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