set 1!!! The first one, he read VERY well, not sounding out a single word! He does not have them memorized either. He was reading each word. This is the first time he's actually read whole sentences. He read slowly, as you expect from a new reader, but he was reading! He needed a lot more help on book 3, and was kind of inbetween on book 2. The word "a" throws him for a loop, as he wants to say a short /a/. Reading for him should be pretty easy though. When he sounds out a word and sees it again on the same page, he still remembers what it said. Phew! So proud of my little guy!

Playing with C-rods on his own - Mama found him like this!

Pointing out color words... and yes, he can read those color words.

Weekly Report - Year 3 Week 11

This week was a little busy, since we had a co-op day that we don't normally have, so not everything got finished, but that's ok. We had a good, productive week.

Tornado Boy

Math: We continued to work through fractions this week. We started out doing the practice sections (skipping exercises, as this is a review topic for him). We got to one with word problems, then Tornado Boy asked about dividing with fractions, so I showed him that (a few lessons ahead), and then I decided to have him do the word problems with multiplication involved, rather than the word problems that are just addition/subtraction. He really didn't need to practice with that kind of word problem. The multiplication ones made him draw pictures, so that was good!!! When he got done, all of the ones he'd drawn pictures for were right, and the two he hadn't drawn pictures for were wrong. I pointed that out to him, and he corrected those two and now knows - drawing pictures is good!

Reading: He finished Squanto, Friend of the Pilgrims and then read The Thanksgiving Story.

Grammar: We talked about coordinating conjunctions and compound parts of speech (nouns, verbs, everything). This was all review. I also pointed out that I thought the punctuation was wrong in one of the example sentences, and that got us into a discussion on independent clauses and dependent clauses.

Writing: We started unit 3 in IEW this week!!! It's actually going very well so far, though of course the keyword outline was done for us this week. Next lesson should be more difficult. At any rate, Tornado Boy IS having some fun with this assignment. He is supposed to rewrite "The Boy Who Cried Wolf". His story will be "The Battle Droid Who Cried Canon". He has written the first paragraph, and once we added the dressups, it turned out very well! We never got around to the 2nd paragraph, but we'll do that next week. There are 3 paragraphs total in this assignment. I look forward to seeing what he comes up with. He's not usually the creative one, but he CAN be. Maybe this will help break him out of his shell. I told him that for this assignment, I will type up the final copy - he just has to hand write the rough draft. That helped him let loose a bit and not do a bunch of 3 word sentences. ;)

Spelling: This week (26) was contractions, so very easy. Of course, the exercises made him think!

Handwriting: He did 'r' and 'h'. His 'r' page looks fabulous!

Latin: This week, we learned pecunia (money). We only did Latin one day. It's definitely getting trickier now!

Vocab: Skipped.

Poetry: Skipped.

Read-Aloud: We started reading The One and Only Ivan. So far, it's... a bit depressing. We'll see if it gets better. We're almost halfway through it. The kids seem to be enjoying it somewhat, so maybe they're not as depressed as I am. :P

Bible: Continuing through the harmony of the gospels.

History: We started the Landmark book this week! I kept hearing that it's awful for young kids and way over their heads, at least in the first few chapters. Well, the first reading assignment was not at all that way. We'll see if it gets harder in the next chapter. Tornado Boy really enjoyed it, as did I.

We also continued reading The Sign of the Beaver. This is a good story! Matt has now been accepted by Attean's grandmother and allowed to come to the village. The boys play a gambling game. When we were done reading that chapter, Tornado Boy said, "I want to make that game!" So I, the completely non-crafty, non-fun homeschool mom, actually said yes and helped him make it. I told him and The Brute where to find a good branch (it was hanging out of a tree down the driveway - needed to be pulled down the rest of the way).

Then I took a saw and cut 6 discs from the thick end.

Then the kids painted the discs red on one side.

They had also used their branch to make little sticks to gamble with (note that we're not normally a gambling family :P). Here is the final product!

Science: Tornado Boy has been reading through Introduction to Biology this week. He also read a bit of The Way We Work, plus he did a frog dissection co-op class.

The Brute

Math: The Brute worked on numbers to 20 this week. This is still review, and he's doing great with it.

Reading: We got to the second "Tim the Dim Cop" story and read the first paragraph! Yay!

Handwriting: We never actually got to handwriting this week... Oops.

Other: We caught up on last week's Sonlight week. Still need to catch up on THIS week's Sonlight week. I like to keep the two kids on the same week of Sonlight, so I better read some today! Thankfully, P4/5 is easy to do multiple days in one day.

Later this week, The Brute decided to make a paper airplane, cutting pieces of paper in the shape of an airplane, stapling them together, and then adding some sticks. He brought in a branch from outside. I was not impressed. :P He did take it back outside when he was done, and I vacuumed up the stick bits from the floor before company came over! I also gave him a lesson in FOLDING paper airplanes, and we now have a bunch of paper airplanes all over the house.

There is a tree in my house...

Mischief

Mischief  did some work in Adventures With Books this week. He also read the first Bob book (Set 1, Book 1), actually reading sentences and not sounding out every word! I was shocked! This was the first time he'd actually really read a book. :)

Weekly Report - Year 3 Week 10

We had a 3 week break recently... one week to prepare for Disney World trip, one week to take said trip, and one week to recover from the trip and get back into the "real world" (very hard to do!!!). We had a great time!

This week, we started school back up, almost full throttle. The kids did better than I expected after a 3 week break! Ah... maturity. :)

Tornado Boy

Math: We finished through Review 2 in the Singapore 5A textbook. When we started the fractions unit, I looked at it and decided we didn't really need to do all those exercises. He's doing Life of Fred Fractions and has practiced much of that several times already. So I went over the material, tested his knowledge (it was excellent), and had him just do the "Practice" sections A and B, skipping the workbook exercises. He did well on those sections, so we'll just continue on.

We did not do any Life of Fred this week. He's at the Bridge to chapter 25 right now.

Reading: He started reading Squanto, Friend of the Pilgrims this week for Sonlight.

Grammar: We finished level 1.3 in KISS this week, having gone through adjectives and adverbs.

Writing: I had intended to do a week of IEW, but Tornado Boy got sick Tuesday, and I had had him do a separate writing assignment Monday, writing about something he enjoyed at Disney. This assignment was fairly open-ended. I just told him to write about anything he liked and to draw a picture and write 2-3 sentences. I put up some words on the board that he might need to spell, and he asked during the writing how to spell one word. I was quite pleased with the results of the assignment. It was simple, but he did it fairly easily. His coloring has gotten better, too. :P

Later in the week, I tried to get him to notebook in science. He did write and draw a picture, but he ended up doing copywork instead of writing from his head. Oh well. I'll be more specific next time, and also give him a passage to write from. The one he picked was a one-sentence fact, so that's why it ended up being copywork. I'm not sure that he understood my instructions either, as I have had him choose his own copywork before. I accepted the assignment and will give better instructions next time. ;)

Spelling: We finished week 25 in R&S Spelling 3.

Handwriting: This week included some words such as "eel", "lead", "deed", etc. There were 6 words, spread over 2 days. Again, illness striking set us back some.

Latin: We learned "numero" (I count), plus the other forms of that verb.

Vocab: Skipped.

Poetry: Skipped.

Read-Aloud: We finished Chomp and started The One and Only Ivan. Overall, I liked Chomp. It was an interesting story, and the action at the end had you wanting to read more. I had to skip a little bit of mild language when reading aloud to my little ones, but it wasn't often enough to put the book away or anything. The book does involve a drunk dad that hits his daughter, giving her a black eye. She runs away when meeting up with a friend in the Walmart parking lot. Her dad later comes to look for her, with a gun, and he shoots someone (they are not killed).

Bible: Continuing with harmonizing the gospels. This week, we got to the point where Jesus is talking about how a house divided against itself cannot stand. We also continued Proverbs daily.

History: We learned briefly about some exploration by Spain, England, France, and Portugal in the 1500s. We are also reading The Sign of the Beaver, which is so much more interesting than our last history read-aloud (Secret of the Andes - we did finish it though!). Our current book involves a boy whose father has left him in their cabin in the woods, so he can go get the rest of the family from a city. The father is supposed to be back in 7 weeks. During that time, the boy is robbed by a guy, then a bear destroys some of the food he had stored up. A couple Indians see him and help him one day, and he starts to teach an Indian boy to read. They slowly become friends, and the white boy learns to hunt the Indian way.

Science: We got some library books on weather this week. He has also been reading some science reference books on the shelf.

The Brute

Math: We finished the 3 reviews and started the next unit - numbers to 20. So far, the material is all review from K math. We'll get into some new stuff soon though.

We started Life of Fred Butterflies this week. He's enjoying it still. :)

Reading: We did a few pages of Dancing Bears. One day, he took the card from me and started reading through the power page (4 words per line - just random words) on his own, using the cursor himself. He finished the whole page pretty quickly. Yay! The next page was the "Cloze Sentences", where he reads a sentence and has to fill in the blank with one of 3 words. He did very well with it. Now we're learning a few new words and reading some more sentences.

I pulled out Explode the Code this week, and The Brute said, "My favorite!" So I guess we're doing that again. :) We had done a couple lessons of the first book a YEAR ago, and now we're picking up where we left off. He does it pretty easily, though the word writing is amusing. He starts out normal, then toward the end of the page, it deteriorates into silliness:

 

Those last few words have each letter made into cars. Sigh. And no, I'm not forcing proper handwriting during this workbook. I save that for handwriting time. They'll eventually merge together, I'm sure.

Handwriting: We learned how to write 'w' this week, and wrote several 'w' words ('win', 'wag', etc.).

Other: We did Sonlight P4/5 Week 8.

Mischief

I finally got Rod & Staff Adventures with Books workbook! I knew Mischief would love it, and sure enough, he's doing great with it. I am focusing on the coloring this time, and it's going well. We take turns doing the coloring (it's a LOT of coloring!), but he's starting to try to outline and fill in, so that's cool. :) He has also cut and paste and traced lines. I was surprised at how well he could trace! He can do it with either hand equally well right now - hasn't picked a hand for writing. I think he will end up left handed, as he does use his left hand for most things (including sucking his thumb), but he writes with both and has great fine motor skills, so who knows. I'm not encouraging either one. I just stick the crayon in the middle and let him pick one. ;)

Check out the top boat wave!!!

Concentrating hard on cutting

Weekly Report - Year 3 Week 9

We had a normal week with the normal few interruptions. :) We had a great visit with my parents Tuesday, so no school that day. Then Wednesday we did a special lunch out, followed by haircuts and grocery shopping. Then Thursday, The Brute started up speech therapy again, and we hit the playground afterwards. Somehow, we still finished things by 2pm that day. Strange!

Next week, we're technically supposed to be on break for 3 weeks (taking a trip soon), BUT... I'll probably still do a few days of school and just take the last couple days of the week off to prepare for our trip - doing any last minute shopping, etc. We'll see. With it still being pretty warm, I'm thinking it'd be better to save our "week off" for a nice, fall day.

Tornado Boy

Math: We dove into word problems this week, which involved bar diagrams and also a chance to introduce some basic algebra (for problems where they expected "guess and check"). At one point, I was explaining some algebra concept that Tornado Boy was completely not understanding, so I reworded it and went over it again... and again... and again... Finally, he sort of understood. :) Then when doing the word problems in his exercise, lo and behold, he actually used similar algebra for one of the problems! Woohoo! He's sort of on the cusp of understanding this stuff - sort of there, sort of not. The funny part was that he was trying to use T-T to represent "tank tops" and T-S to represent "T-shirts", and he had set up his equation properly, but it looked like you were subtracting T from T and S from T. :) So I suggested calling them 't' and 's'. He was then able to easily solve the problem without confusion. He also did a problem with a complicated bar diagram on his own. Some problems are easier with algebra and some are easier with bar diagrams.

Reading: He finished Pocahantas and the Strangers this week. He is also still working on Lord of the Rings 2.

Grammar: We focused on adjectives and adverbs this week.

Writing: He wrote a paragraph on George Washington. It was a bit awkward, but he met the assignment. The awkwardness came in because he forgot to put in his "who/which" and "because" clauses before writing the rough draft.

Spelling: He finished review week 24, getting a 100 on his test.

Handwriting: Didn't do anything this week.

Latin: We finished lessons 31-33 in GWSL. We now know how to do first, second, and third person singular and plural verb forms.

Vocab: We discussed the stem "sub" this week.

Poetry: We talked about onomatopoeia and personification this week.

Read-Aloud: We have continued with Chomp. It's more interesting after the first chapter. :)

Bible: Still doing life of Jesus. He has called his apostles and done some more miracles. We also continued with our daily Proverbs study.

History: This week, we learned about the Mayans, noting some things we read in The Corn Grows Ripe earlier in our studies (seems like that book should have coincided with the Mayan section of Incans, Aztecs, and Mayans).

Science: Still reading chemistry books and also some dinosaur books.

The Brute

Math: We worked on order and position this week, finishing up that unit. We have started the first review. There are two more reviews after this one. We are still waiting on our Life of Fred Butterflies order to come in so we can start that up! We missed Fred Friday, after finishing the book Thursday. :)

Reading: We completed another page of Dancing Bears and also started reading "The Little Red Hen" in the Free & Treadwell Primer. He did VERY well reading that! We completed the story. We also read a little bit in McGuffey's Primer.

Handwriting:We worked on the letter 'u' this week and wrote some words and his name.

Other: We finished week 7 of Sonlight P4/5.

Mischief

Mischief worked through some random preschool type workbooks I got from a friend. We also built staircases with C-rods. :)

Weekly Report - Year 3 Week 8

This week, we had 100% of our normal school subjects going. We also had our homeschool support group's "kickoff" on Saturday. Tornado Boy won highest number of pages read for summer reading (13,122 pages) across all age groups. The Brute got 3rd place in his age group, and Mischief got 1st place in his age group. The theme for kickoff was a county fair type deal, and the kids entered the Pet Photo Contest (instead of bringing live animals ;) ). Mischief got Honorable Mention (basically, 4th place). I think that was pretty good, considering he's 3. I liked Final's tail in the picture. :)

Tornado Boy

Math: Tornado Boy finished the order of operations sections and moved into mental math calculations. He also passed the Life of Fred Fractions bridge to chapter 16 on the first try! He then did chapters 16-19.

Reading: He started Pocahontas and the Strangers, by Clyde Bulla.

Grammar: We reviewed adjectives and adverbs this week.

Writing: Tornado Boy wrote a paragraph on the Mongols this week, and while we were discussing it, he proceeded to tell me all kinds of details about the Mongols that he had learned in SOTW. :) In fact, he remembered that they were nomads, so when one of his keywords was "people", he replaced that with "nomads" in his actual paragraph. His requirements were at least one each of an "-ly adverb", "who/which clause", and a "strong verb". He also was not allowed to use the words go/went, say/said, or see/saw. The banned words weren't difficult in this paragraph though. I don't think he had any of those words in his initial thoughts.

Spelling: He finished week 23 of R&S. We had some interruptions, so he didn't have his normal study days and was concerned about that, but I said, "Let's try the test anyway. If you miss some words, we'll practice them and test again next week." Well, he ended up getting a 100 on the test. He knew more than he thought he did, despite having some tricky "-air", "-are", "-ear" spellings to remember. :)

Handwriting: Didn't do anything this week.

Latin: New subject! We've actually been doing this subject all along this year, but I kept forgetting to add it to the list of subjects in my weekly reports! Doh! We are loving Getting Started With Latin (GSWL), and finished though Lesson 30 this week. We know how to say things like, "Y'all ain't farmers!" in Latin now. Very useful stuff! This is Tornado Boy's favorite subject right now. It definitely works the brain!

Vocab: This is another subject I keep forgetting to add to the weekly report. We are doing MCT's Building Languages, and Tornado Boy really loved the first part talking about the Roman architecture. We have now done the first stem lesson on "re".

Poetry: And yet another subject I forgot to add... MCT's Music of the Hemispheres is going very well. We've been discussing soft and hard sounds in poetry so far.

Read-Aloud: We finished The Hero's Guide to Saving Your Kingdom (excellent book!) and now have started Chomp, though we've only read one chapter and I can't say whether we'll like it or not yet.

Bible: We've been continuing studying the life of Jesus, harmonizing the gospels. Jesus has just started his ministry. We also studied Proverbs daily and have picked out a verse to focus on in our family.

History: We finished reading about the Aztecs and also learned about the Incans. Tornado Boy liked the Aztecs a lot. The Incans were a bit boring comparatively, but they had their interesting points. We also finished Secret of the Andes. We thought it would never end! It's not a horrible book... it's just that nothing actually happens! In the last chapter, we did learn what the "secret" was and some details about why Cusi (the young boy in the story) was with this older man (Chuto) on a mountain with a bunch of llamas. It's just that the road to get there was a bit of a slog. At one point, I was reading about him going down a trail with these great descriptions of the trail, and I stopped and said, "I keep expecting orcs to jump out and eat him." Tornado Boy laughed. We've been reading Lord of the Rings, each of us reading it on our own. We finished The Hobbit and LOTR1 and watched the LOTR1 movie (Tornado Boy liked it). We're both about halfway through the LOTR2 book. He's ahead of me, despite starting after me. Sigh.

Science: Tornado Boy continued to study some chemistry books we got from the library.

The Brute

Math: We finished subtraction! He is pretty good with addition and subtraction facts. They're not 100% solid, but he can usually think of them reasonably quickly. We also are just a few chapters from finishing Life of Fred Apples. We certainly know sums of 7 now. :) He is learning what a "set" is, and he has solidified his days of the week and reading time to the hour. I went ahead and ordered Butterflies and Cats (along with Decimals/Percents for Tornado Boy).

Reading: We finished a page of Dancing Bears. Things are going well.

Handwriting: We got through the letter 't' and wrote some words as well.

Other: We finished Sonlight P4/5 week 6. We also started a concentrated effort to learn how to color properly, using R&S's Bible Pictures to Color book. We're coloring a little bit at a time. I think learning to color will help make handwriting easier. ;)

Mischief

My mind is drawing a blank on what Mischief did this week, besides wreaking havoc of course! We dropped MEP Math, as he was getting a bit bored with it. The parts that were easy were too repetitive, and the parts that were hard were, well... hard. And he's not ready for hard. :) I've ordered R&S Adventures with Books and Counting with Numbers for him, and I think those will be a good fit.

Here is a good example of the mischief he did... taking a marker to Dancing Bears, when I was only using light pencil in the book so I could resell it later... sigh.

Nice letters for a 3 year old :)

Weekly Report - Year 3 Weeks 6-7

I never got around to updating last week, so I'm doing a combined post this week. :)

Tornado Boy

Math: We've finished the first unit of 5A and done the first review. I don't think there was really anything "new" to him in this unit. We also worked through all of the challenging section of CWP 4 Unit 1. I think we've already done those in Unit 2, so we'll skip to Unit 3 next week, just doing the challenge section. He did a few chapters of Life of Fred Fractions as well.

One day, while he was supposed to be doing a practice page dealing with factorization, I found him doing his for fun:

Finding all prime numbers within 100

Reading: Nothing assigned. I think next week he'll have something from Sonlight.

Grammar: We finished KISS Level 1.2 (Adding Complements). We did a few R&S exercises last week, but didn't plan any for this week.

Writing: Last week, he did "The Donkey and His Driver". This week, he did "Peter the Great". He has absolutely no problem adding a who/which clause. That has become "easy". He usually has no problem adding an -ly adverb, but this week, the material didn't lend itself to obvious usage, so I had to help him a bit. No problem avoiding banned words this week. Last week, he did very well replacing the banned word "said" with "remarked", and that doubled as a strong verb. :)

Spelling: We finished weeks 21 and 22 of R&S Spelling 3.

Handwriting: For grins, I wrote down the cursive alphabet on a white board and had Tornado Boy copy it (note that he has not been taught how to write cursive yet). I was rather shocked by the results! Mischief erased part of it, but you can see some of it still:

Read-Aloud: Still reading The Hero's Guide to Saving Your Kingdom. We're nearing the end. The Princes Charming have now found Ella ("Cinderella") and are trying to stop the evil witch Zaubera from her plan to take over some kingdoms by killing everyone.

Bible: We started the daily Bible reading that my church elders have put together to study the Life of Christ, harmonizing the Gospels. So far, we're keeping up! ;) We also continuing our daily Proverbs study. Each day, we have found verses that were applicable to situations in our lives.

History: We started Week 5 of Sonlight this week, and have read about the Aztecs. The gross parts were the most interesting to Tornado Boy, of course!

Science: He has been reading a bit about chemistry and also doing some nature study. We did find a weed in the backyard that we cannot identify. I've seen it a lot over the years and know it's common around here, but I can't find it online. If anyone knows what it is, let me know!!! We're in Alabama, btw.

Identify me please!!! :)

The Brute

Math: We picked up Life of Fred Apples for $5 locally last week, so we've been reading a chapter each day usually. The Brute LOVES it! He does very well with the questions, and he likes the "zero game" and even taught it to the eye doctor yesterday. We also continued through Singapore 1A unit 4, chapter 2, learning various methods of subtraction. It's still pretty easy at this point, but that's ok. It's good to give him confidence in a subject like this!

We also built some towers, a la Education Unboxed. What impressed me was that as he was covering the 100 flat with 5-rods, he said, "I'll need 20 5-rods!" Multiplication! I haven't taught him that yet.

And this tower has a electricity/sewer system around it:

Reading: He passed the first Mastery Test in Dancing Bears. Yay! We have begun the next section and are progessing nicely.

Handwriting: We learned 'm' and 'n', which are VERY difficult for him to write (and those are the letters that confused him in speech AND they are letters he gets confused in reading... they are his nemesis!!!). We also did the letter 't'. I had him copy a word that I wrote - "ham", then he had me copy a word he wrote - "cat". :)

Other: We finished Sonlight P4/5 Weeks 4 and 5. Still enjoying it! It really helps to keep it all in one tote bag, so I just grab the bag and sit on the couch to read for a while!

Mischief

We did some rod play from Education Unboxed:

 

We also practiced phonograms from Dancing Bears and read through the first part of the book. He's pretty good at sounding out words and blending.

He did a little bit of handwriting on his own:

He also studied the paranormal a bit...

Weekly Report - Year 3 Week 5

We had a great week, even though we didn't do everything on the schedule. The first 3 days were as scheduled, and then the next day we had a rocketry day at a friend's house - all day rocketry projects! Such fun! Then we recovered on Friday. :P

Tornado Boy

Math: We finished 4B! He got an 80% on the placement test, which is the minimum for moving on. I know that sounds low, but I have tried to get him to a place where he has to work for 80%, so this is GOOD! ;) Most of the problems missed were silly errors anyway. His concepts are solid. We will start 5A on Monday (and work through CWP 4). Of course, I always have him correct missed problems on tests and such, so that 80% will become 100%. ;)

Reading: Nothing specific, but he read lots of library books and such.

Grammar: We did a quick review of complements and a couple lessons in R&S 4 on combining sentences and such.

Writing: He rewrote "The Cocks and the Eagle", including his -ly adverb and who/which clause. That completes lesson 3 (of 15).

Spelling: He did the workbook exercises for Lesson 21. We will do the test Monday. We were supposed to do it Wednesday, but he didn't feel ready. I had him practice the words instead - writing them with his finger on the couch, spelling them out loud, etc. He thinks so much like me... His way of remembering "thousand" is "thou sand". :)

Read-Aloud: Continued The Hero's Guide to Saving Your Kingdom. Currently, the 4 Prince Charmings have just escaped from the Bandit King.

Bible: Continued reading through Romans and Proverbs.

History: None officially (though he's been reading books about the Revolutionary War, and he and Mischief played "Minutemen vs. the British", where Mischief literally marched around with a hockey stick on his shoulder like a rifle - hilarious).

Science: Various science books around the house, and of course the big Rocketry Day! A friend did a subscription to Aurora Lipper's summer e-science stuff, and she decided to do a bunch of the projects all in one day with several boys invited over to join in. It was supposed to go from 9-1:30, but it ended up 9-4! We had a great day though.

And from last week, pics of our nature study subject...

 

The Brute

Math: We started subtraction. The number stories get pretty silly. One day, he did a number story that went on and on and on and on and on. He really puts the "story" into number stories! Another day, there were 4 frogs on a lilypad and one more jumping off. So his story was, "There are 5 frogs. One turned into a shark and ate the other frogs." I asked how many frogs were eaten, and he said, "4!" :)

Reading: We're on the last drill page before the first Mastery Test. I imagine it will take us all week to finish it.

Handwriting: We did 'k' and 'l' this week. Kind of slacked off the last 3 days. :/

The 'k' in the middle is his... and he demanded checks. :)

Other: We finished week 3 of Sonlight P4/5. We're a little behind on the DEL workbooks, but that's ok. We did several pages this weekend. Clearly, I need to teach my kids to color...

Mischief

He has continued with MEP Reception. We've done 6 or 7 lessons now. One lesson had him tear brown paper to make a bear. We did that (with my help), and The Brute came over and decided to make the bear a girl (top half)... I then added a dress to the bear. :P