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.