Weekly Report - Year 2 Week 10

We did pretty well this week, getting in most subjects. Hooray!

Tornado Boy

Math: We worked this week on some mental math review, using bar models in word problems (we know this from CWP, but it was good to review the MM way), order of operations, and he worked ahead a little bit doing bar graphs because he wanted to. I had originally planned to do just 2 pages a day of MM4, but yeah, that's just not happening. He's continuing to do a full section (2-3 pages). We may slow down when we hit long division, but I don't see anything else between now and then that would likely slow him down.

Other math done this week... Tornado Boy picked up a book his Grandpa gave him called You Can Count on Monsters by Richard Evan Schwartz. It talks about factoring numbers and has a section on how to find all the prime numbers 1-100. Tornado Boy then asked for a sheet of paper - he wanted to find all the prime numbers 1-100. :)

We also got a sample chapter of Beast Academy this week. It's a new elementary curriculum coming for grades 2-5 from Art of Problem Solving. So far, we're both in love! I will post a full review separately when we finish the chapter. We've read it and started on the workbook. I learned some things myself reading the text, and this is a 3rd grade math book!

Reading: Still plugging through The Phantom Tollbooth. We were scheduled to finish it this week, but we didn't do 2 chapters each day as intended, so we'll just move it into next week. That's fine.

Grammar: We did lessons 10-13 this week. We were supposed to do through lesson 12, but we accidentally did an extra lesson on Thursday. :) We practiced the "Land of Nod" poem some more, and he has about 3 of the 4 stanzas memorized.

Writing: We completed week 4 (and the remaining lesson of week 3) in WWE2. The passages this week were from Dr. Dolittle. I'll have to put that on our "to read" list.

Handwriting: We practiced a little bit in the salt this week, but didn't focus on it as much as I would have liked.

Spelling: I'm playing "Musical Spelling Programs" right now. :P We did some WRTR the first few days, then Thursday and Friday, I printed out Wheeler's Elementary Speller, free on Google books. We did a couple lessons and will continue trying this out for a bit. WRTR lacked dictation of sentences, and I think that is what he really needs at this point. Wheeler's has a mix of everything - sometimes a lesson will be a word list that they copy, sometimes it will be copywork of part of a poem or general good literature. Sometimes it will be dictation or writing from memory. It's usually NOT word lists, but when it is, they have them mark certain things in the word lists. Very cool.

Read-Aloud: I should just take this label off until Mischief is 3...

Bible: We finished the Old Testament this week!

History: This actually was accidentally done independently this week. The Brute had speech therapy Tuesday, so I told Tornado Boy to bring SOTW1 with him and read it in the van. He did. I didn't get around to doing anything with it the rest of the day. The next day, I asked him the leading questions from the 2 sections he'd read. He answered all of them! So he just had to do the map work after that. I've made a history notebook that he can do somewhat independently, and we're going to see how that goes.

Science: We did the two lessons I had planned. Way to go me! I have changed the way I'm doing science. I'm now having him read the student text for the lesson, then tell me 3 things he learned. Then he does the activity manual. He liked this method, so we'll keep it up for now.

Art: We did two lessons this week! Woohoo! The first one was drawing pictures with markers on square pieces of white paper. One was to use lines and angles, while the other was to use curves only. The second lesson involved me making a simple line design, such as a diagonal line and a jagged line, with a black marker, then we would form that design into a picture of something. I think Tornado Boy did well!

Top two are Tornado Boy's, bottom two are mine. Tornado Boy's involved bombs...

These are both Tornado Boy's. The one on the left is buildings... maybe on fire?

These are mine.

Spanish: Skipped it again.

The Brute

Math: We did a little bit of EM book B this week... I think maybe 3 pages? It was working on determining which number is one more. I used C-rods to demonstrate.

Reading: I don't think we did anything formal here this week.

Handwriting: Did some more salt box practice.

Mischief

Terrorized the house as normal, but also read some Apologia books with The Brute. :)

So cute with their little thumbs...

Weekly Report - Year 2 Week 9

This has been a bit of a lazy week. We got enough done though, so it's ok. Just have quite a bit of rescheduling done in HST+. :)

Tornado Boy

Math: We started MM4A this week. I had plans to just do 2 pages a day, but the sections with 3 pages were so simple (review), and he kept seeing fun things on the 3rd page that he wanted to do, so I let him have at it. So while we only did math 4 days this week, we still did everything we were supposed to in MM. I didn't get to IP or CWP this week, but that's ok. We'll get to those next week. We're still working on the grade 3 end of year test. We have a couple pages left to go. He's done well so far. There are a few things that we skipped and he doesn't know, but they'll be hit again in the grade 4 chapter on that topic, so I had decided I'd rather just do the grade 4 material rather than grade 3 and skipping through grade 4.

Reading: He started The Phantom Tollbooth this week and is enjoying it! He's into jokes and such right now, so some of the puns are right up his alley (like the "watch dog").

Grammar: We did lessons 7-9 in FLL3. Less 7 involved going through a list of common and proper nouns. If I said a common noun, he was to stay seated. If I said a proper noun, he was to stand up. He LOVED this lesson! In fact, the next day, he asked if we could do it again. :) We also started working on memorizing the poem "The Land of Nod". He enjoyed that poem, and we talked about dreams. I had had a weird dream about a tiger/dog cross (yes, I know, that's impossible). He said he usually dreams about Star Wars.

Writing: We did days 1-3 of week 3 in WWE2. I'll try to catch day 4 over the weekend sometime (narration/dictation).

Handwriting: I made a salt box this week! Both boys loved it. We've been practicing 'a' and 'd' this week, along with 'ad' (which he points out is the TV ad, not the add and subtract type add).

Spelling: We started working on WRTR word lists. He tests into list M, but I backed up to list K, because I saw several words there that he didn't know how to spell. He knows most of them, and we're using those to help get used to the process. I didn't quiz or test him on any words yet. I'll probably start that next week. I plan to make some dictation sentences to practice also.

Read-Aloud: I have a cold. That's my excuse this week!

Bible: This week we learned about Esther.

History: We only got to one day of history this week, learning about Caesar becoming a consul of Rome - the Triumvirate.

Science: Skipped it.

Art: Skipped it.

Spanish: Skipped it.

The Brute

Math: The only math we did was living math - "We need 4 plates. There are 2 on the counter. How many more do we need?" He answered correctly. :)

Reading: We worked on phonograms briefly one day. To my surprise, he knew the phonogram "er" already? I think I've mentioned it once a long time ago, and we hadn't practiced words with it. We also learned "ar" and looked at the word "car".

Handwriting: We practiced various cursive letters in the salt box. He had fun and did VERY well. His letters are quite legible in the salt!

Mischief

He practiced making circles on the magnadoodle this week. He's very good at circles and slow, deliberate lines. He's also played with the white board markers a lot. I need to hairspray one of his shirts. :P He did lots of "maf", coloring in the used math workbooks from his brothers. :)

Weekly Report - Year 2 Week 8

This was an interesting week! We had a little delay early in the week due to a friend's emergency. Thankfully, we were able to go out and help as needed without worrying about getting back in time to pick someone up from school. Love it. ;) We were a bit slacking toward the end of the week, especially with a multi-store shopping trip on Thursday, but that's ok.

Tornado Boy

Math: We finished grade 3 MM!!! Well, he's still working on the end of year test, technically. It's 8 pages! We're about halfway done with it. I'd like him to finish it so I can see any glaring holes, since we have skipped some things here and there.

Reading: He finished Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Next week is The Phantom Tollbooth!

Grammar: We did lessons 4-6 in FLL3. This early stuff is mostly review, so it's still easy right now. :) We are skipping the "optional dictation", since we're doing dictation in WWE2.

Writing: We completed week 2 of WWE2. So far, this has been easier than WWE1. I suspect that this will change. It's lulling us into a sense of comfort and ease, and then suddenly we'll get a passage that we have no clue what it's talking about. Just waiting for it now... :)

Handwriting: This week, we went out in the sand and drew 'a' and 'd', plus the combination 'ad'. I had to convince Tornado Boy not to press so hard in the sand. Light touches are fine! He's getting there. He has some nice letters in the sand.

Spelling: We skipped spelling this week, and I'm contemplating some changes, after doing some more research on Writing Road to Reading (Spalding) and Spell to Write and Read (Spalding-spinoff). Now that I have used AAS, I understand WRTR/SWR and think it might be better for Tornado Boy, since more phonograms are learned up front.

Read-Aloud: <hangs head in shame>

Bible: This week we learned about Daniel's prophecies, some of the Jews returning to Jerusalem, and how there was trouble rebuilding the temple.

History: We learned about the first emperor of China's grave (with thousands of clay soldiers), Confucius, and then we went back to Rome and learned about Julius Caesar being kidnapped by pirates!

Science: Skipped this week.

Art: Skipped this week.

Spanish: We finished most of Chapter One Part B. Not quite done yet.

The Brute

Math: We did a little bit of Book B, but not much yet.

Reading: We worked on some phonograms (Spalding style) and started learning how to read some cursive letters. We'll start some pre-writing activities next week (salt box and such).

Mischief

Mischief sat in on our phonogram  lesson, and while he was doodling on his Magnadoodle, he suddenly said "A says /a/!" and I saw this:

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.