Weekly Report - Week 13

Maybe these are bi-weekly reports, but I'm still doing separate posts for each week! :)

Week 13 (a week ago from date of posting) went very well. Since we half-schooled through our break, it was easy to get back up to speed afterward.

Originally, DH was going to take the big boys to the zoo and stay overnight at a hotel, but we had a lot of severe weather that day, so the trip has been postponed. We still finished up school by Thursday though.

Tornado Boy

Math: We started chapter 4 of MM 2A, learning addition with regrouping. I was surprised that when I explained it, he immediately understood the place value part of it. When adding the numbers in the 10s column (including the "carried" 1), he gave an answer in the 10s, not ones (ie, "80", not "8"). That showed me that he understood what was going on. Nifty! He enjoyed learning this, and he was able to extend the knowledge to bigger numbers. On day 2 of learning this, I had him add 2 5-digit numbers together. He did it just fine. :)

Reading: Still plugging through The Trumpet of the Swan.

Grammar: We started FLL2 this week. We are taking it at regular pace and doing the copywork and such involved. This week we reviewed nouns and pronouns, and started memorizing the poem "The Goops", which Tornado Boy likes.

Writing: Someone slap me when I say I'm going to double up on writing for no reason, ok? I changed back to one week = one week. No reason to get ahead. Afterall, we'll end up starting WWE2 in October, I believe, and that will still put us ending it before we started 3rd grade. It's all good. We school year round. I don't know what I was thinking last week. So... we did week 15... just week 15. :) This week's passages were from The Railway Children.

Spelling: We're at a spot where we're doing one step per day at this point. The "new concepts" are fairly basic phonics, so we can breeze through them. We did steps 11-14 this week, learning blends with vowel-consonant-e ("prize"), plural vowel-consonant-e words ("stones"), the vowel teem "ee" ("feet"), and I or O followed by 2 consonants ("find").

Read-Aloud: Still plugging through Misty of Chincoteague. Phantom and Misty are in the pony pens, and a storm is coming!

Bible: In the morning, we've been reading about King Saul and his pursuit of David. I still haven't checked his workbook work. He's been reading it on his own.

History: We studied the Assyrians this week. We learned about how Ashurbanipal used siege towers against other cities and also how he created a library at Nineveh. We built a Lego siege tower.

Science: We began our study of wolves this week, reading some library books on wolves (during his free time).

Art: One of these days, we will get to art... really...

The Brute

Reading: Lots of progress here! I pulled out OPGTR and started using that to give us some sentences to read on the white board. I'm mixing it with Webster's Speller. This week, we just did sentences from OPGTR. It went very well. He has to sound out each word, but then he can go back and read the sentence without sounding out.

Math: No math this week.

Weekly Report - Break 2

This is our second break, though we didn't really take a break... We kept going with math, grammar, writing, history, and half of reading. It was at least a slightly easier week though!

We took a "field trip" this week to a local mountain. I had an aunt and two uncles in town, so I visited with them at my parents' house one day. We all went to this mountain to walk the trails that go around a lake. It was very nice! The kids had a blast. Tornado Boy led the way, pointing out which direction we should go, and warning people of danger (we'd had a lot of rain the day before, so some of the trails were still under water, and the lake was a bit flooded).

Tornado Boy

Math: We did the review section of chapter 3, the cumulative review, and the chapter test. During the cumulative review, it had some things like finding the number of hours between 9am and 1pm. He put 4. The next one was finding the hours between 6am and 8pm. He couldn't quite remember how to do this one, so I asked him how he did the previous one. He said "The 1 is like a 13, so I added 9 + __ = 13!" Ok... We've never talked about military time before, but that's a great way to do it! So I said "Well, if 1 is 13, what is 8?", and he said "20!" and quickly did the rest of the problems. That's not how MM taught them, but oh well. A little birdie has told me that his weird math thinking is just like my older sister, and he really is the male version of her in many ways. :)

We did the first section of chapter 4 - adding with whole tens as one of the numbers, and also rounding.

Reading: Still plugging away at Trumpet of the Swan. I had him tell his Daddy some about what he was reading tonight. He definitely comprehends it!

Grammar: We finished FLL1! Now we'll do FLL2 starting Monday, and I'll plan on taking it regular pace.

Writing: I've decided to speed up WWE for just a short time, so we'll be ready to start the next book in August for the next school year. No real pressing reason to do that. I just like order, and I don't think it will be a problem. So for the next 6 weeks, we'll do 2 days in 1 day, then after that we'll go regular pace. We did weeks 13 and 14 this week, and he did very well. Actually, I figured out that he needed to be raised up a bit so he wouldn't be so far below the table. THAT has helped his writing stamina immensely! He didn't complain at all about doubling up the days, even the day that he had to do copywork and then narration with copywork.

Handwriting: We went over his letters for his copywork in WWE. He's getting better at deciding why a letter is good or not good, and that is carrying over to writing them a bit neater. I was pleased with his handwriting this week.

Spelling: We took the week off from this.

Read-Aloud: I wasn't able to read Misty of Chincoteague this week. I have had a cold and lost my voice. I'm finally getting it back enough to read out loud a little bit!

Bible: I didn't have him working in his workbook this week, but I think he did some lessons anyway... He may have done 2 weeks' worth. I need to check. I have no clue what he learned about if he did them. :P

In our morning readings, we annointed David as the next king, David became a harpest for King Saul, David killed Goliath, and David and Jonathan became friends. Also, Saul is now jealous of David since the women were singing that Saul had killed thousands and David had killed tens of thousands. Saul tried to kill David with a spear twice while David played harp for him.

History: This was our first week of SOTW+AG instead of using Biblioplan (see last week's history discussion). It went sooooo well! I made schedule sheets for the next 10 chapters, and I also made narration pages for those chapters, complete with pictures! They look great! I put the map instructions on the schedule sheet. Tornado Boy was able to look at the instruction sheet and see exactly what he needed to do, and he was able to do some of it independently. I put the Usborne Internet-Linked Encyclopedia of World History (UILE) in the schedule - something we only did the first couple weeks of Biblioplan. Previously, I had read it out loud, and his eyes had glazed over. This time, I said "You can read it yourself." So he took the book and read the two pages, looked at the pictures, studied it all, then proceeded to read through a few more pages! He actually LIKES the book when he's reading it himself! Go figure! So UILE is back in the schedule, giving us some extra information. :) I had put some books on hold from the library, but only one came in. We're still waiting for the other one. Next week should be better, since I put books on hold for the next couple weeks at the same time as this week's books (which was late for this week). For all 10 chapters I set up, I found which books my library has, so I can put them on hold easily.

Our topic this week was the Phoenicians. They started out in northern Canaan, but gradually added cities around the Mediterranean, as they were good sea traders. They didn't have appropriate land for growing a lot of food, but they did have cedar trees that made nice furniture, and they also had some type of snail like thing to make purple dye out of. We narrated both sections of the chapter - something we haven't gotten in in a long time. We also made Phoenician bread today! It was good. :) Tornado Boy did the map work independently, which he also liked. Oh, and I gave him a coloring page of the Phoenician ship... He doesn't like to color, but he did get excited and ask to draw on the back. He drew another Phoenician ship and a Persian ship. Both had flags, stairs, and people. The Phoenician ship was sinking the Persian ship, and the Persian flag fell on someone and killed him. Boys are fun. :P

Science: We didn't do any science this week. I didn't plan BFSU like I'd wanted to. Oops. In my defense, I've been sick!

Art: Nothing, unless you count the drawing of the ships. :)

The Brute

We didn't do anything with The Brute this week. He asked. I said no. I was trying to take it easy, since this WAS our break!

Weekly Report - Week 12

This week went pretty well. I made a decision to change some things in history that will probably make us a bit more relaxed.

Tornado Boy

Math: We are almost done with chapter 3! We did sums of 13, 14, 15, 16, and 17 this week. It was a lot of fact practice. She also threw in some <,>,= stuff using fractions (1/2 only), which was pretty neat. I especially liked one of the word problems this week:

A baby slept 4 hours and woke up to nurse. Then she slept another 2 hours and woke up to nurse. Then she slept another 3 hours more and nursed again. Then she slept 3 hours till the morning.

How many hours did the baby sleep?

We just have to do some review, cumulative review, and a chapter test and we'll be done with chapter 3!

At the beginning of the week, I had talked to Tornado Boy about showing his work on word problems. He is doing that pretty regularly now, although he still comes up with the answer, then tries to figure out how to write how he got that answer. It's amusing, to the say the least.

Reading: Still plugging through The Trumpet of the Swan. This is not his favorite book, so he's just reading 1 chapter at a time. I might assign 2 chapters at a time next week.

Grammar: We finished through lesson 75 this week. We've been doing 5 lessons a day. Tornado Boy is definitely ready for FLL2. We'll finish up FLL1 next week and then get started in 2!

Writing: The passages this week were from the song "Today is Monday" (I'd love to get music to that? I haven't heard the song before, so I just had to read it like a poem) and "Old Mother Hubbard".

Handwriting: I made some copywork to go with FLL1 this week, but no extra copywork was given. Though I did tell him Friday (April 1) that I had a paragraph of copywork for him to do that day... April Fool's! :)

Spelling: We did steps 9 and 10 this week. They were pretty simple.

Read-Aloud: Still reading Misty of Chincoteague. The ponies have just swum across to Chincoteague on Pony Penning Day. Paul jumped into the water to help Misty swim across.

Bible: The kingdom was divided this week, and we discussed the kings of Judah.

History: Ah, history. My initial goal for ancients was to mix the Biblical history into the rest of history and see where it all fits together. I used Biblioplan because I thought it would do this. Well, it doesn't really merge the two together. It just gives you more of a reading plan of "Read this chapter in SOTW and these chapters in the Bible," without ever connecting the two in any way. Right now, we're in a section where the Bible readings are a LOT, and we were getting behind in SOTW while trying to catch up on Bible readings. Finally, I decided to stop trying. We will continue to read through the Bible from where we are, and continue to read through SOTW from where we are. We won't worry about making the connections between the two, because those connections aren't being made anyway. Next time through ancients, I'll pick a resource that does a better job of connecting the two, and Tornado Boy will be old enough to make those connections better anyway (5th grade).

So now I'm going through the SOTW AG and planning it out. I don't have much use for Biblioplan now, since the K-2 readers are usually not available in my library anyway. I might as well just use the SOTW AG. I also keep going back and forth on what to do for history next year, and finally decided to go with SOTW2+AG, and this will give me some practice using it in that manner. I think by going through the Bible slower and going through SOTW at a normal pace again, I can get more narrations in for history, and ask more Bible questions (the Egermeier's Bible Story book has good leading questions in the back, so if we read just ONE story a day, we can ask those questions and discuss the story more).

Back to what we did this week... We discussed Ancient Africa and learned some Anansi the Spider stories. Those were great! Our favorite was the one about Anansi and the Make Believe Food. He keeps going to different villages and finding food walking around (such as plantains), and then the food comes up and wants him to eat them. They'll say "Do you want us boiled, roasted, or fried?" and they get really excited when he makes his choice and they all hop in the pan to get cooked, then line up to get eaten. But then Anansi sees another village and decides to check that out before eating, and each time, the food is something he likes better and better. I won't give away the ending of the story, but it does have a good moral. :) I was cracking up when reading the food ask if he wanted them boiled, roasted, or fried. Tornado Boy really liked this story too.

In our story Bible, we got through Saul becoming king and disobeying God. David will be anointed soon.

Science: I had intentions of doing multiple BFSU lessons this week. That didn't happen, as I never planned more than one. We DID do one lesson though - Air is a Substance. It was a good lesson, and Tornado Boy learned some things from it (like that air is a substance and not just "nothing"). He got to play in the kitchen sink with an empty water bottle, putting it in upside down and seeing that the water doesn't go in the bottle. Then we poked a hole in the bottle and watched the water go in no problem. We also discussed balloons, but didn't have one to demonstrate with, so we pretended we had balloons. Gotta love those pretend science experiments. :)

Art: Once again, slacker mom. We'll try to get this in next time!

The Brute

Math: We did a couple pages in Rod & Staff's preschool workbook Counting With Numbers. Our lesson involved determining which number was less, and then we worked on finding the number that comes next, the number between two numbers, and the number that comes before a number. That last one was the hardest and made his little 4 year old brain work. It was amusing. he was able to do it, and at the end, he wanted to do another page, and I said "Sweetheart, your brain just worked REALLY hard. We need to stop here." and he said "My brain didn't work hard!" Yes, dear, it did. It really truly did.

Reading: We only did one lesson this week, but tried some blends! First we tried BLA BLE BLI BLO BLU BLY. NOT ready for that one. He just can't say it! So I tried BRA BRE BRI BRO BRU BRY. He could say that, with some hard work. I think the syllabary will be good for getting blends into his speech! That is something he struggles with, and it is age appropriate that he can't say them yet, though many of them he CAN say. He clearly can't say the BL blend yet, so we're skipping that for now. He could say BR, so we'll keep going with that type. We also did some 2 letter syllables as usual, which he did great with. Things are really coming along!

Weekly Report - Week 11

Posting this a week late, but we had a great week!

Tornado Boy

Math: We worked on adding 6 and 7, reviewed subtracting to 10, and started facts with 11 and 12. He likes the number rainbows used. :)

Reading: We started the week with My Father's Dragon. That took all of 2 days to read, so we continued the week with The Trumpet of the Swan. That one's not going quite as fast. I asked him to tell me about the first book, and he gave some good details. He clearly liked the book. I need to put the next one in that series on hold.

Grammar: I asked Tornado Boy if he'd like to do one lesson of FLL1 3 days a week or do a bunch per day to speed it up and move on into FLL2. He chose the second option (which I was leaning toward anyway). FLL1 is pretty easy for him, but there are some things in there that I want him to get more practice with, so we're going quickly through the lessons that he already knows. We got halfway through the book this week.

Writing: The passages this week were from The Trumpet of the Swan. Perfect! :)

Handwriting: No extra copywork this week.

Spelling: We did steps 7 and 8 this week. Sentence dictation is going very well. I am actually surprised at how long a sentence he can hold in his head without me repeating it. We won't be doing dictation in WWE until next year, but I feel a lot better about it now!


Read-Aloud: We started reading Misty of Chincoteague this week. The boys are enjoying it, and so am I, as I haven't read this in a long time.

Bible: We talked about King Solomon this week. He asked God to make him wise, and God did so. Solomon built the temple (which David had not been allowed to do). Solomon eventually strayed from God. Recurring theme.

History: We learned about the first cities of India, Ancient China, and the Israelites finally entering Canaan. We finally had one of the K-2 readers available from Biblioplan's recommendations: One Grain of Rice: A Mathematical Folktale. This is the story of the grain of rice that keeps getting doubled. Tornado Boy, being a math geek, really liked this story. I thought he would. :)

Science: We finished up our study of horses this week, with a lot of hands on discussion!

Art: No art this week. Slacker mom.

The Brute

Math: We got through Rightstart A lesson 10, but I'm really not feeling the Rightstart love. I naturally think the "Asian way" of math as taught in Singapore, Math Mammoth, etc., and I know Rightstart eventually does this too, but the visualization of numbers stuff... it's just not what I want to teach first. I'm going to get the Singapore Essential Math K books to use instead, but we'll still use the RS manipulatives and learn how to use the abacus. The RS lessons are just too scattered for me anyway. It changes topics all the time and just doesn't make any sense to me!

Reading: We did great this week!!! We have done most of the 2-letter long vowel syllables and some of the 2-letter short vowel syllables. We also completed the first row of CVC words. The syllabary is excellent for teaching reading! The Brute still asks for lessons, and he copies the letters that I write. He is now at the point of reading where he sounds something out once and then says it. He's not ready to read books yet, but that will come.

Wordless Wednesday: Happy 4 Year Old Learning to Read

Weekly Report - Week 10

Tornado Boy had a field trip this week to "Let's Pretend Hospital" at the local nursing school. He had a good time, and now the boys play hospital and check for broken legs using a football as an x-ray machine. :) With the field trip, a new horse, and The Brute wanting to do school more often this week, we didn't get quite as much done as usual, but that's ok. We're not behind, so it doesn't matter!

Tornado Boy

Math: In math this week, we started Chapter 3 of MM 2A. It began with a review of making 10s to add across a 10. As I was going over the example, I said "You remember doing this a few weeks ago, right?" and he said "No." LOL. Life with a first grade boy. It's a good thing MM has review built in! So we did the review, and he did just fine doing everything. It all quickly came back. Though I have to wonder how his mental math worked... At one point, he said "8 + 7 is 12 + 3, so that's 15!" Um... yes, but that's not the easiest method... Whatever works though, right? :)

Reading: We finished Charlotte's Web! He read 3 chapters Friday, of his own choosing, so he could finish the book! We plan to start My Father's Dragon next week. I'll probably have him do 2 chapters at a time.

Grammar: We have continued in FLL1, doing 3 lessons per day up through Thursday, then we had completely gotten in sync with WWE, so next week we'll start doing 1 lesson 3 days a week, to be in sync with WWE and also to start FLL2 and WWE2 at the same time next year. FLL lessons are easy to get through, but he's also learning things, so it's all good. We're almost through the noun stuff (which can be tedious, but it's easy to go through it quickly if the child already understands it). I love the picture study, which we haven't done before. The story narrations have been great too - having a full story to read instead of just a passage.

Writing: The topic in WWE this week was Davy Crockett. Tornado Boy did well with his copywork and narrations. We did not do day 4 yet, since I had him narrate and do copywork in science instead. Normally I'd do both, but we were trying to get caught up in other subjects due to a field trip this week, so I let it slide. We'll do it eventually. :)

Handwriting: He had to do copywork of "I will pay attention to my work." earlier in the week... 2 sentences. You can guess why. :P

Spelling: We've mostly played with Webster's Speller this week, though we finished step 6 of AAS, doing the dictation phrases and sentences (about 4 or 5 throughout the week). We'll do step 7 next week and continue in Webster's.

Read-Aloud: We finished James Herriot's Treasury for Children. That is an excellent book. I have a couple choices for next week ready to go.

Bible: We learned about King David today, brief overview really. King David in one lesson isn't going very deep. :) I'm sure we'll go deeper as we get to that section in history later.

History: The Israelites left Egypt and are wandering through the wilderness, complaining about every little thing along the way. Moses gets the Ten Commandments, ends up breaking the first set out of anger since the people had built a golden calf to worship, and then he goes back and gets a second set. It's amazing to see history repeat itself over and over again in such a short timeframe, and yet it still happens even today!

Science: We've been studying horses this week, since we just got our horse Saturday. The boys have been having so much fun learning how to feed and take care of him!

Final investigating Wanagi (goat guardian dog)

As mentioned above, instead of doing day four of WWE this week, I made a narration and copywork from Apologia Zoology 3, the section on the horse's senses. I then had him draw a picture of a horse being aware of something in his surroundings. This idea first brought tears, but after some talking, he liked the idea. He was mostly afraid that he couldn't draw a horse, but then I reminded him that he's drawn a horse before in art. I even offered to let him look at that picture while he drew, and that made him feel a bit better. Then I suggested that maybe he could draw the horse being aware of Darth Vader. That brought a smile and started the brain working again! He decided to draw General Grievous riding the horse. I'm sure the horse would certainly be aware of him!

Art: No art this week, except the above science drawing... and lots of Playdough.

The Brute

Math: We did RS A lessons 5 and 6 this week. The Brute was really into school this week!!! He had no problems with these lessons, except trying to say "quadrilateral". :) He is in speech therapy, so I was impressed with his attempts!

Reading: All I can say here is WOW... We've continued with Webster's Speller this week and had great success! We did several rows - D's, F's, H's, M's, N's, and R's, plus we did AB EB IB OB UB. When we did the H's, he would see HA and say "/h/... /ay/... /bay/. No. /h/... /ay/... /bay/. No." It was really quite cute the way he said no so quickly after saying /bay/. He did figure out the correct syllable. Friday, he had no problem with the syllables we did. We went through N's and R's just sounding out once and saying the syllable immediately. I was impressed! We also did the short letters ending in B, as written above. He didn't have any problem going from long vowel sound to short vowel sound. Woohoo! His blending was great. Again, he just sounded it out once, then said the syllable right away. No repeating the sounding out a million times. So great progress here! He has also been writing letters on the white board as we do these lessons. He loves to write letters. He is very good at copying the way I write the letters. He has almost all of them down pat except the ones with sharp angles, like M, N, V, W. He makes them too rounded. We tried doing some horizontal zig-zag patterns across the white board to practice, but he had a hard time not making them curvy. He can draw straight lines just fine. It's just the angle that throws him. But that's ok, we'll get there! He's doing great for his age and stage. He already writes his letters better than Tornado Boy did at 5. :P

Wordless Wednesday: The Brute's First Syllable