We did plenty of school after week 23 of last year, but I didn't blog about it. :) Now we've started our new school year. First week went well! I now have a 5th grader, 2nd grader, and K'er (who is as independent as a 5th grader).
Some changes we've made... While I love TOG, I decided to focus on spelling and writing with Tornado Boy this year. So I decided to use Mystery of History instead. I can use one book with all 3 children, an we can get extra books from the library if we want, but we don't have to. We're going light on history so we can focus on foundational skills. So far, so good!
Tornado Boy
Math: He started Chapter 6 in AoPS Prealgebra. He also did warm-up with CLE Math 508.
Literature: He read "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi" for Lightning Literature 7. We intend to do this program slowly, possibly over two years.
Writing: He finished Lesson 7 of CAP Writing & Rhetoric Fable. He also did the first 3 lessons of Essentials in Writing 6. We're doing W&R Monday-Wednesday and EIW Thursday-Friday. If we don't finish EIW this year, that's fine. Though I think we will.
Grammar: He did Lessons 5 and 6 in Hake Grammar 6. This is another book that we don't have to finish this year. We'll just work on it twice per week to keep grammar topics fresh.
Spelling: He did Logic of English Lesson 1, which was pretty easy. I would get the advanced words out, but later lessons have basic words he could use, so I plan to go through it quickly and then run through it again with advanced words.
Latin: He did the first 6 pages of Lesson 9 in Lively Latin Big Book 1. Technically this was redoing work, as he had started Lesson 9 before the end of our school year, but I hadn't bound his workbook, and the pages are lost, so I had no idea how far he got. I figured a little review won't hurt anything. It's been a couple months since he did Latin. So he happily redid the beginning of Lesson 9.
Read-Aloud: We are currently reading Harriet the Spy.
History: We did week 1 of MOH1, learning about Creation, Adam and Eve, and Jubal and Tubal-Cain.
Science: We did Lesson 17 of Science in the Beginning. Yes, we only ever got 16 lessons done last school year. :P I don't know why I have an aversion to science, especially since this book is so easy to get done. But oh well. This week, we learned about liquids turning to solids. We demonstrated how water expands when frozen by filling a bottle with water, putting a balloon on top, and sticking it in the freezer. Later, the water is frozen and the balloon has plenty of ice inside it due to the expansion. We also lit a candle and poured wax into a measuring spoon. As it cooled, we saw a dimple. Most substances contract when frozen. Water is just weird. :)
Bible: We are reading through Egermeier's Bible Story Book at breakfast time, asking the questions in the back and having one child do a narration each day (Mischief gets one per week, the other two get two per week). We did Creation through Noah this week. It was Mischief's first time to do an oral narration, and he did an excellent job. I'm very proud of him!
The Brute
Math: He finished up CLE 207 and started 208. We also did 4 pages of Beast Academy 3B. The perfect squares chapter is killing me. The Brute can do the work, but he's definitely needing a lot of hand holding. I'm thinking we'll just do BA once a week for a while. I'd drop it completely, but he really likes it, plus it's good to have some problems that he can't do immediately without thinking (a la CLE). And who knows... the next chapter might be better. I think perfect squares are a bit too abstract for him at this point (things like 65x65=60x70+25).
Spelling/Reading: We did Lesson 1 of LOE this week. The Brute and Mischief are going through the book together, 5 days per week. Tornado Boy is going at a faster pace, 3 days per week. Though this week they ended up in the same place because Tornado Boy only did 2 days. ;) Anyway, The Brute did very well and enjoyed the last section where he got to make up phrases (sometimes silly ones) using the spelling words.
History: See Tornado Boy's entry.
Science: See Tornado Boy's entry.
Mischief
Math: Mischief did Lessons 42-45 in CLE Math 103. He really enjoys CLE, as he can work independently for most of it. I have to read the word problems to him because they're only in the TM. There is also some dictation for me to give. Other than that, he's on his own and just comes to me with questions. I love an independent 5 year old! He's getting good with his facts. We are not doing flash cards, but he does the speed drills untimed.
Spelling/Reading: As mentioned above, he did Lesson 1 of LOE this week. He had no trouble with anything, even writing 6 dictation phrases and then making up 6 phrases of his own for composition, all in one day. That was supposed to be two days in my original schedule, but we had one day that we skipped LOE, so we caught up on Friday.
I may have to split The Brute and Mischief up at some point. Mischief is capable of going through this faster than The Brute (Mischief reads well). But for now, I'm keeping them together. We'll see how it goes over the next few weeks.
History: See Tornado Boy's entry.
Science: See Tornado Boy's entry.
Monday, June 30, 2014
Monday, December 23, 2013
Weekly Report - Year 4 Week 23
Since my last post in October, we have not changed any curricula! Hooray!!!! This week went sooo well, so I'll go ahead and blog about it. :)
Tornado Boy
Math: He did 3.6 and 3.7 Problems and Exercises this week in AoPS Prealgebra. The big thing - he basically did them on his own. Yay! I was in the room, but I was busy doing something else. He just asked me for help a couple times, and that was it. He otherwise worked on his own, checked his own answers, etc. I'm so proud of him! This is an easier chapter for him, so he needs less handholding. I hear that Chapter 5 will need me again. :P
Literature: I gave Tornado Boy a pass on TOG literature the last several weeks. He was supposed to read The Wind in the Willows, which he got 3 chapters into and just couldn't take it. We've tried this book as an audio book a few years back and didn't get into it then either, so I'm just giving up. We don't enjoy the book, and he won't have a horrible education if he never reads it. ;) And then technically he was supposed to be reading Winnie the Pooh for TOG this week, and well, he's really above that book. He has read it before a year or so ago, but now at age 9, he'd rather read something a bit more mature. So I again let him skip it. I didn't replace it with Dialectic level literature because I don't think he's ready for the literary analysis at that level. So for these two books, I'm just giving him a breather from literature. He did, however, read a lot this week! Tuesday night, he asked me to download some books to his Kindle from the library's Overdrive. I discovered that our local library that we don't use as often as the big next-county-over library has different books on Overdrive from the other library system, so now we have a much larger selection of Kindle books. Yay! Tornado Boy was hoping for more Warriors books, but they don't have the particular series he's in (they have the first one and the one that comes after this series). He's also reading A Series of Unfortunate Events right now, and I was able to put the next book on hold. Then it dawned on me... He's 9. I could let him read Harry Potter! They had it available, so I downloaded the first book to his Kindle. The next morning, he pulled the physical book 2 off my bookshelf and read that. Then that night he asked me to put book 3 on his Kindle. :D Friday or Saturday, I went ahead and put 5, 6, and 7 on his Kindle, as he had read through book 4 by that time. He is a very fast reader, obviously! He is really enjoying HP, and he even built a wand shop out of Legos one morning. :) So we'll get back to classic literature later. Maybe the next TOG unit will have better literature choices than the last 2 books (previous weeks' choices were excellent).
Writing: We finished week 6 of Writing & Rhetoric book 1. His summary was a tad long, but not horrible. I'm not worrying about it much, as I think the instruction for summarizing in Writing With Skill 1 next year will be better (I'm going through that book myself right now). Since he tends to be a man of few words, I'm ok right now with summaries being long. It's usually like pulling teeth to get him to write more than the bare minimum!
Spelling: He completed Week 20 of R&S Spelling 4.
Latin: Monday, I gave him the Lesson 1-4 test. He scored a 98.5%!!!!! What really impressed me was when he was doing the bonus section, naming 5 English derivatives of the Latin vocabulary on that page. One of his words was "fenestration". My own vocabulary is fairly mediocre, so I had to look that word up to make sure it really was a word. :P Sure enough, it was! He then told me that defenestration started the 30 Years War. He learned that in SOTW. And he said that defenestration was a fancy word for throwing someone out a window. Ok, so Latin is going quite well, as is history, apparently! We started Lesson 5 on Tuesday, and I told him to do two pages per day (so a Lesson and Exercise page the first day). That first day, he did the lesson and exercise, then went ahead and did the history as well, since he loves the history sections. So he ended up doing Lesson 5.1, Exercise 5.1, history lesson, Lesson 5.2, Exercise 5.2, Word Power C.2, Word Power C.3, and another history lesson.
Read-Aloud: We finished Return to Howliday Inn this week (part of the Bunnicula series).
History: TOG threads are helpful in blogging about this! Tornado Boy learned about jazz music and the Harlem Renaissance, issues of racism in Amerca, Italy, and the USSR, learned about President Warren Harding, and learned about FDR's early political career.
Science: We didn't do science this week, though we did go see the Mythbusters in person at "Behind the Myths". That was very cool! We will probably do some science over our Christmas break.
The Brute
Math: We did through lesson 11 of CLE 204, then promptly LOST the LightUnit the very next day! Can't find it anywhere, and the school room is relatively clean. I have searched and searched. How did it get lost between his desk and his shelf right behind his desk chair? I have no idea. At any rate, we couldn't do CLE the rest of the week. We instead did Beast Academy 3A, where we were playing around with hundred charts and skip counting, including skip counting starting from a weird number. The Brute has done very well with Beast Academy so far. If I don't find the CLE LU over the Christmas break, I will bump him up to 205 and not worry about it. I think he'll be fine skipping some lessons.
Phonics/Reading: We started Unit 2 of R&S Phonics and Reading this week! I was terrified going in, because it is a huge jump in writing from Unit 1. The first day, he had a few instances of asking if he could just do part of it, but I said nope. You can do this. It's just filling in a few letters. ;) The next lesson was way more writing, but he didn't complain! I was shocked, to say the least. He also wrote fairly neatly, and letters are sitting on the line for the most part. We've really been working on that lately. I'm very proud of him! This unit also moves pretty fast at first. The first lesson in Phonics teaches long /A/ sound spelled a-e (review), ai-, and -ay. So he learned two new spellings that day. The next day, he learned long /E/ sound spelled ee (review), ae, and -e. So again, two new spellings. Then the 3rd day, he learned long /I/ sound spelled i-e (review), ie, and -y. Then the 4th day was the most new concepts - long /O/ sound spelled o-e (review), oa, oe, ow, and -o. So that's 4 new sounds that day! Big week! Next lesson will be long /U/ sound with one new spelling, but then most of the rest of this unit will deal with consonant blends he has experience with already. Phew! He is still enjoying the Phonics and Reading. The Reading includes some sight words, but I explain the phonics of them where possible. He loves the reader and is gaining confidence. The exercises in the workbook are fabulous for teaching him to really LOOK at the word instead of guessing based on the first letter or the shape of the word. Love it.
History: We read about Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington, plus listened to their music.
Science: Skipped science, as mentioned above.
Tornado Boy
Math: He did 3.6 and 3.7 Problems and Exercises this week in AoPS Prealgebra. The big thing - he basically did them on his own. Yay! I was in the room, but I was busy doing something else. He just asked me for help a couple times, and that was it. He otherwise worked on his own, checked his own answers, etc. I'm so proud of him! This is an easier chapter for him, so he needs less handholding. I hear that Chapter 5 will need me again. :P
Literature: I gave Tornado Boy a pass on TOG literature the last several weeks. He was supposed to read The Wind in the Willows, which he got 3 chapters into and just couldn't take it. We've tried this book as an audio book a few years back and didn't get into it then either, so I'm just giving up. We don't enjoy the book, and he won't have a horrible education if he never reads it. ;) And then technically he was supposed to be reading Winnie the Pooh for TOG this week, and well, he's really above that book. He has read it before a year or so ago, but now at age 9, he'd rather read something a bit more mature. So I again let him skip it. I didn't replace it with Dialectic level literature because I don't think he's ready for the literary analysis at that level. So for these two books, I'm just giving him a breather from literature. He did, however, read a lot this week! Tuesday night, he asked me to download some books to his Kindle from the library's Overdrive. I discovered that our local library that we don't use as often as the big next-county-over library has different books on Overdrive from the other library system, so now we have a much larger selection of Kindle books. Yay! Tornado Boy was hoping for more Warriors books, but they don't have the particular series he's in (they have the first one and the one that comes after this series). He's also reading A Series of Unfortunate Events right now, and I was able to put the next book on hold. Then it dawned on me... He's 9. I could let him read Harry Potter! They had it available, so I downloaded the first book to his Kindle. The next morning, he pulled the physical book 2 off my bookshelf and read that. Then that night he asked me to put book 3 on his Kindle. :D Friday or Saturday, I went ahead and put 5, 6, and 7 on his Kindle, as he had read through book 4 by that time. He is a very fast reader, obviously! He is really enjoying HP, and he even built a wand shop out of Legos one morning. :) So we'll get back to classic literature later. Maybe the next TOG unit will have better literature choices than the last 2 books (previous weeks' choices were excellent).
Writing: We finished week 6 of Writing & Rhetoric book 1. His summary was a tad long, but not horrible. I'm not worrying about it much, as I think the instruction for summarizing in Writing With Skill 1 next year will be better (I'm going through that book myself right now). Since he tends to be a man of few words, I'm ok right now with summaries being long. It's usually like pulling teeth to get him to write more than the bare minimum!
Spelling: He completed Week 20 of R&S Spelling 4.
Latin: Monday, I gave him the Lesson 1-4 test. He scored a 98.5%!!!!! What really impressed me was when he was doing the bonus section, naming 5 English derivatives of the Latin vocabulary on that page. One of his words was "fenestration". My own vocabulary is fairly mediocre, so I had to look that word up to make sure it really was a word. :P Sure enough, it was! He then told me that defenestration started the 30 Years War. He learned that in SOTW. And he said that defenestration was a fancy word for throwing someone out a window. Ok, so Latin is going quite well, as is history, apparently! We started Lesson 5 on Tuesday, and I told him to do two pages per day (so a Lesson and Exercise page the first day). That first day, he did the lesson and exercise, then went ahead and did the history as well, since he loves the history sections. So he ended up doing Lesson 5.1, Exercise 5.1, history lesson, Lesson 5.2, Exercise 5.2, Word Power C.2, Word Power C.3, and another history lesson.
Read-Aloud: We finished Return to Howliday Inn this week (part of the Bunnicula series).
History: TOG threads are helpful in blogging about this! Tornado Boy learned about jazz music and the Harlem Renaissance, issues of racism in Amerca, Italy, and the USSR, learned about President Warren Harding, and learned about FDR's early political career.
Science: We didn't do science this week, though we did go see the Mythbusters in person at "Behind the Myths". That was very cool! We will probably do some science over our Christmas break.
The Brute
Math: We did through lesson 11 of CLE 204, then promptly LOST the LightUnit the very next day! Can't find it anywhere, and the school room is relatively clean. I have searched and searched. How did it get lost between his desk and his shelf right behind his desk chair? I have no idea. At any rate, we couldn't do CLE the rest of the week. We instead did Beast Academy 3A, where we were playing around with hundred charts and skip counting, including skip counting starting from a weird number. The Brute has done very well with Beast Academy so far. If I don't find the CLE LU over the Christmas break, I will bump him up to 205 and not worry about it. I think he'll be fine skipping some lessons.
Phonics/Reading: We started Unit 2 of R&S Phonics and Reading this week! I was terrified going in, because it is a huge jump in writing from Unit 1. The first day, he had a few instances of asking if he could just do part of it, but I said nope. You can do this. It's just filling in a few letters. ;) The next lesson was way more writing, but he didn't complain! I was shocked, to say the least. He also wrote fairly neatly, and letters are sitting on the line for the most part. We've really been working on that lately. I'm very proud of him! This unit also moves pretty fast at first. The first lesson in Phonics teaches long /A/ sound spelled a-e (review), ai-, and -ay. So he learned two new spellings that day. The next day, he learned long /E/ sound spelled ee (review), ae, and -e. So again, two new spellings. Then the 3rd day, he learned long /I/ sound spelled i-e (review), ie, and -y. Then the 4th day was the most new concepts - long /O/ sound spelled o-e (review), oa, oe, ow, and -o. So that's 4 new sounds that day! Big week! Next lesson will be long /U/ sound with one new spelling, but then most of the rest of this unit will deal with consonant blends he has experience with already. Phew! He is still enjoying the Phonics and Reading. The Reading includes some sight words, but I explain the phonics of them where possible. He loves the reader and is gaining confidence. The exercises in the workbook are fabulous for teaching him to really LOOK at the word instead of guessing based on the first letter or the shape of the word. Love it.
History: We read about Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington, plus listened to their music.
Science: Skipped science, as mentioned above.
Monday, October 14, 2013
Lots of Changes!
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.
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.
Friday, July 19, 2013
Weekly Report - Year 4 Week 4
I forgot to update the last few weeks, but we only really had school about half the time. Still doing swim lessons and a few doctor appointments, but I'm ok with half weeks at this point.
The only new thing since last update is that I've been playing with Microsoft OneNote. Very cool program! It has a free app for my phone (Android), and while my kids' computer is using an older version that can't sync with Skydrive, I am able to pull it up online on their computer so Tornado Boy and use it. I put any "computer work" in one tab, so he can click each thing and follow the link. Very handy! I can see us using this a lot as he gets older.
Tornado Boy
Math: We completed the main sections of Chapter 1 of AoPS Prealgebra this week. We just have the Review and Challenge sections left to go. While working through things, I decided that he could use a little more practice with order of operations involving larger equations and also with the associative, commutative, and distributive properties. So I pulled out Dolciani Prealgebra and put sticky flags on Section 1-2 and Section 1-5. He did 1-2 this week. Next week, he'll do 1-5, then he'll continue with the Review and Challenge sections of AoPS Chapter 1. The Dolciani went fine. He found it fairly easy. And of course, there were zero problems with order of operations during those 20 problems (he did all the odds).
I also signed Tornado Boy up for Alcumus at the Art of Problem Solving site. He's done several problems so far. No quests yet. Hopefully he'll get one soon.
Reading: I did not assign any reading the last few weeks, though I should have had him reading the last 3 books of Core D. Oh well. He can probably read them all in a week. :)
Grammar: We did R&S English 5 Lesson 2 this week. Yes, we hadn't picked it up in a while. :P Nothing really exciting.
Writing: We completed WWE3 Week 2 this week. He is doing well with the dictation, and his narrations have come back to the land of normal (last year I dropped the ball and didn't have him doing narrations for a while - bad move!).
Handwriting/Typing: He has done several pages of Pentime 3. I've also had him start doing typing lessons daily, first thing in the morning.
Spelling: Another one we haven't picked up as much... He's done part of week 15 of R&S Spelling 4.
Latin: This has been done every single day that we have done school. :) He completed Lesson 1 and is halfway through Lesson 2 (of 16). Vocabulary B will certainly slow him down a bit. This is by far his favorite subject, so he's always excited to get to it.
Read-Aloud: We finished The Horse and His Boy and began The Magician's Nephew. We will finish that this week. We are also nearing the end of Swift Rivers. Just 60 pages to go...
Bible: We have read through Acts 17-23, and we also have been doing our daily Proverbs.
History: We have read through Chapter 18 of Landmark History of the American People. Core D goes through Chapter 23, so we have some reading left to do! I'm hoping to start Core E soon.
Science: Another subject that has been done fairly regularly is science! This is only barely behind Latin as far as favorites go. We are almost done with Module #1 of Apologia General Science. We just have one reading session left, and then we'll do the study guide via a lapbook. We did experiments 1.3 and 1.4. We had a lot of fun with 1.3!
The Brute
Math: He learned how to add double digit numbers vertically without regrouping and horizontally with regrouping (mental math).
Reading: He read the -ch/-tch page in Phonics Pathways and also did another pyramid.
Handwriting: He worked on the letters 'Bb' and 'Cc', with some copywork.
Grammar: We have been learning about common vs. proper nouns, which he seems to understand pretty well. He doesn't need 45 lessons, but that's ok. He enjoys FLL1, so we'll keep going. He has memorized "The Catepillar" by Christina G. Rosetti, and we have done a story narration and a picture study.
Writing: We completed week 2 of WWE1. This has gone very well so far! He answers the questions with ease. He has figured out how to make his answer into a complete sentence (though still has to be reminded, of course). He also gives good narrations when asked "What is one thing you remember from this passage?" His goal is to fill up the page, apparently. :)
Excuse the messy handwriting. That would be MY handwriting on those huge WWE1 lines, trying to keep up with an eager beaver. :) In that last narration, we had one blank line left, and I said his narration was good. Then he saw the blank line and added "He was happy," to fill up the page. Silly boy. Soooooo different from his big brother!
Other: We are almost done with Sonlight P4/5. Just have a couple Uncle Wiggly stories and a couple Peter Rabbit stories left.
Mischief
Math: He's about halfway through Book A of Singapore Essential Math K. He's now practiced writing all the numbers.
Reading: He finally moved his sticky tab past the first section of Phonics Pathways, into the CVC words section. There is more on a page, which is why he didn't want to read those pages at first. He's gotten over that now. :)
Mischief largely does his school independently. He likes to self-teach, apparently. Of course, none of what he is doing is really "new". ;)
The only new thing since last update is that I've been playing with Microsoft OneNote. Very cool program! It has a free app for my phone (Android), and while my kids' computer is using an older version that can't sync with Skydrive, I am able to pull it up online on their computer so Tornado Boy and use it. I put any "computer work" in one tab, so he can click each thing and follow the link. Very handy! I can see us using this a lot as he gets older.
Tornado Boy
Math: We completed the main sections of Chapter 1 of AoPS Prealgebra this week. We just have the Review and Challenge sections left to go. While working through things, I decided that he could use a little more practice with order of operations involving larger equations and also with the associative, commutative, and distributive properties. So I pulled out Dolciani Prealgebra and put sticky flags on Section 1-2 and Section 1-5. He did 1-2 this week. Next week, he'll do 1-5, then he'll continue with the Review and Challenge sections of AoPS Chapter 1. The Dolciani went fine. He found it fairly easy. And of course, there were zero problems with order of operations during those 20 problems (he did all the odds).
I also signed Tornado Boy up for Alcumus at the Art of Problem Solving site. He's done several problems so far. No quests yet. Hopefully he'll get one soon.
Reading: I did not assign any reading the last few weeks, though I should have had him reading the last 3 books of Core D. Oh well. He can probably read them all in a week. :)
Grammar: We did R&S English 5 Lesson 2 this week. Yes, we hadn't picked it up in a while. :P Nothing really exciting.
Writing: We completed WWE3 Week 2 this week. He is doing well with the dictation, and his narrations have come back to the land of normal (last year I dropped the ball and didn't have him doing narrations for a while - bad move!).
Handwriting/Typing: He has done several pages of Pentime 3. I've also had him start doing typing lessons daily, first thing in the morning.
Spelling: Another one we haven't picked up as much... He's done part of week 15 of R&S Spelling 4.
Latin: This has been done every single day that we have done school. :) He completed Lesson 1 and is halfway through Lesson 2 (of 16). Vocabulary B will certainly slow him down a bit. This is by far his favorite subject, so he's always excited to get to it.
Read-Aloud: We finished The Horse and His Boy and began The Magician's Nephew. We will finish that this week. We are also nearing the end of Swift Rivers. Just 60 pages to go...
Bible: We have read through Acts 17-23, and we also have been doing our daily Proverbs.
History: We have read through Chapter 18 of Landmark History of the American People. Core D goes through Chapter 23, so we have some reading left to do! I'm hoping to start Core E soon.
Science: Another subject that has been done fairly regularly is science! This is only barely behind Latin as far as favorites go. We are almost done with Module #1 of Apologia General Science. We just have one reading session left, and then we'll do the study guide via a lapbook. We did experiments 1.3 and 1.4. We had a lot of fun with 1.3!
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| Red cabbage water mixed with vinegar at start of experiment 1.3. |
 | |
| After adding the baking soda, the balloon blows up and the water turned clear. |
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| Experiment 1.4 shows how the larger ellipse looks more round, similar to planetary orbits. |
The Brute
Math: He learned how to add double digit numbers vertically without regrouping and horizontally with regrouping (mental math).
Reading: He read the -ch/-tch page in Phonics Pathways and also did another pyramid.
Handwriting: He worked on the letters 'Bb' and 'Cc', with some copywork.
Grammar: We have been learning about common vs. proper nouns, which he seems to understand pretty well. He doesn't need 45 lessons, but that's ok. He enjoys FLL1, so we'll keep going. He has memorized "The Catepillar" by Christina G. Rosetti, and we have done a story narration and a picture study.
Writing: We completed week 2 of WWE1. This has gone very well so far! He answers the questions with ease. He has figured out how to make his answer into a complete sentence (though still has to be reminded, of course). He also gives good narrations when asked "What is one thing you remember from this passage?" His goal is to fill up the page, apparently. :)
Excuse the messy handwriting. That would be MY handwriting on those huge WWE1 lines, trying to keep up with an eager beaver. :) In that last narration, we had one blank line left, and I said his narration was good. Then he saw the blank line and added "He was happy," to fill up the page. Silly boy. Soooooo different from his big brother!
Other: We are almost done with Sonlight P4/5. Just have a couple Uncle Wiggly stories and a couple Peter Rabbit stories left.
Mischief
Math: He's about halfway through Book A of Singapore Essential Math K. He's now practiced writing all the numbers.
Reading: He finally moved his sticky tab past the first section of Phonics Pathways, into the CVC words section. There is more on a page, which is why he didn't want to read those pages at first. He's gotten over that now. :)
Mischief largely does his school independently. He likes to self-teach, apparently. Of course, none of what he is doing is really "new". ;)
Friday, June 28, 2013
Weekly Report - Year 4 Week 1
Oh, by the way, we finished our year back in May. Ha! We took off a good month for camp, playing outside, etc. Now we've started up again so I don't go insane. It's too hot to be outside past about 9am these days. Though we are still doing swim lessons some days, as well as other occasional distractions.
Tornado Boy
Math: We started AoPS Prealgebra this week. This is kind of scary for me, as it's a hard book, and the kid just turned 9 yesterday, but so far... it's going well! Hooray! I'm discussing things with him and working through it with him right now, just to get him used to the book. We read the material, do the problem set, read the solutions that teach the concepts, then do the exercises. He LOVES the exercises! The problem sets are a bit boring because this chapter talks about why 2+3 = 3+2, but then they use that knowledge to solve much more difficult problems. So the exercises are fun. We did sections 1.1-1.4 this week.
Reading: We didn't quite finish Sonlight Core D last year, so he read Robert Fulton: Boy Craftsman this week.
Grammar: We started R&S English 5, but only did one lesson this week. The first lesson is an intro to the book plus a bit of review. He had to look in the table of contents and index for things. He had to notice the publisher, copyright date, and title of the book. He had to use the TOC and/or index to find answers to some of the review questions. We also discussed how to label his paper (I gave him a different way to label than what the book says). We talked about the importance of having your name on your paper, because in college if you turn in a paper with no name, you'll get a big, fat zero. :)
Writing: We started WWE3 Week 1. He did very well with both the narration and the dictations.
Handwriting: He did a couple pages of Pentime 3 (cursive).
Spelling: He started week 14 of R&S Spelling 4. Unfortunately, we didn't really get to it but one day, so only Part A is done. Oh well. We'll get to it next week. :)
Latin: We began Lively Latin Big Book 1, and this is by far his favorite subject so far!!!! He really loves this curriculum. He loves the history lessons added in, and he enjoys the derivatives work. We actually did about 3 lessons, a couple exercises, a history lesson, vocabulary A, and a derivatives exercise. All that in 4 days!
Read-Aloud: We are reading through the Chronicles of Narnia series and are currently about halfway through The Horse and His Boy. We also read a bit of Swift Rivers, though I didn't get to it every morning as I meant to. Oops. That's another holdover from Core D. :)
Bible: We read Acts 16. The adult class at church is going through the book of Acts right now, so we read the chapter at breakfast and answer my class questions. Tornado Boy does pretty well with the questions. Some require a bit more logic stage thinking, so he doesn't get those. But most he's able to answer.
History: We read chapter 16 of Landmark History of the American People.
Science: Coming in a very close 2nd for favorite subject, Apologia General Science is going really well so far. He is enjoying the text (even though it's module #1, which is supposed to be the boring one!). And he loves the experiments. We've done 2 experiments so far. They were both super easy, but demonstrated the concepts being taught.
So we learned that cork floats on top of oil, ice floats on top of
water, grape floats on top of syrup, and rock sinks to the bottom.
In the 2nd experiment, we were seeing how the atoms in water are in constant motion. The boiling water dispersed the drop of food coloring very quickly, while the tap water was much slower.
Please excuse the food on the stove. :P
The Brute
Math: We worked on adding/subtracting tens and ones (separately) within 100. We also did greater than and less than. This was all easy, but we're taking our time. :) Still working through 1B, but we'll probably finish it in a few weeks.
Reading: We did a couple pages of Reading Pathways (he LOVES the pyramids) and one little "box" in Phonics Pathways.
Handwriting: We did one page of Pentime 1, book 2. We never did finish book 1, but book 2 goes over each letter again AND adds words and sentences. He's totally ready to do that, so we split up the page into two days.
Grammar: We started FLL1, which he enjoyed. I had one little issue... When the book says, "Everyone has a mother and a father," The Brute said not everyone has a father. Our preacher had done a sermon recently and mentioned the problem of many kids not having fathers. He was talking about cases where the father is absent (not involved in the kid's life). So I had to explain that everyone has a father technically, but some fathers aren't a part of their kids' lives. Oh, the joys of teaching a very literal child who thinks too much. :)
Writing: We started WWE1 this week, and he did very well! He loves Little House in the Big Woods, which was the first passage. His first "narration" was the same as his copywork from the day before: "There were no roads." :) He technically can't read the copywork when he first sees it, but we go over the phonics involved, and I think it will only serve to help his reading. So it's all good.
Mischief
Math: We started Singapore Essential Math K this week. He did at least 30 pages in the first 3 days. He loves it! He also insisted on doing much of it on his own, unless he needed me to read the directions to him. :)
Reading: He did all of that first section of Phonics Pathways with the two-letter blends. He loves that section and does it VERY fast. He actually did that all on his own too. In fact, one day I got out of the shower, called up to him to ask if he was ready to start school, and he said, "I've already started school." Crazy child.
The Brute and Mischief demonstrated recently that they can both read Go, Dog, Go! The Brute is a good bit faster at it, but both can read it. Yay!
Tornado Boy
Math: We started AoPS Prealgebra this week. This is kind of scary for me, as it's a hard book, and the kid just turned 9 yesterday, but so far... it's going well! Hooray! I'm discussing things with him and working through it with him right now, just to get him used to the book. We read the material, do the problem set, read the solutions that teach the concepts, then do the exercises. He LOVES the exercises! The problem sets are a bit boring because this chapter talks about why 2+3 = 3+2, but then they use that knowledge to solve much more difficult problems. So the exercises are fun. We did sections 1.1-1.4 this week.
Reading: We didn't quite finish Sonlight Core D last year, so he read Robert Fulton: Boy Craftsman this week.
Grammar: We started R&S English 5, but only did one lesson this week. The first lesson is an intro to the book plus a bit of review. He had to look in the table of contents and index for things. He had to notice the publisher, copyright date, and title of the book. He had to use the TOC and/or index to find answers to some of the review questions. We also discussed how to label his paper (I gave him a different way to label than what the book says). We talked about the importance of having your name on your paper, because in college if you turn in a paper with no name, you'll get a big, fat zero. :)
Writing: We started WWE3 Week 1. He did very well with both the narration and the dictations.
Handwriting: He did a couple pages of Pentime 3 (cursive).
Spelling: He started week 14 of R&S Spelling 4. Unfortunately, we didn't really get to it but one day, so only Part A is done. Oh well. We'll get to it next week. :)
Latin: We began Lively Latin Big Book 1, and this is by far his favorite subject so far!!!! He really loves this curriculum. He loves the history lessons added in, and he enjoys the derivatives work. We actually did about 3 lessons, a couple exercises, a history lesson, vocabulary A, and a derivatives exercise. All that in 4 days!
Read-Aloud: We are reading through the Chronicles of Narnia series and are currently about halfway through The Horse and His Boy. We also read a bit of Swift Rivers, though I didn't get to it every morning as I meant to. Oops. That's another holdover from Core D. :)
Bible: We read Acts 16. The adult class at church is going through the book of Acts right now, so we read the chapter at breakfast and answer my class questions. Tornado Boy does pretty well with the questions. Some require a bit more logic stage thinking, so he doesn't get those. But most he's able to answer.
History: We read chapter 16 of Landmark History of the American People.
Science: Coming in a very close 2nd for favorite subject, Apologia General Science is going really well so far. He is enjoying the text (even though it's module #1, which is supposed to be the boring one!). And he loves the experiments. We've done 2 experiments so far. They were both super easy, but demonstrated the concepts being taught.
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| Experiment 1.1: Density in Nature |
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| Experiment 1.2: Atomic Motion - part 1 |
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| Part 2 (after sitting for a while - the one on the right looks like the left) |
Please excuse the food on the stove. :P
The Brute
Math: We worked on adding/subtracting tens and ones (separately) within 100. We also did greater than and less than. This was all easy, but we're taking our time. :) Still working through 1B, but we'll probably finish it in a few weeks.
Reading: We did a couple pages of Reading Pathways (he LOVES the pyramids) and one little "box" in Phonics Pathways.
Handwriting: We did one page of Pentime 1, book 2. We never did finish book 1, but book 2 goes over each letter again AND adds words and sentences. He's totally ready to do that, so we split up the page into two days.
Grammar: We started FLL1, which he enjoyed. I had one little issue... When the book says, "Everyone has a mother and a father," The Brute said not everyone has a father. Our preacher had done a sermon recently and mentioned the problem of many kids not having fathers. He was talking about cases where the father is absent (not involved in the kid's life). So I had to explain that everyone has a father technically, but some fathers aren't a part of their kids' lives. Oh, the joys of teaching a very literal child who thinks too much. :)
Writing: We started WWE1 this week, and he did very well! He loves Little House in the Big Woods, which was the first passage. His first "narration" was the same as his copywork from the day before: "There were no roads." :) He technically can't read the copywork when he first sees it, but we go over the phonics involved, and I think it will only serve to help his reading. So it's all good.
Mischief
Math: We started Singapore Essential Math K this week. He did at least 30 pages in the first 3 days. He loves it! He also insisted on doing much of it on his own, unless he needed me to read the directions to him. :)
Reading: He did all of that first section of Phonics Pathways with the two-letter blends. He loves that section and does it VERY fast. He actually did that all on his own too. In fact, one day I got out of the shower, called up to him to ask if he was ready to start school, and he said, "I've already started school." Crazy child.
The Brute and Mischief demonstrated recently that they can both read Go, Dog, Go! The Brute is a good bit faster at it, but both can read it. Yay!
Monday, February 25, 2013
Weekly Report - Year 3 Weeks 27-28
Forgot to update last week! We did do school though, and we've had a productive TWO weeks. :)
Tornado Boy
Math: We finished the geometry section of Singapore 5B. Now on to average and rate.
Reading: He read Martha Washington: America's First Lady.
Grammar: We worked on Adverbs the last two weeks.
Writing: In week 27, we wrote a letter to Grandmama. The little ones joined in this adventure, and Grandmama was very happy to see letters from all 3 of her grandchildren. :)
Also, R&S English had a writing assignment this past week where he was to retell the story of the feeding of the 5000 from the Bible. He did well with this assignment, though we had some issues with the directions at first. R&S gives you a topic sentence that kind of sums up the story, so he used that sentence, then put one more sentence and was done. LOL. I said that wasn't correct and he'd have to redo it. He couldn't get past that topic sentence, so I had him leave it out. He then wrote a wonderful paragraph, retelling the story nicely. We used IEW's Story Sequence Chart to help us, except we made it one paragraph instead of the 3 that IEW does. This gave us a nice outline to work from, and he had no problem writing the story after that.
Handwriting: He worked on some letter strokes individually the last two weeks. We're nearing the end of the workbook!
Spelling: Completed lessons 6 and 7 in R&S Spelling. Lesson 6 was a review lesson with 50 words on the test! He got them all right. I just had to split the test over two days. He also aced the lesson 7 test.
Latin: We have learned "ambulo" (I walk), "ad" (to/toward) and "acta" (seashore).
Read-Aloud: We started reading Little House in the Big Woods as our bedtime story. Tornado Boy said, "I recognize two parts of what you read." Yep, those parts were from WWE1! I've actually read at least half the book to him back in first grade, but he only remembered the WWE1 sections. We're also reading Carry on, Mr. Bowditch! for history.
Bible: Still harmonizing the gospels. Jesus has talked about what's about to happen to him, and said that someone will betray him.
History: We read a couple stories in American Adventures Part 1 and started reading The Story of Eli Whitney.
Science: We lost our Brain last week! But thankfully, we found it and were able to do Chapters 3 and 3.5. We learned that Tornado Boy leans more left brained, but has some right brained tendencies. I'm more left brained than he is. These results didn't surprise me. :)
The Brute
Math: We've been adding and subtracting numbers within 40, using our basic facts under 10 to help us. The Brute is looking forward to getting to multiplication soon!
We also completed Life of Fred Cats and started Dogs.
Reading: Big news here is that this past week, READING HAS CLICKED!!!!!!!!!! He is no longer painfully sounding out every single phonogram of every single word. Woohoo! I knew it was coming because the previous week, he had started to blend the first two letters of the word like Phonics Pathways has you do. This was very helpful! This past week, he has been reading some of his Star Wars Phonics readers (the whole thing on his own, mostly), some A Beka "I Do Read" books, and some Scholastic "High Frequency Readers". He is very excited that he has this new found skill! Yipee!!!
Writing: We worked on "A", "a", "U", and "u" the last two weeks. And of course he wrote a letter to Granmama:
Other: We completed 2 weeks of Sonlight P4/5.
Mischief
Mischief has been in a reading and writing mode the last couple weeks. He is orally sounding words out for fun, figuring out how to spell some CVC words. He is also writing his alphabet, though I realized that he gets J and G confused.
Mischief also wrote a page that said, "Love <name>", and he wrote that perfectly (me telling him the letters). Granmama was surprised at how well he wrote for a 3 year old. Now if he'll just pick a hand to write with... :)
Tornado Boy
Math: We finished the geometry section of Singapore 5B. Now on to average and rate.
Reading: He read Martha Washington: America's First Lady.
Grammar: We worked on Adverbs the last two weeks.
Writing: In week 27, we wrote a letter to Grandmama. The little ones joined in this adventure, and Grandmama was very happy to see letters from all 3 of her grandchildren. :)
Also, R&S English had a writing assignment this past week where he was to retell the story of the feeding of the 5000 from the Bible. He did well with this assignment, though we had some issues with the directions at first. R&S gives you a topic sentence that kind of sums up the story, so he used that sentence, then put one more sentence and was done. LOL. I said that wasn't correct and he'd have to redo it. He couldn't get past that topic sentence, so I had him leave it out. He then wrote a wonderful paragraph, retelling the story nicely. We used IEW's Story Sequence Chart to help us, except we made it one paragraph instead of the 3 that IEW does. This gave us a nice outline to work from, and he had no problem writing the story after that.
 |
| I never did get around to having him title it... |
Handwriting: He worked on some letter strokes individually the last two weeks. We're nearing the end of the workbook!
Spelling: Completed lessons 6 and 7 in R&S Spelling. Lesson 6 was a review lesson with 50 words on the test! He got them all right. I just had to split the test over two days. He also aced the lesson 7 test.
Latin: We have learned "ambulo" (I walk), "ad" (to/toward) and "acta" (seashore).
Read-Aloud: We started reading Little House in the Big Woods as our bedtime story. Tornado Boy said, "I recognize two parts of what you read." Yep, those parts were from WWE1! I've actually read at least half the book to him back in first grade, but he only remembered the WWE1 sections. We're also reading Carry on, Mr. Bowditch! for history.
Bible: Still harmonizing the gospels. Jesus has talked about what's about to happen to him, and said that someone will betray him.
History: We read a couple stories in American Adventures Part 1 and started reading The Story of Eli Whitney.
Science: We lost our Brain last week! But thankfully, we found it and were able to do Chapters 3 and 3.5. We learned that Tornado Boy leans more left brained, but has some right brained tendencies. I'm more left brained than he is. These results didn't surprise me. :)
The Brute
Math: We've been adding and subtracting numbers within 40, using our basic facts under 10 to help us. The Brute is looking forward to getting to multiplication soon!
We also completed Life of Fred Cats and started Dogs.
Reading: Big news here is that this past week, READING HAS CLICKED!!!!!!!!!! He is no longer painfully sounding out every single phonogram of every single word. Woohoo! I knew it was coming because the previous week, he had started to blend the first two letters of the word like Phonics Pathways has you do. This was very helpful! This past week, he has been reading some of his Star Wars Phonics readers (the whole thing on his own, mostly), some A Beka "I Do Read" books, and some Scholastic "High Frequency Readers". He is very excited that he has this new found skill! Yipee!!!
Writing: We worked on "A", "a", "U", and "u" the last two weeks. And of course he wrote a letter to Granmama:
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| "We saw Jack Hanna at the VBC." |
Other: We completed 2 weeks of Sonlight P4/5.
Mischief
Mischief has been in a reading and writing mode the last couple weeks. He is orally sounding words out for fun, figuring out how to spell some CVC words. He is also writing his alphabet, though I realized that he gets J and G confused.
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| Writing the alphabet... sort of... |
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| "Granmama"... sort of... |
Saturday, February 9, 2013
Weekly Report - Year 3 Week 26
We've had a busy, but good week! Tornado Boy got braces Wednesday, then two of the brackets fell off the next morning during breakfast, so we had to go back in Thursday after speech therapy to get them put back on.
On top of that, Tornado Boy and The Brute were leaving town with their Daddy later that afternoon for a Nashville Predators (hockey) game. So we had to get all of our schoolwork done Thursday shortly after lunch and still have time for those two to get in a short nap before their trip, since they'd be staying up late. Oh, and our wonder pup, Keiko, had a skin issue that we needed to get checked out at the vet. Tuesday. It's a wonder we got school done at all this week, but we did!
The Brute lost two teeth this week as well, so he's our toothless wonder!
Tornado Boy
Math: He finished the percents unit and did Review 9. He found the review to be quite easy and finished it in one sitting. Hooray! We'll be getting to some geometry next, and he likes geometry (unlike his mother).
Reading: He finished George Washington: Young Leader.
Grammar: We did possessive pronouns as adjectives this week.
Writing: We did week 27 of WWE.
Handwriting: He did 4 pages in Pentime 2. He's working on capital letters now.
Spelling: Finished week 5 of R&S Spelling 4. He aced the test plus got two bonus words (I never tested the first week, so I took the two hardest words from that week - he remembered them;). He also did very well on the work itself this week. He often has several that he misses, because the exercises can be pretty hard, but this week he got most of them right.
Latin: We did lessons 48 and 49, and had much 8 year old boy giggling as we learned "sed" ("but"). I had to say, "No, not that butt..."
Read-Aloud: We finished Toliver's Secret and Mr. Revere and I. I think I only got to one chapter in Five Children and It this week.
Bible: Still harmonizing the gospels.
History: We learned about the writing of the Constitution and the issues involved with big states vs. little states, the setup of the 3 branches of the government, etc.
Science: We did Chapter 2.5 of "The Brain", learning about the layers surrounding the brain, the blood brain barrier, and cerebral-spinal fluid.
Art: YES! WE DID ART!!!!!!!!!!!!! Ok, we did it on Saturday, but it still counts! :) We did the first activity in Usborne's Art Treasury, doing a swirly landscape after learning about Van Gogh's "Starry Night".
The Brute
Math: We worked with 2-digit numbers and did several exercises. This stuff is still super easy, so we usually did 2-3 lessons per day.
Reading: We did a couple pages in Phonics Pathways and read more Star Wars Phonics readers. Ah... bribery. :)
Writing: We worked on the letter 'u'. I think we only did handwriting one day this week.
Other: We did a week of Sonlight and another chapter of Life of Fred Cats. We're almost done with Cats.
Art: Same as Tornado Boy.
Mischief
Mischief did a few words here and there in Phonics Pathways plus his little workbooks. He also played Starfall a lot, since he didn't go on the hockey game trip.
And of course, he joined us for art. :)
On top of that, Tornado Boy and The Brute were leaving town with their Daddy later that afternoon for a Nashville Predators (hockey) game. So we had to get all of our schoolwork done Thursday shortly after lunch and still have time for those two to get in a short nap before their trip, since they'd be staying up late. Oh, and our wonder pup, Keiko, had a skin issue that we needed to get checked out at the vet. Tuesday. It's a wonder we got school done at all this week, but we did!
The Brute lost two teeth this week as well, so he's our toothless wonder!
Tornado Boy
Math: He finished the percents unit and did Review 9. He found the review to be quite easy and finished it in one sitting. Hooray! We'll be getting to some geometry next, and he likes geometry (unlike his mother).
Reading: He finished George Washington: Young Leader.
Grammar: We did possessive pronouns as adjectives this week.
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| Diagram (review sentence)... and that should say "Joel's" |
Writing: We did week 27 of WWE.
Handwriting: He did 4 pages in Pentime 2. He's working on capital letters now.
Spelling: Finished week 5 of R&S Spelling 4. He aced the test plus got two bonus words (I never tested the first week, so I took the two hardest words from that week - he remembered them;). He also did very well on the work itself this week. He often has several that he misses, because the exercises can be pretty hard, but this week he got most of them right.
Latin: We did lessons 48 and 49, and had much 8 year old boy giggling as we learned "sed" ("but"). I had to say, "No, not that butt..."
Read-Aloud: We finished Toliver's Secret and Mr. Revere and I. I think I only got to one chapter in Five Children and It this week.
Bible: Still harmonizing the gospels.
History: We learned about the writing of the Constitution and the issues involved with big states vs. little states, the setup of the 3 branches of the government, etc.
Science: We did Chapter 2.5 of "The Brain", learning about the layers surrounding the brain, the blood brain barrier, and cerebral-spinal fluid.
Art: YES! WE DID ART!!!!!!!!!!!!! Ok, we did it on Saturday, but it still counts! :) We did the first activity in Usborne's Art Treasury, doing a swirly landscape after learning about Van Gogh's "Starry Night".
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| Before |
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| After |
The Brute
Math: We worked with 2-digit numbers and did several exercises. This stuff is still super easy, so we usually did 2-3 lessons per day.
Reading: We did a couple pages in Phonics Pathways and read more Star Wars Phonics readers. Ah... bribery. :)
Writing: We worked on the letter 'u'. I think we only did handwriting one day this week.
Other: We did a week of Sonlight and another chapter of Life of Fred Cats. We're almost done with Cats.
Art: Same as Tornado Boy.
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| Before |
 |
| After |
Mischief
Mischief did a few words here and there in Phonics Pathways plus his little workbooks. He also played Starfall a lot, since he didn't go on the hockey game trip.
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| Sitting on the arm of the chair... |
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| Before (Mischief and Mama) |
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| After (Mischief) |
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| After (Mama) |
Sunday, February 3, 2013
Weekly Report - Year 3 Week 25
Whoops! I haven't updated in 2 months! We HAVE been doing school. I promise! :)
We took about 3 weeks off at Christmas, then started back up a month ago and have been going strong. I think the only major change we made in curriculum use is to add in Ellen McHenry's "The Brain" for our science right now. We are really enjoying it so far!
Tornado Boy
Math: We are doing percentages in Singapore 5B right now. This has been pretty easy for him, and sometimes he's done 2 lessons in a day. We are also catching up to that spot in CWP5, so we'll need to slow down there (I like it to be a BIT behind where we are in the textbook/workbook). We're in Volume in CWP5.
Reading: This week, he began reading George Washing: Young Leader.
Grammar: I must say, I'm absolutely loving R&S English 4 these days. Go figure. :) We are now in the Adjectives chapter, having just finished Pronouns. I usually assign roughly half the written work... yes, written. It is stretching him in good ways. He is also learning to write properly from a textbook on loose leaf paper.
Writing: We completed week 26 of WWE2, and we also mailed some letters we had written the previous week for a R&S English lesson. His assignment was to write a letter to a friend, inviting them over. The younger boys decided that they, too, would write letters. So Tornado Boy invited his friend D, The Brute invited D's younger brother J, and Mischief invited the Mom Lori. :) Tornado Boy addressed the envelope himself and did quite a good job. The family did receive the letter this week.
Spelling: We have completed 4 weeks of R&S Spelling 4. This book is definitely a step up in the difficulty department! He struggles with some of the exercises, but he's acing the tests, so the exercises are clearly working. :)
Latin: We did lessons 46 and 47 of Getting Started With Latin this week. It had been a few weeks since we last did Latin, but he did very well anyway.
Read-Aloud: We are currently reading Five Children and It, which the boys are quite enjoying! For Sonlight history read-aloud, we are also doing Toliver's Secret, and since we skipped it when it came up as a reader (didn't own it yet), Mr. Revere and I.
Bible: We are still working through the harmony of the gospels. We have gotten through the triumphal entry.
History: We haven't had to read Landmark for the last 2 weeks because we read ahead 3 weeks ago. :) We did do 2 chapters of Story of the USA book 2. I personally like Landmark better. We also started If You Were There When They Wrote the Constitution...
Science: We have done 2 chapters of "The Brain". The first chapter included learning a bit about Phineas Gage and Albert Einstein. This week's chapter taught us the different parts of the brain and what each of them does.
The Brute
Math: The Brute is cruising along in Singapore 1B now. He often does 2 lessons in a day because they are so simple right now. He loves math and is good at it. Yay! Right now, we are reviewing numbers up to 40.
Reading: We have recently started using Phonics Pathways, which The Brute is liking ok. We still pull out Dancing Bears sometimes, but I felt like he needed something "different" for a bit. I have also been bribing him with Star Wars Phonics books - he gets to read one after he does his phonics lesson. ;) They have been wonderful, and he really loves that he can read a "real" book, even if he's only reading the bold words.
Writing: I started him on Pentime 1 Book 1 a couple weeks ago. So far, he has focused on the letter A/a and U. And of course, he wrote that letter to his friend:
Other: We have consistently been one week behind in P4/5 compared to Tornado Boy's Core D lately, so this week, I finally caught us up! We read all of week 18 in one day, then did week 19 across 2 days. The boys enjoyed listening to a couple Jim Weiss stories on a Tall Tales CD one day.
Mischief
Mischief is working through Phonics Pathways also, just a bit behind The Brute. He sometimes does just 4 words in a day, which is fine. He also has various workbooks that he does independently. He, too, wrote a letter, as already mentioned, and he drew the "Where's My Water?" board game on the back. I love his alligator!!!! He also wrote his name very nicely, but I've blanked it out in this picture. ;)
We took about 3 weeks off at Christmas, then started back up a month ago and have been going strong. I think the only major change we made in curriculum use is to add in Ellen McHenry's "The Brain" for our science right now. We are really enjoying it so far!
Tornado Boy
Math: We are doing percentages in Singapore 5B right now. This has been pretty easy for him, and sometimes he's done 2 lessons in a day. We are also catching up to that spot in CWP5, so we'll need to slow down there (I like it to be a BIT behind where we are in the textbook/workbook). We're in Volume in CWP5.
Reading: This week, he began reading George Washing: Young Leader.
Grammar: I must say, I'm absolutely loving R&S English 4 these days. Go figure. :) We are now in the Adjectives chapter, having just finished Pronouns. I usually assign roughly half the written work... yes, written. It is stretching him in good ways. He is also learning to write properly from a textbook on loose leaf paper.
 | |
| Diagramming... and getting silly with the end letters falling into the seas. :P |
Writing: We completed week 26 of WWE2, and we also mailed some letters we had written the previous week for a R&S English lesson. His assignment was to write a letter to a friend, inviting them over. The younger boys decided that they, too, would write letters. So Tornado Boy invited his friend D, The Brute invited D's younger brother J, and Mischief invited the Mom Lori. :) Tornado Boy addressed the envelope himself and did quite a good job. The family did receive the letter this week.
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| Tornado Boy's letter |
Spelling: We have completed 4 weeks of R&S Spelling 4. This book is definitely a step up in the difficulty department! He struggles with some of the exercises, but he's acing the tests, so the exercises are clearly working. :)
Latin: We did lessons 46 and 47 of Getting Started With Latin this week. It had been a few weeks since we last did Latin, but he did very well anyway.
Read-Aloud: We are currently reading Five Children and It, which the boys are quite enjoying! For Sonlight history read-aloud, we are also doing Toliver's Secret, and since we skipped it when it came up as a reader (didn't own it yet), Mr. Revere and I.
Bible: We are still working through the harmony of the gospels. We have gotten through the triumphal entry.
History: We haven't had to read Landmark for the last 2 weeks because we read ahead 3 weeks ago. :) We did do 2 chapters of Story of the USA book 2. I personally like Landmark better. We also started If You Were There When They Wrote the Constitution...
Science: We have done 2 chapters of "The Brain". The first chapter included learning a bit about Phineas Gage and Albert Einstein. This week's chapter taught us the different parts of the brain and what each of them does.
The Brute
Math: The Brute is cruising along in Singapore 1B now. He often does 2 lessons in a day because they are so simple right now. He loves math and is good at it. Yay! Right now, we are reviewing numbers up to 40.
Reading: We have recently started using Phonics Pathways, which The Brute is liking ok. We still pull out Dancing Bears sometimes, but I felt like he needed something "different" for a bit. I have also been bribing him with Star Wars Phonics books - he gets to read one after he does his phonics lesson. ;) They have been wonderful, and he really loves that he can read a "real" book, even if he's only reading the bold words.
Writing: I started him on Pentime 1 Book 1 a couple weeks ago. So far, he has focused on the letter A/a and U. And of course, he wrote that letter to his friend:
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| The Brute's letter |
Other: We have consistently been one week behind in P4/5 compared to Tornado Boy's Core D lately, so this week, I finally caught us up! We read all of week 18 in one day, then did week 19 across 2 days. The boys enjoyed listening to a couple Jim Weiss stories on a Tall Tales CD one day.
Mischief
Mischief is working through Phonics Pathways also, just a bit behind The Brute. He sometimes does just 4 words in a day, which is fine. He also has various workbooks that he does independently. He, too, wrote a letter, as already mentioned, and he drew the "Where's My Water?" board game on the back. I love his alligator!!!! He also wrote his name very nicely, but I've blanked it out in this picture. ;)
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| Mischief's letter - "Dear Lori, Come play." (and some practice D's in the middle) |
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| Pretty good alligator for 3.5 years old! :) |
Sunday, December 2, 2012
Weekly Report - Year 3 Week 17
And the holiday season begins! We took 2 weeks off for Thanksgiving, when I had intended to only take off that actual week. Oh well. We had to put our dog Kira to sleep the week before Thanksgiving. She was old and had had neurological problems for the last 3 years, so it was expected. She was a sweet girl.
So that derailed our school plans, and frankly, I just wasn't in the mood to teach the rest of the week. I declared it a week off. We then prepared for a new adoption... We got Keiko that Saturday. Her name in rescue was actually Kira, so of course we changed it. Keiko was dropped off at a shelter with 2 1-week old pups back in September. The pups are weaned now, and one has been adopted (yay!). The other is still waiting. Keiko has the BEST temperament! She's a really great dog. She is a dark sable German Shepherd.
Ok, so after Thanksgiving, we got back to school work. We had a good week, and our main interruption was getting a piano - finally! We had been planning to get one last April, but then the garage fire happened literally within 2 weeks of our planned piano purchase date. DH had to set up his "office" in the space that the piano was going, so the piano had to wait until the garage office was fixed up again. The day before Thanksgiving, we stopped by a piano store and purchased a digital piano. It was delivered Monday. In the piano store, I taught Mischief where middle C is. He still remembered it on Monday! He proudly tells everyone where it is. :)
Tornado Boy
Math: We covered multiplication and division of decimals by whole numbers and multiplication and division of decimals by 10, 100, and 1000. Most of this was review. We also did several pages of CWP, finishing up fractions and getting most of the way through area and perimeter. Tornado Boy loves CWP time.
Reading: He read Benjamin Franklin of Old Philadelphia two weeks ago when all this was originally assigned. It's a library book, so I had him read it on our way to get Keiko (4 hour drive). He finished it pretty quickly and liked the book, as I thought he would.
Grammar: We did some usage lessons in R&S this week: raise vs. rise, lay vs. lie, set vs. sit. These lessons were a good reminder to me as well. ;)
Writing: We started to do a rewrite of the Princess and the Pea for Unit 3 of IEW SWI-A. Unfortunately, the unit 3 thing just didn't make enough sense to me in this one. I pulled out the example outline and was thinking, "Huh?" So I've decided to shelve unit 3 until I get/watch Teaching the Classics. Perhaps that will help some. I think we will move on to Unit 4, which I can handle and Tornado Boy can handle. So in lieu of IEW this week, we did a R&S lesson on writing a report, which happened to use key words from multiple sources. He wrote a paragraph on Bobwhites (a type of quail). I didn't have him add any dressups or anything like that. He did ok.
Spelling: We did the review week 30 this week.
Latin: We did 2 lessons - puella (girl) and amo (love/like).
Read-Aloud: We started Johnny Tremain this week for Sonlight. We are at the part where he has just injured his hand very badly. We are also still working through I, Robot and should finish it this week. We're in the last "story". Tornado Boy is enjoying it, as am I. The little ones... not so much. They tend to fall asleep while reading. :)
Bible: Still harmonizing the gospels. It's now the last week of Jesus' life. We also did Proverbs daily.
History: We read the Landmark book 2 weeks ago, so I can't remember the topic now. We also learned about the French and Indian war in the Story of the USA book.
Science: Skipped this week.
The Brute
Math: We practiced addition and subtraction within 20 this week, doing two exercises in the workbook and some mental math strips (the latter focused on facts within 10). We also finished Life of Fred Butterflies and started Cats.
Reading: We continued with Dancing Bears and did very well. We also worked on saying /ch/ properly, and his SLP also worked on that during speech therapy. He then told her toward the end, "Can we stop making that sound now?" :)
Writing: We did several new words in WRTR this week, writing them in print and cursive on a lap size white board.
Other: We finished Sonlight P4/5 week 13.
Mischief
Our biggest accomplishment was taking a NAP on Wednesday so he was pleasant in Bible class that night! :P I'm not really sure what Mischief did academically this week, as Tornado Boy was "teaching" him. He did join in on the WRTR lessons with The Brute, often saying the word before The Brute even tried. Sigh. I know at one point, he copied the word "stop", then sounded it out and told us it was "stop". Good job, kiddo!
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| Kira |
So that derailed our school plans, and frankly, I just wasn't in the mood to teach the rest of the week. I declared it a week off. We then prepared for a new adoption... We got Keiko that Saturday. Her name in rescue was actually Kira, so of course we changed it. Keiko was dropped off at a shelter with 2 1-week old pups back in September. The pups are weaned now, and one has been adopted (yay!). The other is still waiting. Keiko has the BEST temperament! She's a really great dog. She is a dark sable German Shepherd.
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| Stalking Aerial, the cat |
Ok, so after Thanksgiving, we got back to school work. We had a good week, and our main interruption was getting a piano - finally! We had been planning to get one last April, but then the garage fire happened literally within 2 weeks of our planned piano purchase date. DH had to set up his "office" in the space that the piano was going, so the piano had to wait until the garage office was fixed up again. The day before Thanksgiving, we stopped by a piano store and purchased a digital piano. It was delivered Monday. In the piano store, I taught Mischief where middle C is. He still remembered it on Monday! He proudly tells everyone where it is. :)
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| Mischief playing piano |
Tornado Boy
Math: We covered multiplication and division of decimals by whole numbers and multiplication and division of decimals by 10, 100, and 1000. Most of this was review. We also did several pages of CWP, finishing up fractions and getting most of the way through area and perimeter. Tornado Boy loves CWP time.
Reading: He read Benjamin Franklin of Old Philadelphia two weeks ago when all this was originally assigned. It's a library book, so I had him read it on our way to get Keiko (4 hour drive). He finished it pretty quickly and liked the book, as I thought he would.
Grammar: We did some usage lessons in R&S this week: raise vs. rise, lay vs. lie, set vs. sit. These lessons were a good reminder to me as well. ;)
Writing: We started to do a rewrite of the Princess and the Pea for Unit 3 of IEW SWI-A. Unfortunately, the unit 3 thing just didn't make enough sense to me in this one. I pulled out the example outline and was thinking, "Huh?" So I've decided to shelve unit 3 until I get/watch Teaching the Classics. Perhaps that will help some. I think we will move on to Unit 4, which I can handle and Tornado Boy can handle. So in lieu of IEW this week, we did a R&S lesson on writing a report, which happened to use key words from multiple sources. He wrote a paragraph on Bobwhites (a type of quail). I didn't have him add any dressups or anything like that. He did ok.
Spelling: We did the review week 30 this week.
Latin: We did 2 lessons - puella (girl) and amo (love/like).
Read-Aloud: We started Johnny Tremain this week for Sonlight. We are at the part where he has just injured his hand very badly. We are also still working through I, Robot and should finish it this week. We're in the last "story". Tornado Boy is enjoying it, as am I. The little ones... not so much. They tend to fall asleep while reading. :)
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| Mischief during I, Robot |
Bible: Still harmonizing the gospels. It's now the last week of Jesus' life. We also did Proverbs daily.
History: We read the Landmark book 2 weeks ago, so I can't remember the topic now. We also learned about the French and Indian war in the Story of the USA book.
Science: Skipped this week.
The Brute
Math: We practiced addition and subtraction within 20 this week, doing two exercises in the workbook and some mental math strips (the latter focused on facts within 10). We also finished Life of Fred Butterflies and started Cats.
Reading: We continued with Dancing Bears and did very well. We also worked on saying /ch/ properly, and his SLP also worked on that during speech therapy. He then told her toward the end, "Can we stop making that sound now?" :)
Writing: We did several new words in WRTR this week, writing them in print and cursive on a lap size white board.
Other: We finished Sonlight P4/5 week 13.
Mischief
Our biggest accomplishment was taking a NAP on Wednesday so he was pleasant in Bible class that night! :P I'm not really sure what Mischief did academically this week, as Tornado Boy was "teaching" him. He did join in on the WRTR lessons with The Brute, often saying the word before The Brute even tried. Sigh. I know at one point, he copied the word "stop", then sounded it out and told us it was "stop". Good job, kiddo!
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| Mischief writing/reading "stop" |
Saturday, November 10, 2012
Weekly Report - Year 3 Week 16
This week has gone very well! We used our brand new school room for the first time, and I can't believe how much that helped us stay on task and be productive.
My husband plans to put a big white board on the wall those desks are facing. Currently, I just have my old 2'x3' on an easel in the corner by that wall.
The white shelves separate the "school area" from the "toy area". I wasn't sure how well that would work, but so far, it has been fine. Library books are on the back side of the shelving unit also, so sometimes the kid that isn't doing school can be back there reading. In fact, one day, Mischief was reading so quietly there that I forget he was back there! :)
Tornado Boy
Math: We did Exercises 3-7 in the decimals unit. They were pretty easy, but it was good to practice those concepts a bit. We also did 2 pages per day of CWP5. This week was Fractions, and those problems were mostly easy for Tornado Boy. He loves fraction word problems!
Reading: He finished reading The Matchlock Gun.
Grammar: We did 3 lessons in R&S English 4, including action verbs with and without direct objects and learning about predicate nouns. These are all review topics for Tornado Boy, but it had been a while since he diagrammed, and he likes diagramming. :)
Writing: I had intended to do IEW this week, but when I made the schedule, I forgot to put it on there, and I had already messed up the first printing of the schedule and reprinted once, so I decided to let it go one more week. We'll do the rewrite of the Princess and the Pea the next two weeks before our Thanksgiving break. I did not replace the writing this week, but I did have him do the exercises in R&S that included writing a couple original sentences based on a picture. He had those in two of the lessons and did them with ease, with all words spelled correctly! Hooray!
Spelling: We finished week 29 of R&S Spelling 3. 100% on the test. I had forgotten to test week 28, but I gave him one of the harder words from that list, and he got it correct also. Next week is a review lesson.
Latin: We did 2 lessons this week - tabula and aqua.
Vocab and Poetry: Just here for placeholders in case we ever get back to them. :P
Read-Aloud: We finished the 5th story in I, Robot and started the 6th.
Bible: Continued harmonizing the gospels. Our daily reading schedule has dates, and we finished September this week. Ha! We're a bit behind, but that's ok. I'm not in a hurry. We just plug along at our pace. :) We also read Proverbs each day.
History: We read a lot about the House of Burgesses and the Virginia Aristocracy this week in the Landmark book. It was interesting reading about some colonial times elections in Virginia while the US elections were going on for us. Some things haven't changed.
Science: I forgot to put this on the schedule also. :P
The Brute
Math: We did exercises 12 and 13, plus Mental Math 2 and 3. We are now adding and subtracting within 20 pretty well. My biggest challenge during math time is getting him to write numbers properly instead of big, scary numbers or numbers that are eating other numbers, etc. :)
Reading: We finished a whole page of Dancing Bears.
Writing: I started the WRTR word list this week, doing both print and cursive. The Brute sits at his desk with his lap size white board, and I write the words on the board and have him read and copy them in manuscript and then cursive. This is NOT how Spalding is supposed to be done, btw. So don't copy this and think it's Spalding. ;)
Other: We finished P4/5 week 12.
And we have bad news about our pet "Astronaut"... When you see a caterpillar make an upside down 'V' like this, it's a virus:
He stayed up there for a couple days, then finally died, hanging on by only one pair of legs in the middle. Dr. Google said virus, and sure enough, he didn't make it. :(
I still need to move some leaves around to see if Flower is still alive. I'm hoping he's in chrysalis form now.
Mischief
Tornado Boy worked with Mischief a few days this week, using a variety of preschool to first grade workbooks, including The Brute's Singapore 1A (no, Mischief is not actually ready for 1A :P ). He also joined in on The Brute's WRTR lesson, reading those words.
And the funny for the week... Thursday, Mischief came out saying, "Ok, I have my clothes on!" My reply was, "I wasn't planning to rob anyone's house today..."
He did change again before taking The Brute to speech therapy that day:
And later, I found another hat (or toque, for the Canadians) and put it on Tornado Boy, who was complaining that he was cold:
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| The Brute and Mischief helping Daddy put shelves together |
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| All moved in! |
The white shelves separate the "school area" from the "toy area". I wasn't sure how well that would work, but so far, it has been fine. Library books are on the back side of the shelving unit also, so sometimes the kid that isn't doing school can be back there reading. In fact, one day, Mischief was reading so quietly there that I forget he was back there! :)
Tornado Boy
Math: We did Exercises 3-7 in the decimals unit. They were pretty easy, but it was good to practice those concepts a bit. We also did 2 pages per day of CWP5. This week was Fractions, and those problems were mostly easy for Tornado Boy. He loves fraction word problems!
Reading: He finished reading The Matchlock Gun.
Grammar: We did 3 lessons in R&S English 4, including action verbs with and without direct objects and learning about predicate nouns. These are all review topics for Tornado Boy, but it had been a while since he diagrammed, and he likes diagramming. :)
Writing: I had intended to do IEW this week, but when I made the schedule, I forgot to put it on there, and I had already messed up the first printing of the schedule and reprinted once, so I decided to let it go one more week. We'll do the rewrite of the Princess and the Pea the next two weeks before our Thanksgiving break. I did not replace the writing this week, but I did have him do the exercises in R&S that included writing a couple original sentences based on a picture. He had those in two of the lessons and did them with ease, with all words spelled correctly! Hooray!
Spelling: We finished week 29 of R&S Spelling 3. 100% on the test. I had forgotten to test week 28, but I gave him one of the harder words from that list, and he got it correct also. Next week is a review lesson.
Latin: We did 2 lessons this week - tabula and aqua.
Vocab and Poetry: Just here for placeholders in case we ever get back to them. :P
Read-Aloud: We finished the 5th story in I, Robot and started the 6th.
Bible: Continued harmonizing the gospels. Our daily reading schedule has dates, and we finished September this week. Ha! We're a bit behind, but that's ok. I'm not in a hurry. We just plug along at our pace. :) We also read Proverbs each day.
History: We read a lot about the House of Burgesses and the Virginia Aristocracy this week in the Landmark book. It was interesting reading about some colonial times elections in Virginia while the US elections were going on for us. Some things haven't changed.
Science: I forgot to put this on the schedule also. :P
The Brute
Math: We did exercises 12 and 13, plus Mental Math 2 and 3. We are now adding and subtracting within 20 pretty well. My biggest challenge during math time is getting him to write numbers properly instead of big, scary numbers or numbers that are eating other numbers, etc. :)
Reading: We finished a whole page of Dancing Bears.
Writing: I started the WRTR word list this week, doing both print and cursive. The Brute sits at his desk with his lap size white board, and I write the words on the board and have him read and copy them in manuscript and then cursive. This is NOT how Spalding is supposed to be done, btw. So don't copy this and think it's Spalding. ;)
Other: We finished P4/5 week 12.
And we have bad news about our pet "Astronaut"... When you see a caterpillar make an upside down 'V' like this, it's a virus:
I still need to move some leaves around to see if Flower is still alive. I'm hoping he's in chrysalis form now.
Mischief
Tornado Boy worked with Mischief a few days this week, using a variety of preschool to first grade workbooks, including The Brute's Singapore 1A (no, Mischief is not actually ready for 1A :P ). He also joined in on The Brute's WRTR lesson, reading those words.
And the funny for the week... Thursday, Mischief came out saying, "Ok, I have my clothes on!" My reply was, "I wasn't planning to rob anyone's house today..."
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| Doing school work so they don't have to have a life of crime... |
Saturday, November 3, 2012
Weekly Report - Year 3 Week 15
To contrast with last week, we hardly did anything this week. :) I've
been busy cleaning house and planning for a big birthday party. We do a
large party for 6th birthdays, and The Brute turned 6 on Thursday! So
several families came over for a cookout Saturday, and I had to do
errands two days this week, with cleaning the other days.
So...
Tornado Boy
Math: We did the first 2 exercises of Singapore 5B, and we also did all of the non-challenge problems in the first unit of CWP5, working them together at the white board. We'll do the challenge problems next week!
Read-Aloud: We finished The Witch of Blackbird Pond Friday, and we also finished the 3rd chapter of I, Robot - Reason and the 4th chapter - Catch That Rabbit.
The Brute and Mischief
No school work, but we did find another caterpillar in the flower bed, sitting on a piece of drift wood. It's an American Dagger Moth. I read that they eat maple leaves, so I stuck some in the habitat and caught him. He's doing well, and he's been climbing all over the sticks and leaves, chomping loudly on the leaves. Mischief named him Astronaut. Our other caterpillar, Flower (named by The Brute), is likely in chrysalis form now. I'm not completely sure. I know where he is, under some leaves, and I have seen some web-like stuff down there, so I'm hoping that's what he's doing. :)
So...
Tornado Boy
Math: We did the first 2 exercises of Singapore 5B, and we also did all of the non-challenge problems in the first unit of CWP5, working them together at the white board. We'll do the challenge problems next week!
Read-Aloud: We finished The Witch of Blackbird Pond Friday, and we also finished the 3rd chapter of I, Robot - Reason and the 4th chapter - Catch That Rabbit.
The Brute and Mischief
No school work, but we did find another caterpillar in the flower bed, sitting on a piece of drift wood. It's an American Dagger Moth. I read that they eat maple leaves, so I stuck some in the habitat and caught him. He's doing well, and he's been climbing all over the sticks and leaves, chomping loudly on the leaves. Mischief named him Astronaut. Our other caterpillar, Flower (named by The Brute), is likely in chrysalis form now. I'm not completely sure. I know where he is, under some leaves, and I have seen some web-like stuff down there, so I'm hoping that's what he's doing. :)
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