Weekly Report - Year 2 Week 7

Last week I didn't update, but we were on break anyway. I got the boys' rooms cleaned up, and they've kept them clean since then - yay! This week we got back into school with a new schedule, and it went well!

Tornado Boy

Math: We are almost finished with multiplication in parts (2 or 3-digit times 1-digit). Next we do fractions, and then we'll be done with MM3B! We've also worked in IP 2B and CWP3 this week, doing addition/subtraction in both. Keeps it fresh! Tornado Boy is also doing XtraMath.org daily to work on memorizing his facts. He's pretty good with his addition/subtraction and is getting better at entering them quickly on the computer. Once he masters those, he'll work on mastering multiplication/division, which he's not very quick with yet (though he knows most of them - still has to skip count to find a few here and there). Luckily, MM4A starts out with addition/subtraction, and long division is in 4B, so we should have the facts memorized well by time we hit long division.

Reading: We did Charlie and the Chocolate Factory this week. He was supposed to read 3 chapters per day, making it 15 chapters for the week. He read ahead some days, so he's on chapter 22 instead. :) We discussed last week how boring the book would be if Charlie didn't find the golden ticket.

Grammar: We started FLL3 this week! The first lesson was on parts of the book (title, author, TOC), the next lesson was reviewing nouns, and the 3rd lesson was making plurals for simple words. I told him going in that the first week would be super easy. It was. He seemed to like it pretty well though. Not too much writing, and the lessons were short.

Writing: We started WWE2 this week! He did great. I typed up his narrations instead of writing them, so that is helping immensely. His dictation both days went great. I'm so proud of him! There were some new words in his first dictation that we haven't gotten to in spelling, so I helped him with those during the dictation, but he didn't freak out or get upset. Phew! Thank you AAS for getting him used to dictation with words he was confident with! :) His second dictation was one sentence of his last narration, and that also went well. I just gave him part of the sentence, because he tends to give me good length sentences. His first sentence was "The Fox played a trick on the Stork, and the Stork did the same to the Fox." I gave him "The Fox played a trick on the Stork." as his dictation sentence. It's a good length for non-spelling word dictation at this point, and we haven't gone into comma usage in a sentence like that.

Handwriting: We started really working cursive this week, and it's in the HST+ schedule, so I can't skip it. :P I'm making my own cursive sheets. We started with a couple letters, one on each line. He traces 3 of them, then writes one of his own, then traces one, then writes one, then traces one, then writes one or more. I also did some simple 2-3 letter words with joins. So each sheet is done over 2 days - the first day working on letters, and the second day working on a word. So for example, we did 'a', 'n', then the word "an". We've gotten some really nice letters this week, and I'm very pleased with his progress!

Spelling: We are now doing spelling only 2 days a week for the moment, so we just did one step this week - Step 19 of level 3. We did a word sort on the words with an /ee/ sound (spelled 'e', 'e-e', 'ee', 'ea', or 'y'). We also dictated 3 sentences.

Read-Aloud: No read-aloud this week. Mischief has not tolerated bed time books lately. :/

Bible: We learned about Daniel interpreting King Nebuchadnezzar's dream, the fiery furnace, Nebuchadnezzar losing his mind, the handwriting on the wall, and Daniel and the lion's den.

History: This week we studied ancient China, including the origin of the country's name and the building of the Great Wall of China. Very interesting!

Science: This week we learned about birds and mammals. No activities.

Art: WE DID ART! TWICE! Can you believe it? I still can't. We did both of the lessons I had planned. I changed the order, but we did both. I'm so happy! Of course, Tornado Boy says "I love art!" :P

Top one is Tornado Boy's, Bottom one is Mama's

Tornado Boy - tornado, telephone poles, cars, road, secrete language, lightening

The Brute

Mama

 

Both of these lessons came from Evan-Moor's How to Teach Art to Children. Great little book! We're learning to use lines, curves, and angles.

Spanish: We got about halfway through Chapter 1 Part B of R.E.A.L. Homeschool Spanish. We are working on more basic conversation (how are you type things).

The Brute

Math: The Brute finished his first math book this week! We're now moving on to Book B of Singapore Essential Math K. We have done a few lessons so far. I expect this book to take us all year.

Reading: We worked on some words in Word Mastery this week, and he did very well. We also read one Bob book.

Weekly Report - Year 2 Weeks 3-6

Apparently, I was a slacker the last 4 weeks! Whoops!

Well, we've gotten a lot done... except in art. One day we'll get back to that. We've done a lot in other areas though, and Tornado Boy is happy. :) Let's see what I can recap (thanks to HST+ telling me what we've done!)...

Tornado Boy

Math: We've finished up through chapter 9 of MM3B - Division. The last 2 chapters are multiplication in parts (eg, 23 x 7) and fractions. He LOVES fractions, so I can't wait to do that chapter! I've set up the lesson plan in HST+ for MM4, and I printed out 4A so far, so we're ready to go with that around mid-September. I also scheduled out Singapore IP 2B and 3A, plus Singapore CWP 3. I'm going to try to do one of those each day.

I started having Tornado Boy do a program on the computer called XtraMath.org. It's free, and it basically drills them on math facts. I set him up to do all 4 operations, so a week later, he's still in the initial assessment phase. His addition score was 35, subtraction score was 43, and multiplication is not quite done yet. Then he'll do division. Once he's done with the assessments, he'll start practicing each one daily. It will show a fact, and they have to type it within 3 seconds to achieve mastery. If they type it within 10 seconds, they get a check mark. If they get it wrong, they have to type the correct answer. So the scores above are "mastery" within 3 seconds. He did better on subtraction because he had gotten used to where the numbers are on the keyboard by that point. :) I expect his multiplication score will be low, as he hasn't been doing multiplication tables long enough to have them all mastered. He can figure them out, but doesn't have every one memorized. He has his addition/subtraction facts all memorized, but typing them in 3 seconds is harder. He seems to enjoy the program, and I think it will be good for him to get his multiplication and division facts down pat before we hit long division in MM4B.

Reading: He finished Detectives in Togas a couple weeks ago, and started Mr. Popper's Penguins. That is such a fun book! He especially liked the chapter where they made an ice rink in their living room. That was my favorite chapter too. :) I think he has one or two chapters left to read because we didn't do reading Friday. I'll have him read it sometime during our break this week. I think we'll do Charlie and the Chocolate Factory next.

Grammar: We have almost completed unit 1 in R&S English 3, and me being the curriculum hopper that I apparently am... I've decided to switch to First Language Lessons 3. It will be here tomorrow. :) I think Tornado Boy will enjoy it more. He loves the poems and such, plus the diagramming gets more in-depth than R&S 3. He is his mother's child - loves diagramming. And even better, FLL3 has the diagrams already drawn for him!

Writing: We finished Writing With Ease 1!!! I was originally thinking I'd do WWE2 from the text (choosing our own passages), but I chickened out at the last minute and ordered it - thank you Amazon Prime. :P So that is entered into HST+ and we will begin it next Monday. I'm not sure how dictation will go... I might have to have a pep talk with him before we begin. He's used to doing dictation with spelling words, but some of these words he won't know how to spell already, though he will be doing them as copywork the day before. I'll just be sure to point out the spellings so he'll study them a bit and remember them. I can help him with spelling during the dictation, so it shouldn't be TOO bad... I hope. :) He's ready for the narrations totally, so I'm excited to get to that - pulling the main idea out of the story.

Handwriting: We've really slacked off on this, but last week I made my own cursive sheets in Startwrite and tried them out. I actually made one version for Tornado Boy and one version for The Brute. :) The Brute isn't quite ready for pencil writing though. He's still pretty wobbly with it, though he has beautiful numbers with crayon. I need to do the sand/salt/shaving cream stuff with him. Anyway, back to Tornado Boy... He did very well with the cursive. I had him tracing light, solid lines, and then there was space to write it himself. We kept it simple... 'a', 'm', 'n', 'an', 'man'. I actually took this from Word Mastery, which is a learning-to-read program from many years ago, but I thought it might be fun to use it for cursive, and that way The Brute can join in as it progresses through the phonics. Fun, eh?

I still need to put my lessons into HST+, so I can officially make them on the schedule. If they're on the schedule, it will get done. I just hadn't been scheduling handwriting, so it wasn't getting done.

Spelling: We got through whatever step gets into words with /ee/ spelled "ea". Spelling continues to go well. He's very good at remembering rules and rule breakers.

Read-Aloud: We've read some Aesop's Fables and some fairy tales from Lang's Blue Fairy Book.

Bible: We just finished learning about Jeremiah. Tornado Boy has decided to read ahead, as usual. I don't know where he is in the book.

History: We've learned about the rise of Rome, the Roman Gladiators, the Punic Wars, the Indian caste system, and Siddhartha.

Science: Slackers that we are... We finally made bird feeders per our next science lesson. We took toilet paper rolls, spread peanut butter on them, rolled them in bird seed, and hung them (with dental floss) from trees. We're supposed to be watching the birds at our feeders. Ha! I haven't seen a single bird anywhere near the feeders. Oh well. We'll just need to observe birds everywhere else.

Art: No art the last 4 weeks... Oops.

Spanish: We finished Unit 1 Part A, but haven't gotten around to Part B yet. We'll pick that back up next week.

The Brute

Math: We're getting close to finishing book A of his Singapore Essential Math K! I also had him play with some Cuisenaire Rods a bit last week. I printed out a Cuisenaire Discovery Book, and he got to build some creatures with rods, so that was fun. Tornado Boy likes playing the games in the book too (despite it being a PRESCHOOL book :P ).

Reading: We read the 5th Bob book in set 1, and are almost done with lesson 2 in ETC1. He's really been in more of a math mood recently, so that's what we've done. At church, he likes me to point out words in the songs as we sing, so he may be getting closer to making a leap in reading. We'll see. ETC is definitely helping him get a little faster with reading the words instead of sounding them all out, but we are probably sounding out 90% of the words still. That's ok. It will come. :)

Weekly report - Year 2 Week 2

Second week of school was much more normal! We're getting back in the groove. I've added in everything except handwriting, only because I completely forgot about it. :P

Oh, and it was someone's birthday... Tornado Boy turned 7 on Monday!!!

Tornado Boy

Math: Continued with multiplication facts, doing tables of 6, 11, 9, 7, and 8. We also did almost an entire fraction chapter in Primary Challenge Math. Love that book! We're almost done with the multiplication chapter in 3A. Then we'll move on to division! Strangely, Tornado Boy seems to be better at the missing factor problems than the regular multiplication problems. If you ask him __ x 3 = 24, he'll immediately say 8, but if you ask him 8 x 3, he might have to think. Most facts he pretty well has memorized though. He just needs time using them to get them solid, and I think he'll easily do that in the 3B chapters of MM. I'll also pull out the RS card games for multiplication.

Reading: Continued Detectives in Togas. He is enjoying the book.

Grammar: This week we learned to diagram! I love diagramming! When I showed my son how to do compound subjects/predicates, he said, "Cool!" Big smile from Mom there! I guess he loves diagramming as much as I do. It is very mathematical, I think.

When doing a worksheet later this week, I wondered what the publishers of Rod & Staff would think of my son's sentences...

one simple subject, one simple predicate: A bomb exploded.
two simple subjects, one simple predicate: A tornado shelter and bunker are in my ship.
one simple subject, two simple predicates: I killed his people and destroyed his ship.

Love it. The last sentence is referring to his brother's ship (they had made ships out of the base-10 blocks, which we don't use for math, so might as well build with them!).

Writing: We did narrations on passages from The Tale of Benjamin Bunny and A Christmas Carol.

Handwriting: Again, forgot. I need to enter the lessons in HST+ so I will have it officially on the schedule. :P

Spelling: We started spelling back up this week. We did two steps in AAS level 3, and also did some syllable work and went over the Sight Word List 1 in How to Teach Spelling (HTTS). Of 30 sight words, Tornado Boy didn't know 7 of them. Not bad. We just went over those, studied them a bit, then "tested" on them. I'll go over them again next week. Not all of the list was really "sight words", as some were easy enough to phonetically spell (a, the, he, she, we, go...). Some were actual "rule breakers" though. He knew some of the ruler breakers from AAS. The others we just haven't gotten to yet in that program.

I'm basically planning to do half AAS and half HTTS for a bit to see how HTTS is. It has harder words and sentences, but AAS is easier to use and a bit more thorough, I think. Combining the two just makes sense to me at this point (since I own through level 4 of AAS). I'll reevaluate when we're done with level 4 whether I'll get levels 5 and 6 or just stick with HTTS. I'm likely to just finish AAS, since Tornado Boy enjoys it, and it holds my hand in teaching different strategies. HTTS is nice to have though, as I can add in harder words and sentences to move things along a bit.

Read-Aloud: Still reading Aesop's Fables, and I also read "The Bronze Ring" from Lang's Blue Fairy Book.

Bible: We continued to learn stories about Elisha this week, including Naaman's healing from leprosy by dipping in the Jordan River 7 times.

History: This week, we studied a bit about the ancient Americas. We learned about the Nazca drawings, which are pretty cool. Amazing that they did those drawings without being able to see what they looked like. We learned about the Olmecs and the huge head statues they built. We also learned about what North Americans ate in different regions (cold vs. warm) and the story "Rabbit Shoots the Sun".

Meanwhile, Tornado Boy picked up SOTW2 and read straight through the entire book in about 5 days! I decided I better go ahead and get 3 and 4. SOTW4 came yesterday, and 3 came today. He's read a bit in 4 about World War II (which he's interested in), and he's read in 3 about some of the states that used to be part of Mexico.

Reading SOTW4

Science: We did our "Leaping Lizards" activity this week. We stuck thermometers outside with lizards taped to them. The one in the shade ranged from 120-130F! It was next to the gravel driveway, and it was very sunny out, though I wasn't expecting a temp that high. The one in the shade was around 82F, which is to be expected. Clearly, the lizard in the shade was much happier and much more active. :)

Art: We never got around to doing art this week.

Spanish: New subject this week! I took part in the Homeschool Buyer's Co-op for R.E.A.L. Homeschool Spanish, which is a downloadable Spanish curriculum for the whole family. It includes PDF text, PDF activity book, and audio files for the text and the activity book. We started it Wednesday as soon as I downloaded it! We've learned this week how to do some simple greetings, ask how someone is, and ask someone's name. We'll spend next week learning the rest of the vocabulary for Unit 1 Part A. The boys have really enjoyed this. We take turns all having little canned conversations, and I try to use the phrases throughout the day for practice. We haven't tried the activity book yet. So far, I've just been writing vocabulary on the white board, going over what it means, then having conversations with the boys.

The Brute

Math: The Brute was in math mode this week. He did some pages in EM, but also pulled out the R&S Counting With Numbers book and did some in there as well. We also started a 100 chart, since he's been wanting to count to 100. he can get up to almost 30, skipping 14 and 15, so he's close. One day in the van, he had me count to 100, so I did. I then told him to do it. He then counted to 20, then said, "80, 90, ooooone hundred!" I told him he skipped a few numbers. He said, "I counted to 100 the short way!" This kid is going to be so much fun to teach...

Reading: We did about half of lesson 2 in ETC1, and we did some spelling at the white board one day when he asked to do it ("cat", "dog", and a few other words). He's quite a good speller so far!

Weekly Report - Year 2 Week 1

A little behind updating, so I'll do weeks 1 and 2 today. :)

We had a good start to our second grade year! Just a few little meltdowns early in the week, but all in all, not so bad. I'm so glad I only took 2 weeks off!!!!

Tornado Boy

Math: I had intended to go back and do chapter 1 of MM 3A, however Tornado Boy decided he wanted to do chapter 3, so I let him move on. We'll hit the materials in chapter 1 informally at the white board or something, I guess. This week, he learned the multiplication tables of 4, 5, 3, and 10, plus did a mid-chapter review page.

Reading: He started reading Detectives in Togas this week, which ties in nicely to the fact that we're about to get into ancient Roman history. I read this book out loud to the boys last summer, but they don't at all remember that, nor did they really understand it at that point, as they weren't used to read-alouds. Tornado Boy is enjoying the book and doing well with it. He just needs help remembering how to pronounce the Latin names. ;) We are not doing anything formal with the book. I sometimes informally ask him what happened in the chapter he just read, and he tells me some brief bit about it. I can see clearly that he comprehends what he is reading, so that's good! I was a little concerned, as the book is reading level 7.3!

Grammar: We started R&S English 3 this week, and it went very well! I'm doing textbook lessons 3 days per week, then doing worksheets the other 2 days. So far, this is working well, as there isn't a worksheet for every lesson. We are doing the oral reviews, then teaching the new lesson on the white board, then I assign some of the written work. I try to keep sentence writing to 2-3 at the most. So far, so good. This week, we learned how to use a dictionary, how to put words in alphabetical order, and reviewed what a sentence is (which thankfully, the grade 3 book only spends one lesson on this and then moves on - grade 2 spent a whole unit on this topic!).

Writing: Since we are doing some "copying" in English, and since Tornado Boy is ready to do the WWE2 level work, we are finishing WWE1 in the next 6 weeks by just doing the narrations each day and skipping the copywork days, so we do 2 WWE weeks in a physical week. This week, we did selections from The Happy Hollisters and Polyanna. I'm glad we have Happy Hollisters in the literature line-up for this year!

Handwriting: We didn't start handwriting this week.

Spelling: We didn't start spelling this week.

Read-Aloud: During our break, we began reading Aesop's Fables. We are continuing to read a couple pages per night at bedtime. The boys are enjoying these stories.

Bible: This week we learned about Naboth's Vineyard; Ahab's son Ahaziah becoming king, getting injured, and dying; Elijah going to heaven in a chariot of fire; and Elisha saving two boys from slavery. Let the Elijah/Elisha confusion begin! :)

History: We learned about Alexander the Great this week.

Science: This week we did an experiment that basically just showed how you do an experiment. We took paper towels from two different brands, measured out the same amount of water for two cups, then dipped the paper towels in the cups for 30 seconds. We then pulled the paper towels out and measured the water that was left in the cups. Our paper towels were Members Mark brand and Scott brand (from Dollar General). The Member's Mark towel was probably 3/4 the size of the Scott towel, yet the Scott towel did not hold nearly as much as the Member's Mark. I'm glad I use Member's Mark regularly! :)

Art: We did the first lesson in How to Teach Art to Children. The lesson was on lines. We learned about horizontal, vertical, and diagonal lines.

Tornado Boy on the left, Mama in the middle, The Brute on the right

The Brute

Math: I don't think we did any math this week.

Reading: We did one lesson of ETC1. He totally loves it! He's also able to do the writing in it with no problem. Phew! I'm actually quite surprised at how well he can write his letters already.

Weekly Report - Summer Break

We're taking a summer break... for 2 weeks most likely. I don't think I could break much longer than that. :P This week, Tornado Boy has had Cub Scout Day Camp, so he's been busy, dirty, and tired. :)

I have been making lesson plans, making narration pages, etc. I have SOTW1 completely planned out and entered into HST+. Phew! Now to start SOTW2. Ha! We won't be there until October, so I can do it a little bit at a time. :) I have made narration pages for the rest of WWE1 also. I still need to make lesson plans for art and literature/poetry. I have purchased several books for literature, and I'm going to plan them out this time around. I hope to do some narrations on the lit each week. I'm adding in poetry, since Tornado Boy said he likes poetry. I am using the recommendations from the Core Knowledge Sequence. They have lesson plans available on the Baldwin Project, so I can do a few things with the poetry. I think he'll like my plans.

For art, I've purchased Usborne Art Treasury and Evan Moor's How to Teach Art to Children. I plan to make some lessons using those, and still intermix the Draw Write Now book we have. That should give us enough to do for the years.

Next week, I have planned to declutter the house some, as well as finish working on lesson plans. I'll have all the kids home, so we'll see how all that goes. The following week, we're planning to start school back up, but we're also going to have swim lessons for 4 days, so we may be doing half school that week. I just don't want to take too much time off, or getting started again will be a bear!

Weekly Report - Week 20

Our last week of first grade! This has been such a great semester!!!! We did everything we had planned this week, even if a couple things got pushed off a day. We were able to make it up easily without stress.

Tornado Boy

Math: We finished Chapter 2 of 3A, aced the chapter test, and got started on Chapter 1 (Addition review).

Reading: He finished Boxcar Children #3 last Sunday, and read Elmer and the Dragon this week... twice. He read the book all the way through Sunday afternoon, then did 2 chapters each day through the week. We did some copywork from the book and a few narrations. We also discussed each set of 2 chapters. His comprehension is excellent. I just have to laugh when I say "So what was your favorite part of the story?" and he says "I liked every part!"

Grammar: We worked a bit on finding the subject of a paragraph this week, and also learned to use the dictionary in the back of the English book. That's all we'll do from R&S English 2. We'll start the grade 3 book when we start back up in a couple weeks.

Writing: Since we did copywork out of our literature this week, we did 2 weeks of WWE narrations. We'll just continue this route until we finish the book. I'm still undecided about getting the workbook for WWE2 or winging it with the instructor text. I'm inclined to get the workbook at least one more year. We'll see. I'll continue to pull copywork out of our literature as we speed through the narrations in WWE1 (one per day).

Handwriting: Copywork was handwriting this week. I used Startwrite to make lightly shaded sentences to trace. This really helped him get a feel for the shape of the print italic letters.

Spelling: We got through Step 9 this week, though didn't do spelling at all Thursday and Friday.

Read-Aloud: I'm still reading through that children's story book that is really weird. I NEED to pick up a new read-aloud. Really need to. I can't... take... much... more. :P

Bible: We talked about Elijah and King Ahab this week. Elijah called upon God to burn up an altar, and fire came down from heaven, while Baal didn't send fire. All of the prophets of Baal were killed. Jezebel was angry, so Elijah hid again. Elijah didn't think there were any God-worshipers left, but then God told him there were 7000 men who had never worshiped Baal. Elijah then went back and anointed Elisha to take his place.

History: Sparta and Athens were at war this week! Sparta attacked Athens. Athens was inside their city, but someone led them out to fight against Sparta. They lost horribly, and that guy led Sparta back into the city via a secret passageway. Sparta won!

We played the game in the SOTW AG for this chapter, which is basically a game of Sorry. Sparta won there too! I was Sparta. :)

Science: We studied amphibians and reptiles this week, discussing the similarities and differences

Art: We did art yet again!!! This time we made a girl, and the cool thing is that you start out by writing "girl", then using that to draw the girl. The Brute didn't quite follow those directions, so he wrote "girl" on the lines, but just drew a girl on his own in the picture, which is totally fine. :)

The Brute

Math: We've learned to write all our numbers, and are getting pretty good at it too! Some of his numbers look like I wrote them. This week's lessons were mostly on number order in both directions (0 to 10, and 10 down to 0).

Reading: We did a few sentences from OPGTR this week. Nothing really fancy. We also worked on some writing a bit.

Mischief

Dogback Riding

Weekly Report - Week 19

Almost done with school for the year! Though we'll be schooling year round, so we're just taking a short break soon. :)

This week involved a Father/son trip out of town Friday/Saturday, so we did 5 days in 4 days, which once again, didn't seem to take any longer than doing 5 days in 5 days. Weird.

Next week will be our last week for "first grade", and then we'll take a break for 2-3 weeks, then start "second grade" (though nothing he'll be doing at that time will have a "2" on it).

One big change this week:

Missing something

Tornado Boy

Math: We continued with multiplication this week and finally hit one page that slowed him down at least a tiny bit (ie, I had to walk him through a few problems before he could do it on his own). It was word problems where you have one group of so many plus one group of so many (ie, 5 cows and 3 humans - how many legs are there?). He can do them now, but I think it was the first time I've seen him have to work to figure out how to do it. We've found where he's at! At least, at the moment...

Besides the 5 sections in MM3A that he did, he also did somewhat random pages in SM IP 2A and SM CWP 2. One of them was length, and one involved adding/subtracting with renaming, so that's good review.

Multiplication facts seem to be coming along quite nicely. I'm surprised at how many he has memorized already, and it's only been 2 weeks!

Oh, and we did math Monday during a thunderstorm, and the dog was scared... and looked a bit demon possessed...

Reading: He's still working on Boxcar Children #3. I had him read 2 chapters per day later in the week, so he's over halfway through the book now. I need to have him speed read since we have Elmer and the Dragon ready to go, and it will have to be returned in a couple weeks (though that one will be read quickly).

Grammar: We did 4 sections of R&S English 2 Unit 5, which introduces paragraphs. Even more amazing... He copied the paragraphs (which are about 3 sentences in length). They took up half a page of HWT 3rd grade paper, so they were a good length. I couldn't believe he wrote them... without complaint!!! Huge improvement in writing over here. I look forward to starting R&S English 3 after our break, and we'll be doing it as written (though I won't assign all exercises).

Writing: Just for grins, I gave him the end of year evaluation for WWE1. He did well, although he couldn't remember Aunt Em's name... He said "Aunt Ed?" That was close. He also couldn't remember what building Uncle Henry ran to. He knew what it was, but couldn't remember that it was called a shed. He said "shelter", which is probably because our goats use goat shelters during storms, so he was probably picturing something along those lines. I'm going to keep plugging away at WWE1, but... I've decided to cut out the copywork (since we'll be doing R&S English which includes copying properly formed sentences from a book, and I'll also be adding in some literature copywork from what he's reading), and we'll just do the narration days everyday. He'll still be copying his narrations on the day #4 of each "week". So our plan will be each week to do 2 "weeks", days #2 and #4 of each of those. He really likes narrations, so this will work well, I think.

I believe he's just about ready to move on to the next step in narrations, but given how he did on the evaluation, we'll practice a bit more first. He definitely passes the copywork section of the evaluation. I didn't even give it to him. He's copying 3 sentences in paragraph form from a grammar textbook without error, so I'm not worried about his copywork abilities. He could probably handle starting dictation now, but it won't hurt to wait a bit longer and get his spelling more solid so he'll have more confidence.

Handwriting: We did a couple days' worth in the GDI book. I need to put it on our assignment sheet, as I keep forgetting to do it!

Spelling: We completed up through step 6 of level 3. We're now starting to hit a point where we will probably need to slow down and actually do review.

Read-Aloud: I've been reading out of a children's storybook that I picked up at the library. It has some stories I know well, such as the "Three Little Pigs", "Goldilocks", and "Little Red Hen". It also has some really strange stories such as "Titty Mouse and Tatty Mouse", which make me wonder what kind of drugs the authors were on. I'm sure it probably has some deep meaning, but on the surface, it's a strange story.

Bible: Elijah has told King Ahab that it won't rain until Elijah announces that it will. Elijah then goes into hiding, staying near a brook and being fed daily by ravens. When the brook dries up, he stays with the widow whose flour and oil didn't run out. Finally, Obadiah finds Elijah and tells King Ahab to come meet with him.

History: We finished Cyrus the Great from last week, getting a great narration on that one (main topic sentence followed by supporting sentences - woohoo!). We learned about Sparta and Athens, and had a good discussion on why Tornado Boy is being educated, thanks to some of the statements made in the section on Athens. :) We also squeezed in the chapter on Greek gods, since it only had one section. The mapwork for that chapter was a test to see how many places he could find on an unlabeled map. He was to get a chocolate chip for each one he found. He got them all. :)

Science: We did lessons 2 and 3 of BJU Science 3, studying vertebrates and invertebrates, warm- and cold-blooded animals, and going a little deeper into fish. Thursday afternoon, as we were closing a gate, we found a frog (toad?) and did more science, talking about how he's a vertebrate, cold-blooded, etc.

Art: We did art! We did art! I also have last week's art to show. Tornado Boy's pieces are on the left, and The Brute's are on the right.

 

The Brute

The Brute had his last day of speech therapy this week, and his beloved therapist is moving away, so he won't see her again. The Brute drew a picture for her and wrote his name. The funny part? The biggest thing he was working on in speech was getting him to say 'm' instead of 'n' (like "milk" was being said "nolk"). We were successful, but maybe a little too successful... He wrote his name, but the 'n' in his name was an 'm', and he drew 3 more m's above it. :)

Math: The Brute worked on writing numbers this week. Most of them are fairly legible. We got all the way through writing "10".

Reading: I think we only had one lesson this week, but it was a good one! He copied a whole sentence!!! Then finally he read it. After that one sentence, we stopped. I was happy with that. :)

Mischief

Mischief turned 2 this week!!!