Weekly Report - Year 3 Week 3

This week was a bit busy, as we had a doctor appointment Monday, then a specialist appointment Wednesday (all things clear - yay!), so we were only home all day 3 of the days, AND we had the A/C guy out Friday. We had a good week though. It was just laid back.

Tornado Boy

Math: We're into measurements now, and we took our time, doing just one lesson per day. :) Next week, we'll do measurements "Practice" section, then Volume, then it's just on to review and placement test. That's it for 4B! I imagine it will take us 2 weeks to complete all that, since those reviews and placement tests are LONG. We also did one section of Life of Fred Fractions this week.

Reading: He is over half done with Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. I'm way behind him, but plugging along. :) He is also reading Hero's Guide to Saving Your Kingdom, which my dad gave him this week. He got two other books from my dad also, both similarly thick hardback books. They look good. I'm sure he'll enjoy them. No assigned reading yet until we get to week 4 or maybe 5 of Sonlight. In the meantime, he's really close to his 10,000 pages goal for the summer reading program with our homeschool group. Finishing LOTR will do it, and he still has 2 weeks left, though he might meet the goal before finishing LOTR, since we hit the library today and got a bunch of new books! :)

Grammar: We inadvertently skipped grammar this week. Oh well.

Writing: We moved on to Lesson 3 in SWI-A this week. He watched the video, then proceeded to rewrite "The Boy and the Nuts", but he made it, "The Zombie and the Nuts". He didn't get very creative with it, but I'm also not surprised about that. He made it an Athlete Zombie instead of a "Boy" (all the 3rd grade boys around here are into a game called Plants and Zombies right now, and he got to play it at a friend's house Wednesday and learn a bunch about the details of the game, including names of different types of zombies as seen above). Other than it being a zombie and the pitcher being "damaged", the story was basically the same. But hey, it's a good start! This is not my creative child. I know The Brute would be going off into the weeds with such a creative rewrite. :) I think as Tornado Boy gets used to this writing business, his creative side will come out too. ;)

Spelling: We finished the Week 18 review and did the test. He did very well, and I'm seeing better spelling in his writing assignments already. Woohoo!

Read-Aloud: Hero's Guide to Saving Your Kingdom. Yes, Tornado Boy is reading it himself, but I'm also reading it to all 3 children out loud.

Bible: We started reading Romans this week and continued reading a Proverb most days.

History: None (officially).

Science: He finished reading the Apologia Astronomy book on his own. We'll start SL Science next week, I think.

The Brute

Math: We mostly did very early word problems this week. So far, they're easy peasy. While we could probably skip ahead a bit, I'm trying to keep math "easy", since reading is so difficult. I want him to be confident. He already feels bad that he can't read real books yet, so it's good for him to have math be easy, especially knowing that he's working one grade ahead.

Reading: We had a great week here! We have read the "Tim the Dim Cop" story in Dancing Bears multiple times this week, and each time, he has gotten faster and it's been easier. We are almost done with the Power Page after that story, and then we started the next page a little bit as well. He's definitely gaining some confidence. Today, we read part of Hop on Pop, and he was able to read most of it, with just a bit of help on the sounds he hasn't had yet ("all", "mouse", etc.). He did very well with those new sounds, and I think he was even figuring out some on his own, like "play". Yipee! For our 'm'/'n' confusion issue, I got a photocopy of one page of PAL Writing where it shows 'm' as the "mountain letter" and 'n' as the "nose" letter. I showed him those and discussed it some. He definitely had an easier time figuring those two out that day! I will continue to use that method. For 'b'/'d',we're using the instructions in Spalding - 'b' makes a line with your mouth when you say /b/, and 'd' makes a circle with your mouth when you say /d/.

Handwriting: We only did handwriting one day this week. I'm a complete and total slacker in this department, and it's one I need to get back to! Maybe I should put reading and handwriting together in our first session. He can go for about 30 minutes, and we've been doing reading and math, then later we do handwriting... maybe. Anyway, we did the letter 'b' this week. He tried to make it like a '6' (the HWT style '6'!), and it took some work to get him to stop doing that, but I did get some nice 'b's out of him eventually. I'll definitely have to watch how he does that each time for a while, so he doesn't keep a bad habit of the weird way (he goes straight down, then goes along the base line and around back to the line). I wonder if it's partly because the clock letters all go counterclockwise, and 'b' goes clockwise. So confusing.

Other: This week, we had box day! Sonlight P4/5 came in on Tuesday, a day early! The Brute was so excited!! He LOVES the Bible and is enjoying the stories we're reading. We went ahead and started it Wednesday and Thursday, and we finished the whole first week. Oops! We are doing the Developing the Early Learner books that come with it, and I think they will be nice for figuring out The Brute's strengths and weaknesses, since he's so hard to figure out most of the time. He's done well on the exercises so far except the tracing one. He can't remotely stay on the line without stopping! I don't know that Tornado Boy could do that. :P

The Brute enjoying the Sonlight box :)

Mischief

Mischief worked on his C-rod Alphabet Book and also started the DEL book above (I made a copy). He is likewise doing well in the book, missing the tracing completely and having some issue with the missing object exercise (4 objects on the table, take one away and they circle which object is missing). After completing the page, we practiced it a bit, and once he understood what he was supposed to do, he had no problem with it. I'm sure he'll do fine with that exercise next time it comes around.

Weekly Report - Year 3 Weeks 1-2

This should technically be week 3, but we took off a week for VBS (with a gospel meeting in the evening and a singing with a new song book at the end of the week... what a great week!). So we've done weeks 1 and 2 of 3rd grade/K, and it's gone very well so far!

Tornado Boy

Math: We did some geometry and have now gotten into data and probability, bar diagrams, etc. We should finish 4B (including review and placement test) in the next couple weeks.

Reading: I'm not assigning reading right now, but he reads all the time anyway. Recently, he has re-read the entire SOTW series (volumes 1-4), the D'Aulaire Norse Myths book (multiple times), and The Hobbit (which I read alongside him... he beat me). He'll start Fellowship of the Ring soon, once he pries it out of my hands. Ha! He also reads various and a sundry books that he finds around the house, library books, etc. The kid is always reading.

Grammar: We've done 2 exercises of KISS since we started. We're in level 1.2 and did exercises 5 and 6.

Writing: Here is where things are really shining right now!!! We have done 3 paragraphs for IEW SWI-A, and it is going fabulously. He enjoyed the lesson we watched on the DVD, he has no problem doing a keyword outline, and best of all... He can WRITE from the keyword outline! Woohoo! It's pretty painless for him. He thinks of a sentence based on the keywords, and he writes it down. He writes in pen and asks to spell words or tries to spell them phonetically. I have been so pleased with this program so far. It's like a light bulb has gone on!

At the end of SWI-A video - gravity at work :)

Rough draft of "Starfish" paragraph - written "with ease"!

Spelling: We've done 2 weeks of R&S Spelling 3. Next week, we'll finish week 17 and start reviewing (week 18).

Read-Aloud: None going on right now.

Bible: We've been continuing through Acts and also reading Proverbs daily (the chapter that corresponds with the day of the month), discussing the different themes we come across and applying them to our lives.

History: None right now (though again, he's read SOTW 1-4 recently ;).

Science: We have done lessons 2-5 in Apologia Astronomy the last couple weeks. We've learned about the Sun, Mercury, Venus, and Earth. We did the crater demonstration, where you drop rocks into flour. I learned that that is not one you want to do in the house. Just sayin'.

Crater demonstration

The Brute

Math: We have started Singapore 1A, and it is going swimmingly. This part is pretty easy, as he understands basic addition and has several number bonds memorized (thank you C-rods!). We have done number bonds under 10 and then focused on making 10's. Next week, we'll start working on early word problems. If he has any problem, this might be it just because language is an issue. But we'll see. He tends to surprise me! :)

Reading: We have conquered a few pages in Dancing Bears the last 2 weeks! I can really see his reading coming along. He still tries to guess sometimes, but then I tell him to read the word, and he will sound it out. :) He's starting to remember some words later in the page, so that's wonderful! I think it will still be a while before he's ready for real books, but today he successfully read about "Tim the Dim Cop". :P

Handwriting: We are using the Writing Road to Reading handwriting instructions, and this week, we finished the clock face letters. Next week, we'll get to b, e, and some others.

Science: Tagging along in Apologia Astronomy, he remembered that Mercury is really hot during the day and really cold during the night because it has no atmosphere, and Venus is really hot all the time because it has a thick atmosphere. He contributes a lot to our notebooking!

Mischief

Mischief has been doing a Cuisenaire Rod Alphabet Book and loves it. He is so proud of himself for doing his "school". When he finishes that, I plan to do R&S ABC series. I think he could handle that now. He's pretty good with fine motor skills. We'll also play with the C-rods to learn their values a bit more. I work with him first thing in the morning, then work with The Brute, then finally Tornado Boy. It's working well so far.

"That's an 'A'!"

2012-2013 Curriculum Plans

Since I start up in a month, I do have plans made already. :)

Tornado Boy - 3rd grade

Math: Singapore 4B/5A/5B, then probably some Math Mammoth 6 and start Prealgebra
Grammar: KISS Level 1 (3rd grade workbook), mixing in some Rod &Staff English 4
Writing: Writing With Ease 3 using the instructor text to pull stuff from our history/science, Institute for Excellence in Writing SWI-A
Spelling: Rod &Staff Spelling 3/4, Spelling City
Handwriting: Cursive instructions from Writing Road to Reading
Poetry: Michael Clay Thompson's Music of the Hemispheres
Vocabulary: Michael Clay Thompson's Building Language
Latin: Getting Started With Latin
History/Reading/Read-Alouds: Sonlight Core D with Advanced Readers
Science: Apologia Astronomy, followed by whatever we feel like doing :)

The Brute - Kindergarten

Math: Singapore 1A/1B
Phonics/Reading: Dancing Bears A, Reading Eggs, I See Sam readers
Handwriting: Instructions from Writing Road to Reading
Read-Alouds: Sonlight Core P4/5

Mischief - PreK3

Reading: Reading Eggs
Other: Rod & Staff ABC series, used workbooks from The Brute, continually make mischief
Read-Alouds: Library books, listen in on Sonlight Core P4/5

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My goals for this coming year:

• Get Tornado Boy comfortable with a little bit of original writing - putting words onto paper even if he doesn't know how to spell them. ;) 
• Get the Brute reading well.
• Keep Mischief from being too much mischief during school. :)

Year End Wrap Up - 2011-2012 School Year

I haven't done my weekly updates in a long, long time. One reason is that I haven't really been doing "everything" consistently the last several months, as my house has been in renovation chaos. We kept up with the basics and did everything we needed to do, so it's fine, but it wasn't worth blogging about. ;)

Excitement in our lives since February:

We got a new pony. Her name is Roxy. She's very sweet and follows you around like a little dog. She also is small enough that the boys are more comfortable getting on her! She is Final's "pocket pony", much to Final's chagrin.

Then we had our windows replaced... all of them. Most walls in this house have at least one window, which means almost all of our furniture had to move to the center of the rooms. In the meantime, we were also removing two large bookcases to get ready for a piano (we'll put in a custom bookshelf structure over it that my dad will build). So I had a lot of books in boxes. As I said, chaos. The new windows look great though!

New windows on left, old one on right.

Tornado Boy and The Brute had a little run-in with each other, racing to the kitchen from different directions, trying to get to the van first. Tornado Boy lost that race...

My friend and I went to Memphis for the Greater Homeschool Convention. It was a fun girls-only trip, and we were both able to recharge. The convention was smaller than last year. Not sure if we'll go back next year or find a different one. I like going, but I imagine the better speakers may not come back next year. Plus a lot of the speakers are more "world view" type speakers instead of "homeschool" speakers. I go to church and read my Bible for my "world view". I'd like to learn about teaching reading, writing, and math when I go to a homeschool convention. ;)

And finally, about a month ago, my husband went outside to go to work and found this:

Our truck had self-ignited in the middle of the night, causing smoke and heat damage to just about everything in the garage. My van was parked next to the truck and had lots of pieces melted on it and some engine stuff damaged. It's running now, but has to go back to the body shop to take care of the corroded metal (which is all over, inside and out!). On a good note, it now has a new timing chain, water pump, cam shaft sensor, belts, motor mounts, and other such things. We were able to find a new (used) truck to replace the old one, and that's how the family has gotten around while the van was out for several weeks. We are BIG fans of detached garages now! Thankfully, the garage was well sealed, and the fire smoked itself out. It could have been a lot worse if we'd opened a door earlier.

That's what we've been up to the last several months. So our end of year progress:

Tornado Boy

Math: Finished through the Decimals unit of Singapore 4B. We'll do the rest this summer, then start 5A when we're ready. We've also been working through Beast Academy 3A and Life of Fred Fractions.

Reading: Tornado Boy has been reading, reading, and reading some more. We recently started Sonlight Core D with the Advanced Readers, and he's reading those faster than the schedule, so I don't think we'll have any trouble keeping up with that! He's also tracking his summer reading for our local homeschool group, and his goal is 10,000 pages. He has read almost 3000 in the first 1 or 2 weeks (I forget when it started - ha!), so I think it's definitely a doable goal in 8 weeks. Last year, he won for his age group with just 3800 pages. He certainly loves to read!

Grammar: We've kind of bounced around based on my mood and what I felt like Tornado Boy needed at the time. We are definitely staying with KISS Grammar next year. I've also been throwing in some R&S English 3 for the written grammar exercises. With KISS, he truly understands the parts of speech and how they're used. He analyzes real sentences. And even when we took a whole month off from it, we came back and he remembered what predicate nominatives, predicate adjectives, and direct objects were. Pretty impressive! We kind of let FLL3 fall by the wayside, not because I didn't like it, but because I've been using KISS for the teacher-intensive stuff and R&S for the more independent work (give him an assignment to go off and do on his own).

Writing: I think I've slacked off here the most the last several months. My last post in February had us at week 17 of WWE2. We have now finished week 21. Oops! I've really been a slacker in the narration department in general, and I intend to hit narrations hard this summer to get us back up to par. He's usually good at narrations, so I don't think it will be a problem. On a good note... My child who would say his hand hurt when copying ONE sentence last year can now copy 6 sentences with no pain whatsoever!!!!! Hooray! He's still absolutely terrified to write originally, due to perfectionism with spelling, but we'll work on that next year.

Spelling: We did several lessons of Apples & Pears and liked it overall, but we've kind of moved back toward R&S Spelling. The reason? It gets done more easily. Recently, he's been getting more independent with his work, and R&S has been easy enough to say, "Go do this," and he does it. I've also started putting the word lists into Spelling City, and he enjoys doing that too.

Read-Alouds: We've done pretty well with read-alouds, especially since starting Sonlight. I can't remember what all we've read, unfortunately. :P

Bible: We did very well keeping up with the "Daily Bible Reading" schedule my church put out up until about 3 weeks ago. Now we're hopelessly behind, which is why I dislike daily Bible reading schedules. I feel icky getting off schedule. So we're just plugging along through Acts right now. We have also done several lessons in Bible Study Guide for All Ages and really like that. We'll plan to continue it in the next year.

History: I think we got somewhere in the 20s in SOTW2 before switching over to Sonlight Core D. We've now done about 4-5 weeks of Core D and are loving it. It's US History, first half. We've learned a lot about Native American Indians, both North and South America, as well as the early Spanish settlers.

Science: We're somewhere in chapter 2 of the Apologia Astronomy book, which is funny, since last update (again, in February), we were in chapter 1. :) We've watched lots of Mythbusters and done our science kits though, plus read various library books.

The Brute

Reading: He is halfway through Map 5 on Reading Eggs, doing very well with that. He is also plugging away through Dancing Bears. Confidence is coming, slowly but surely. He said to me one day that he could only read "baby books", and he was sad about that. I showed him big boy books that he was reading, and that perked him up. He's not really ready for real readers yet. He can sound out a lot of words and is starting to recognize them more quickly, but he still can't read a sentence and comprehend it. We'll get there. He's "K" next school year.

Math: This is where The Brute has started to really take off! He has about 4 or 5 pages of Singapore Essential Math K book B left to go, and then he'll start 1A when we start back up (in about a month). He's totally ready for 1A. He is adding and subtracting with ease. His concept of place value is rock solid, up into the ten thousands. He can skip count by 2's, 5's, 10's, 100's, 1000's, etc. He can even add some easier 2-digit numbers mentally, like 30+31. I can't believe that 6 months ago, this child could hardly count past 10 and had NO clue about place value or adding or subtracting. He's a totally different child in the math department! He's even started saying, "Let's fly!" when I pull out the math book, and he means skipping stuff that he already knows. :)

Handwriting: We're practicing making decent circles, but haven't practiced a LOT. Obviously, his numbers are great, given how much he's flying through the math workbooks. ;)

Mischief

Reading: He just finished map 4 of Reading Eggs today. Yes, he's really able to read a little bit. He'll be 3 years old this week! He's not picking up books and reading them yet, and I don't expect that to happen for a good while yet, but he is able to sound out a word, blend, find a word that you say, and even spell a CVC word. Craziness.

Math: Tornado Boy has started teaching him math. Of course, he's teaching him the multiplication tables. :) One day I asked Tornado Boy what 3x3 was, and Mischief said, "9!" I was quite shocked! The next day, I was showing The Brute 3x2, and Mischief said, "6!" Ok kid, stop scaring me! Mischief does not actually know what multiplication is. He's just memorized a few facts that big brother has taught him. I figure he'll have all his facts for the 4 operations memorized before he's 5, and my work will be done! :P

Weekly Report - Year 2 Week 26

Whoops... Long time no post! Well, we took off a good 3 weeks of December due to family visiting, holidays, etc. Then we got started the first week of January, and promptly caught the stomach plague that's going around, so that took us out for a week. Now we're back at full swing, though we'll be having house renovations starting in another week - not sure how much that will affect our schooling. Good thing we're ahead in skill subjects, right? :)

Tornado Boy

Math: First let me say that we're in the geometry section of Singapore 4A, and I HATE GEOMETRY. But we're doing fine with it, and it's almost over. Just a few more lessons and a cumulative review, then the 4A placement test. Then we can start Decimals in 4B. Yipee! Tornado Boy is doing great with Singapore. He really enjoys it quite a bit more than Math Mammoth. So we'll stick with it this year and next.

Reading: He's been reading 101 Dalmatians. It's somewhat slow going, since he doesn't really care for the book that much, but he is reading it when I remind him to read. :P

We also got a 4 year trial subscription to Reading Eggs (a million coupon codes were posted on WTM forum... I think those codes are all expired by now). Tornado Boy did the placement test for the Comprehension Gym in Eggspress, but it placed him at level 5.1, which was fine for reading level, but not fine for comprehension questions! It was expecting him to understand things like inference and knowing what the purpose of a sentence was in a paragraph. He has not been taught any of those things. So I finally figured out how to bump him back to the beginning - level 2.1. Much better questions! His reading level is quite high, but he's not ready to analyze at the level of a 5th grader. So he'll work his way up the ranks and probably learn something along the way.

Grammar: We did lesson 52 (I think) of FLL3 this week, and we have also been dabbling in KISS Grammar and really liking it. I got a Toshiba Thrive 10" Android tablet for Christmas, and with the ezPDF app, I'm able to have KISS on the tablet and just use our fingers to underline various words in the sentences. Very cool! It's a nice snuggle on the couch time, and those KISS sentences can be hard! They are from real literature.

Writing:  We finished week 17 of WWE2 this week! Woohoo! Narrations are going well, and dictation went very well this week.

Spelling: We did week 8 of R&S 3. I also ordered book A of Apples & Pears to try that out and see if we like it. Tornado Boy isn't crazy about R&S. A&P looks easy to implement - open and go, with no parts and pieces, and done in a way that he'll understand and learn... I hope. :) If not, The Brute will likely need A&P (I suspect he's a visual thinker), so I'll have it for him.

Read-Aloud: We are working our way through The Phantom Tollbooth, which Tornado Boy already read himself, but now he gets to hear it again from me. :) We're enjoying it quite a bit!

Bible:  I recently purchased Bible Study Guide for All Ages unit 1. We've only done a few lessons, but we are greatly enjoying it so far! I got the Beginner pages for The Brute and the Intermediate pages for Tornado Boy. Mischief gets to color a bit on The Brute's pages. So far, we've learned about Joseph and how his brothers hated him and sold him. Then he worked in Potiphar's house, but there was that incident with Potiphar's wife, so he was thrown in prison. Now he has interpreted the dreams of the cup bearer and the baker. We spend 2 days on each lesson, since they're a bit long to do a whole lesson for The Brute (Tornado Boy could easily do a lesson in one day).

History: We didn't do history this week, but the week before, we got up through chapter 15 of SOTW2. Actually, I told him to go read Chapter 11, and he read Chapters 11-15. :P I checked out some library books on those chapters. Oh, and last week he finished reading SOTW4 for the second time. He loves this series!

Here's a notebooking sentence from one of his history chapters...

The squiggly stick figure is an old woman - LOL

Science: I recently noticed that Tornado Boy was bringing the Apologia books everywhere to read. So I got the notebooking journal for Astronomy, and we're officially going through that book. The Brute gets to sit in and contribute to the journal (draw a picture). This is going well so far. We've done "Lesson 1" and even did the balloon solar system project that they'd been wanting to do for ages (and I bought balloons for it last summer, I believe). The project worked out fine, though the sun exploded as Mischief was sitting in his chair at the dinner table waiting for everyone else to come in. Scared him half to death! But he has been assured that the planets likely won't pop.

Apologia Notebooking Journal - Day 1

Solar System, before the sun popped :)

The Brute

Reading: The Brute has been doing Reading Eggs this week. He placed into map 2 and is getting very close to completing map 3. I think the repetition of seeing the words over and over is really helping him quite a bit. I can tell his reading is going to take off soon. He recently replaced the first letter of each word of his speech with /b/ while we were driving home for 30 minutes. That was a long conversation! :) He's also quite good at rhyming. So everything is in place to take off reading. I've ordered Dancing Bears to try out with him, and I'll post a review later when we've been using it for a while.

Math: We're about halfway through book B. The work he's done recently has been number bonds, which he is doing very well with. In fact, one day, I had to go help Mischief use the potty, and The Brute continued on through 2 more pages all by himself, doing addition problems correctly! He uses the C-rods still, but he's been quizzing me on addition facts lately (which I bounce back off him), and he knows several of them. Yay C-rods!

Mischief

Reading: Since we had the 4 years of Reading Eggs for each child, I went ahead and started Mischief on it for fun. To my surprise, he's actually done very well with it! I suspect we'll hit a wall at some point, maybe in map 2. He's almost done with map 1. He knows his letter sounds well. He can do phonemic awareness, but sometimes doesn't. For example, if given pictures to choose which one starts with a particular sound, he'll often get a couple wrong, then do a bunch right, then get a couple wrong. He clearly has some phonemic awareness, but it's not quite there yet (and I don't expect it to be!). I don't think he can blend at all yet, and again, I don't expect him to. He has done fine so far with finding things like "at". He may end up picking up some sight reading at this point. We'll see. I'm just surprised he's done so well with this so far. I thought we'd hit a wall around the first or second lesson. Nope! He's done 7 lessons and been just fine. I help him with the mouse, but he's mostly doing it on his own. He usually needs me if it requires clicking and dragging, as he doesn't know to hold the button down while moving the mouse.

And here's what Mischief did during Bible one day this week (he said the pencils were rockets)...

Weekly Report - Year 2 Week 19

I'm not even going to try to catch up on weekly reports that I didn't do the last couple months! Just know that we have done quite a bit. :)

This week was a bit hectic with appointments and errands and the whole Christmas season and all, so we got horribly behind and then caught up magically. Strange how that happens.

Tornado Boy

Math: After we learned long division in MM 4B, I switched Tornado Boy over to Singapore Standards Edition 4A. Why? After reading threads on the WTM forum about how Singapore makes more conceptual leaps, I was thinking, "That's exactly what Tornado Boy needs!" He also likes the presentation a lot better, and he's a bit bored of MM. MM was the best choice for us in the last year because he was accelerating to "where he is". Now that we have found where he is, we can use Singapore without having to go through 3-4 grade levels in a calendar year. :P We started a couple lessons Thanksgiving week (our week off, but Tornado Boy wanted to start, and so did I!), and then this week we got through Order of Operations and started the Negative Numbers section. We skipped the first chapter on Place Value, since he's already done that in MM4A and has no trouble whatsoever with place value. Order of Operations is review from MM4A, but it was good to practice it again. We also got into some divisibility rules. I love the Singapore HIG (Home Instructor's Guide). It gives extra information for the teacher, including the "why" of the divisibility rules. I always knew that if the digit sum was divisible by 9, then the whole number is divisible by 9, but I never knew why that worked. The HIG explained it very well in a way that I wouldn't have thought of myself. Very cool!

We were only supposed to do through Order of Operations this week, but Tornado Boy saw the Negative Numbers section and just had to do that one too. He loves negative numbers. There was nothing new to him in that lesson, so we were able to quickly go through it and do the workbook pages.

We did some IP 3A and CWP 3 this week, reviewing a bit of long division, since he's only learned how to do that a month ago. Surprisingly, long division was very easy for him to pick up. I taught him the standard algorithm one day (via MM4B), and the next day he remembered how to do it. I haven't had to review how the algorithm works at all. He remembers and does it without problem. Very strange. I expected it to be a bit harder than that!

Reading: He has been reading 101 Dalmatians by Dodie Smith. I think he's around chapter 6 or 7 now.

Grammar: We did lessons 40 and 41 this week. I looked ahead and decided to do lesson 42 next week and skip lesson 43 (a review of poetry memorization that we haven't been doing anyway <bag>). FLL3 is still going very well. He's learning from it and understanding. He seems to like the book pretty well.

Writing: We did week 12 of WWE2 this week, with passages  from Pilgrim's Progress. Tornado Boy really liked these passages! His narrations were excellent. We also talked a little bit about the allegory involved and what things symbolized what. He was able to catch on to that pretty easily.

Spelling: We did Lesson 6 of R&S 3, which is a review of the words from Lessons 1-5. He got a 100 on the test, as he has on all the tests so far. I am liking R&S because it's fairly independent, yet he's still learning how to spell the words. I will probably add in some HTTS... maybe alternating between them. He might be able to do some of book 3 now.

Read-Aloud: We are still reading The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. A couple days this week, I even read 3 chapters at a time. Go me! We have just gotten to the point where the group is going to find the Good Witch Glinda. Oz has flown away in a balloon, and the Winged Monkeys can't take Dorothy across the desert. We'll need to watch the movie when done reading this book, as I can't even remember how the movie goes. I do notice that the movie has her wearing red shoes from the Wicked Witch, and in the book, the shoes are silver.

Bible: We're currently in the middle of Jesus' ministry.

History: This week we have done chapter 6 of SOTW2 - the Rise of Islam. We actually only did the first section, but I'll probably have Tornado Boy do the next 2 sections Sunday afternoon to catch up. He read The Three Princes to go along with this chapter and really enjoyed that book. He said he's read it 3 times. :)

To get more writing in, and to give him a little bit of original writing, I had Tornado Boy start notebooking in history the last few weeks. He is enjoying this and doing very well with it! I made some sheets in Startwrite that have 2 spaces for drawing pictures and 2 spaces for writing something about a section of his history. He likes drawing a picture, though they are always stick figures. The funniest one was when he did "Monks in Caves" and he drew a cave with a statue of Buddha and a Buddhist monk. The statue was a stick figure! I have him write one sentence about what he read - all on his own, not dictated or copied or anything. He thinks of a sentence and writes it down. I help him with spelling if necessary. He has done so well with this. His first sentence even had a comma in it, so it was a decent length. Yay!

Science: WE DID SCIENCE!!!!! That's right, we actually got out BJU Science and did TWO lessons! Woohoo! I also had him write 3 things he remembered from what he read, and he did the activity book for the lessons. This week's lessons were about ecosystems.

The Brute

We have not done much school the last few weeks, but we have read some books and answered a LOT of questions... Oh, the questions just never end! This week, he asked, "When is the last day?" and I said, "Last day of what?" He replied, "The last day of the world!" This kid thinks too much. :P

As far as learning goes, we've been doing I See Sam readers (first 52 are free online), and he really likes those! We have done through book 5, I believe. In book 4, Sam (a lion) is reading a book and doesn't notice a hole in front of him. he falls right in. At the end of the story, the Brute asked where the book was. He was talking about Sam's book. Once he falls in the hole, you don't see the book anymore.

Math knowledge is certainly increasing by leaps and bounds. We're still working on basic counting to 20, yet one day he asked what 4+4 was. I asked the question back, and he said 8. Then he asked what 8+2 was, and I again asked the question back to him. He said 10. Then he said, "Hey, that's the same as 5+5!" We haven't worked on ANY of those facts at all in our math, so he has picked them up on his own somehow, possibly from big brother drilling him, and possibly from C-rod play. I don't know. It's just a bit scary, because again, he's still working on counting to 20!

We haven't worked on handwriting at all. I'm still waffling on whether to start him on cursive or do print and then cursive very soon. I don't want to wait until 2nd or 3rd grade to do cursive. I'm finding that that's a really bad time to do it because the kids are just then getting used to writing in print, and writing is finally starting to get easier, and then you throw cursive at them and set them back completely! Why? 5 year olds can learn cursive. So I'd like to do cursive either this year or next year.

I had an IEP meeting with the local school recently about the Brute. He is in speech therapy right now, and I had some other concerns. They have decided to test his language soon, which I'm anxiously awaiting. I think language is what holds him back. They also had me fill out the C.A.R.S. (Childhood Autism Rating Scale) sheet, but I don't think he is autistic. Sensory issues, yes. Language issues, yes. Incredibly imaginative, yes. Autistic, doubtful. I couldn't answer one question on the scale (the one about intelligence). I honestly can't say whether he is as smart as his peers, less smart than his peers, or more smart than his peers. He's a bit of all 3 all at once! That's the big thing I can't figure out. His intellectual ability is very nebulous to me. He seems very VSL, and they are often late bloomers. So that could be part of it. I just don't know how his brain works, how much he knows, what he's capable of learning. I just don't know! He's doing great with K level work - not speeding ahead, not going too slow. He's technically doing this a year early, but he doesn't act or seem academically gifted. It's his questions that make him sound gifted. The things he thinks about and the connections he makes sometimes blow me away, yet the very basics sometimes take him a while to figure out (like counting). So that's where we are. I look forward to the language testing to see where he is and what they can do for him in that realm. That's the biggest barrier to us understanding his speech right now. He uses strange word order!

Mischief

Every day, when I get ready to teach Tornado Boy's math lesson at the white board, Mischief pulls up a chair and the Singapore EM K book A (that the Brute already completed) and a pencil, and he "does maf" with his big brother. Very cute. He can count a little bit past 10 and knows several letters and colors now. I'm not doing anything formal with him, of course. Not for a long time yet. I suspect he'll be like Tornado Boy, teaching himself before K.

How to Spell Book 3 Samples

There are very poor samples available for the How to Spell workbooks (that go with How to Teach Spelling), so I've decided to post a few samples from book 3. This book is meant for grades 4-6. I'm having trouble linking the actual pictures, so I'll link words below the pictures.

Sample 1

 

Sample 2

 

Sample 3

Sample 4