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!