Boy has it been a while since I did a weekly update! Well, I won't go back and say what all we've done. We've done lots of school work over the past few months. We've had an educational family vacation. And we've been back to school for several weeks since then. In that time, MUCH of our curriculum has changed. I'll go through some of those in this post.
Math
Tornado Boy is still doing AoPS Prealgebra, but at one point, I noticed he was starting to lose some elementary math topics that he wasn't using as much in Prealgebra at that point in time. He also seemed to be needing more sleep at that time, so some of it was likely things falling out of his head due to growth spurt or hormones or something. At any rate, we first moved him out of his brothers' room and into my sewing room (has a guest bed) to sleep. Now he can sleep in a bit if he wants to, and The Brute won't wake him up. The other thing I started doing was having two math strands.
Strand 1: Basic elementary math review for about 15 minutes. For this, I'm using CLE Math 500 level. It's easy because it's below his level, but it's good review and good practice. I call it "math practice" on our schedule. It includes math fact drill of all 4 operations, plus drill of basic unit conversions that are good to memorize. Interestingly, he does better on division drills than multiplication drills. Not sure what's up with that. At any rate, CLE is helping him pay more attention to what he's doing and make fewer silly mistakes. He's also rock solid on the elementary math topics and is practicing them daily to keep them in his 9 year old brain long term. ;)
Strand 2: Challenge level math for 30-45 minutes. I am using a combination of AoPS Prealgebra and Dolciani Prealgebra. I intend to spend 2 years on Prealgebra (4th and 5th grade). We usually introduce a topic with Dolciani, getting some good ol' "drill and kill" and getting comfortable with the topic. Then we go indepth with AoPS, where he can now focus on the problem solving because the "drill and kill" has made the topic automatic for him. For example, he worked with exponents in Dolciani at the normal Prealgebra level. Then he went to AoPS and did things with exponents that were much more advanced than anything you'll see in Dolciani. He didn't freak out. He took it in stride and was able to do the problems. He even got many of the challenge problems without hints from me. Woohoo!
So this 2-strand approach to math is working VERY well for Tornado Boy. He's enjoying both strands, and his math skills are soaring ahead.
Also in math, I changed The Brute to CLE Math 200. At the time that I did the placement test for Tornado Boy, I gave The Brute one for fun. He placed properly into 200 (had just finished Singapore 1B), but I noticed he was fuzzy on some math facts, making a lot of errors there. He also couldn't identify ANY of the coins in the money section, despite us having JUST finished the money section in Singapore. I wanted more automaticity. So we started 200 level. He's doing great with it and really likes it. He does every problem, plus the speed drills and flash cards (I LOVE their flash card system!). His facts are getting rock solid. He no longer makes silly fact errors during a lesson. He gets everything done in about 20 minutes and understands it well. I'll probably pull out Singapore CWP2 and maybe some IP2 at some point, once we've gotten a little farther into CLE. I'm thinking I probably won't use the Singapore 2 TB/WBs I have, all nice and shiny and new. :P
Mischief is still working through Singapore EM K and enjoying it. I will likely use CLE 100 with him next year in Kindergarten. I think it will be a perfect fit for him, especially since he's been reading the directions in his math book himself lately, and he's an independent worker.
Reading
The Brute has been taking the long, slow route to reading the last few years. He'll be 7 in a couple weeks, and he can read, but he's still not able to go to the library and pick up a book to read himself. Just not there yet at all. We've used a number of very good phonics programs. We even tried Spalding for a few months, but he was hating it. I finally decided to go to what I had originally thought would be a good fit for him - Rod & Staff Phonics and Reading. We're just starting our 2nd week of using these programs, but so far, so good! The reading is sight word based, but at this point, I just don't care. The kid needs confidence. I also really like the way they are teaching the sight words. They have the kids comparing them with other similar looking words, so they really do need to be able to recognize it. And the phonics side is very strong. I love that it has them learning early spelling. In lesson 3 of Unit 1, they have to pick 'c' or 'k' to spell the first 2 letters of a word that the teacher calls out, such as "cup", "kitchen", "kettle", "cat", etc. They only have to write the c/k and the vowel that comes next. That's it. I also like the drill down the edge of the page. This gives him that drill practice he needs without it being JUST boring drill. Most of the page is circling things or maybe writing a couple letters. In the reading workbook, they match up words, underline the words to fill in the blank of a sentence, and follow directions to color certain things certain colors. All of this practice is fabulous for The Brute, and he's really liking it and learning. We'll see how things go when we get to completely new phonics material (around lesson 25), but right now, I'm wishing I'd started with this this summer like I'd originally thought about doing.
Science
Dr. Jay Wile, author of the middle and high school Apologia books, recently released the first of a series of elementary books. The first book is called Science in the Beginning. It follows the order of creation week, so the first day, God made light. Well, we have 15 lessons about light. Each day has 15 lessons associated with it, and it ends up being a general overview of science. The next book in the series will be Science in Ancient Times, so I'm excited that we can do that alongside our Ancient history studies next year!
Each lesson in this book is about 2-3 pages along. There is a brief experiment to do, that usually involves stuff you already have around the house. I have not yet had to buy anything special, and we'll get through lesson 12 or 13 this week. At the end of the lesson, there are two questions for the youngest students (answered orally). Then there is some notebooking to do for "older" students, and more notebooking to do for "oldest" students. I have Tornado Boy doing the "oldest" student stuff, and The Brute and Mischief answer the oral questions and draw a picture in their little notebooks and maybe write something. These lessons are short and easy to get done, even with the experiment. Most experiments only take about 5 minutes or less.
I'm really loving that I can combine my kids in science with this program. Tornado Boy liked Apologia General Science, but combining in this just makes more sense. When he ages out of this program, he can finish General Science. We both enjoy Dr. Wile's writing style and like that he doesn't include doctrinal things in the middle of a science lesson (as the Apologia elementary series sometimes does).
History
This change just started this week. We were using Sonlight Core E, and while we enjoyed Core D and liked the books overall, I was just burnt out on historical fiction. I think Tornado Boy was too. He really prefers non-fiction, and Sonlight contains very little of that. The Landmark book is great - Tornado Boy and I both love reading that. But most of the other books are historical fiction upon historical fiction. Read aloud? Historical fiction. Reader? Historical fiction. Every.single.week.
So a couple weeks ago, I get the Tapestry of Grace newsletter. It has a link offering a FREE UNIT to people interested in "changing horses". I was already planning to try TOG Year 1 next year when we come back to Ancients, but this came at just the right time to tempt me for this year. :) I ordered Year 4 Unit 1, found all the books at my library for Lower Grammar and Upper Grammar levels (and most of the Dialectic level too, but Tornado Boy is NOT ready for that level), and we started today!!! So far, I LOVE IT! We had a wonderful day today, discussing geography and land forms (we'll make a salt dough map tomorrow to show land forms). The Brute and I read his literature book (NOT history related!) and read about Henry Ford and the Wright Brothers. We'll read a longer book about Henry Ford later this week, and then The Brute's history will be done for the week. Tornado Boy read about Teddy Roosevelt's childhood and adulthood and the Spanish-American War in Hakim's Age of Extremes. He'll read about Henry Ford and the Wright Brothers later this week. He's also reading a book about Einstein, and his literature for the week is The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (NOT history!!!!). The literature page has him looking for sentences in each chapter that contain a keyword. He'll do 8 chapters this week. He did 2 today. He's doing well dividing up his readings throughout the week. He read more Hakim today than he had to because he likes it. :)
It was so nice to have everyone on the same page, and I just had to read one set of teacher's notes to be able to discuss intelligently with everyone (there are no "discussions" at this level, but I did ask Tornado Boy to tell me about Teddy Roosevelt and the Spanish American War). I didn't have to match up books myself. All the work is done for me. Phew! And did I mention that the literature wasn't historical fiction?!?!? :D Even the read-aloud is non-fiction this week (and we're also still finishing Caddie Woodlawn from Sonlight, but we're all liking that book, so I don't mind it!).
We're scheduled to complete unit 1 just before Christmas break. If TOG continues to go this well, I'll purchase the next units and finish up year 4 this school year, then start year 1 next fall as originally planned.
Writing
Classical Academic Press released a new writing program that follows the progymnasmata.The series is called Writing & Rhetoric. The first two books were released: Fable and Narrative. We started with Fable, and it's another hit with the Tornado Boy! It has varied exercises in each lesson, so it's not the same thing day in and day out. So far, he's worked on oral narration (long retelling), written summarization, written amplification, written retelling of a story with changes in characters, etc. He's also learned how to play with sentences, changing up words but keeping the style of sentence the same. He enjoys those exercises. He's done very well with the written work, and I'm quite pleased with the program as a whole. We are alternating this with WWE3 narrations only (and dictation of his narration when required). Writing & Rhetoric includes dictation at a level more Tornado Boy's current spelling ability, so we're using that dictation instead of the WWE dictation.
Other changes
I've stopped FLL1, WWE1, and Pentime for The Brute. Since he is doing some writing in R&S Phonics and Reading and also doing some notebooking for history and science, I think it's enough writing. I don't want his day going very long. As it is, he has about 45 minutes to an hour for math and reading, then an hour of history/science, then about 15-20 minutes for phonics. That's enough school for first grade. He is a boy that needs to be outside playing a lot. So I've nixed the unnecessary subjects while we focus on learning to read and do some fun stuff in content subjects. I require neat handwriting in his phonics workbook, and today he had better handwriting than I've seen in a long time from him. Sitting on the baseline and everything!
I think that's it! I'm enjoying the new things we're using, and hopefully we can settle in for the rest of the year.
