Tornado Boy
Math: First let me say that we're in the geometry section of Singapore 4A, and I HATE GEOMETRY. But we're doing fine with it, and it's almost over. Just a few more lessons and a cumulative review, then the 4A placement test. Then we can start Decimals in 4B. Yipee! Tornado Boy is doing great with Singapore. He really enjoys it quite a bit more than Math Mammoth. So we'll stick with it this year and next.
Reading: He's been reading 101 Dalmatians. It's somewhat slow going, since he doesn't really care for the book that much, but he is reading it when I remind him to read. :P
We also got a 4 year trial subscription to Reading Eggs (a million coupon codes were posted on WTM forum... I think those codes are all expired by now). Tornado Boy did the placement test for the Comprehension Gym in Eggspress, but it placed him at level 5.1, which was fine for reading level, but not fine for comprehension questions! It was expecting him to understand things like inference and knowing what the purpose of a sentence was in a paragraph. He has not been taught any of those things. So I finally figured out how to bump him back to the beginning - level 2.1. Much better questions! His reading level is quite high, but he's not ready to analyze at the level of a 5th grader. So he'll work his way up the ranks and probably learn something along the way.
Grammar: We did lesson 52 (I think) of FLL3 this week, and we have also been dabbling in KISS Grammar and really liking it. I got a Toshiba Thrive 10" Android tablet for Christmas, and with the ezPDF app, I'm able to have KISS on the tablet and just use our fingers to underline various words in the sentences. Very cool! It's a nice snuggle on the couch time, and those KISS sentences can be hard! They are from real literature.
Writing: We finished week 17 of WWE2 this week! Woohoo! Narrations are going well, and dictation went very well this week.
Spelling: We did week 8 of R&S 3. I also ordered book A of Apples & Pears to try that out and see if we like it. Tornado Boy isn't crazy about R&S. A&P looks easy to implement - open and go, with no parts and pieces, and done in a way that he'll understand and learn... I hope. :) If not, The Brute will likely need A&P (I suspect he's a visual thinker), so I'll have it for him.
Read-Aloud: We are working our way through The Phantom Tollbooth, which Tornado Boy already read himself, but now he gets to hear it again from me. :) We're enjoying it quite a bit!
Bible: I recently purchased Bible Study Guide for All Ages unit 1. We've only done a few lessons, but we are greatly enjoying it so far! I got the Beginner pages for The Brute and the Intermediate pages for Tornado Boy. Mischief gets to color a bit on The Brute's pages. So far, we've learned about Joseph and how his brothers hated him and sold him. Then he worked in Potiphar's house, but there was that incident with Potiphar's wife, so he was thrown in prison. Now he has interpreted the dreams of the cup bearer and the baker. We spend 2 days on each lesson, since they're a bit long to do a whole lesson for The Brute (Tornado Boy could easily do a lesson in one day).
History: We didn't do history this week, but the week before, we got up through chapter 15 of SOTW2. Actually, I told him to go read Chapter 11, and he read Chapters 11-15. :P I checked out some library books on those chapters. Oh, and last week he finished reading SOTW4 for the second time. He loves this series!
Here's a notebooking sentence from one of his history chapters...
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| The squiggly stick figure is an old woman - LOL |
Science: I recently noticed that Tornado Boy was bringing the Apologia books everywhere to read. So I got the notebooking journal for Astronomy, and we're officially going through that book. The Brute gets to sit in and contribute to the journal (draw a picture). This is going well so far. We've done "Lesson 1" and even did the balloon solar system project that they'd been wanting to do for ages (and I bought balloons for it last summer, I believe). The project worked out fine, though the sun exploded as Mischief was sitting in his chair at the dinner table waiting for everyone else to come in. Scared him half to death! But he has been assured that the planets likely won't pop.
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| Apologia Notebooking Journal - Day 1 |
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| Solar System, before the sun popped :) |
The Brute
Reading: The Brute has been doing Reading Eggs this week. He placed into map 2 and is getting very close to completing map 3. I think the repetition of seeing the words over and over is really helping him quite a bit. I can tell his reading is going to take off soon. He recently replaced the first letter of each word of his speech with /b/ while we were driving home for 30 minutes. That was a long conversation! :) He's also quite good at rhyming. So everything is in place to take off reading. I've ordered Dancing Bears to try out with him, and I'll post a review later when we've been using it for a while.
Math: We're about halfway through book B. The work he's done recently has been number bonds, which he is doing very well with. In fact, one day, I had to go help Mischief use the potty, and The Brute continued on through 2 more pages all by himself, doing addition problems correctly! He uses the C-rods still, but he's been quizzing me on addition facts lately (which I bounce back off him), and he knows several of them. Yay C-rods!
Mischief
Reading: Since we had the 4 years of Reading Eggs for each child, I went ahead and started Mischief on it for fun. To my surprise, he's actually done very well with it! I suspect we'll hit a wall at some point, maybe in map 2. He's almost done with map 1. He knows his letter sounds well. He can do phonemic awareness, but sometimes doesn't. For example, if given pictures to choose which one starts with a particular sound, he'll often get a couple wrong, then do a bunch right, then get a couple wrong. He clearly has some phonemic awareness, but it's not quite there yet (and I don't expect it to be!). I don't think he can blend at all yet, and again, I don't expect him to. He has done fine so far with finding things like "at". He may end up picking up some sight reading at this point. We'll see. I'm just surprised he's done so well with this so far. I thought we'd hit a wall around the first or second lesson. Nope! He's done 7 lessons and been just fine. I help him with the mouse, but he's mostly doing it on his own. He usually needs me if it requires clicking and dragging, as he doesn't know to hold the button down while moving the mouse.
And here's what Mischief did during Bible one day this week (he said the pencils were rockets)...
