Weekly Report - Year 4 Week 1

Oh, by the way, we finished our year back in May. Ha! We took off a good month for camp, playing outside, etc. Now we've started up again so I don't go insane. It's too hot to be outside past about 9am these days. Though we are still doing swim lessons some days, as well as other occasional distractions.

Tornado Boy

Math: We started AoPS Prealgebra this week. This is kind of scary for me, as it's a hard book, and the kid just turned 9 yesterday, but so far... it's going well! Hooray! I'm discussing things with him and working through it with him right now, just to get him used to the book. We read the material, do the problem set, read the solutions that teach the concepts, then do the exercises. He LOVES the exercises! The problem sets are a bit boring because this chapter talks about why 2+3 = 3+2, but then they use that knowledge to solve much more difficult problems. So the exercises are fun. We did sections 1.1-1.4 this week.

Reading: We didn't quite finish Sonlight Core D last year, so he read Robert Fulton: Boy Craftsman this week.

Grammar: We started R&S English 5, but only did one lesson this week. The first lesson is an intro to the book plus a bit of review. He had to look in the table of contents and index for things. He had to notice the publisher, copyright date, and title of the book. He had to use the TOC and/or index to find answers to some of the review questions. We also discussed how to label his paper (I gave him a different way to label than what the book says). We talked about the importance of having your name on your paper, because in college if you turn in a paper with no name, you'll get a big, fat zero. :)

Writing: We started WWE3 Week 1. He did very well with both the narration and the dictations.

Handwriting: He did a couple pages of Pentime 3 (cursive).

Spelling: He started week 14 of R&S Spelling 4. Unfortunately, we didn't really get to it but one day, so only Part A is done. Oh well. We'll get to it next week. :)

Latin: We began Lively Latin Big Book 1, and this is by far his favorite subject so far!!!! He really loves this curriculum. He loves the history lessons added in, and he enjoys the derivatives work. We actually did about 3 lessons, a couple exercises, a history lesson, vocabulary A, and a derivatives exercise. All that in 4 days!

Read-Aloud: We are reading through the Chronicles of Narnia series and are currently about halfway through The Horse and His Boy. We also read a bit of Swift Rivers, though I didn't get to it every morning as I meant to. Oops. That's another holdover from Core D. :)

Bible: We read Acts 16. The adult class at church is going through the book of Acts right now, so we read the chapter at breakfast and answer my class questions. Tornado Boy does pretty well with the questions. Some require a bit more logic stage thinking, so he doesn't get those. But most he's able to answer.

History: We read chapter 16 of Landmark History of the American People.

Science: Coming in a very close 2nd for favorite subject, Apologia General Science is going really well so far. He is enjoying the text (even though it's module #1, which is supposed to be the boring one!). And he loves the experiments. We've done 2 experiments so far. They were both super easy, but demonstrated the concepts being taught.

Experiment 1.1: Density in Nature

So we learned that cork floats on top of oil, ice floats on top of water, grape floats on top of syrup, and rock sinks to the bottom.

Experiment 1.2: Atomic Motion - part 1

Part 2 (after sitting for a while - the one on the right looks like the left)

In the 2nd experiment, we were seeing how the atoms in water are in constant motion. The boiling water dispersed the drop of food coloring very quickly, while the tap water was much slower.

Please excuse the food on the stove. :P

The Brute

Math: We worked on adding/subtracting tens and ones (separately) within 100. We also did greater than and less than. This was all easy, but we're taking our time. :) Still working through 1B, but we'll probably finish it in a few weeks.

Reading: We did a couple pages of Reading Pathways (he LOVES the pyramids) and one little "box" in Phonics Pathways.

Handwriting: We did one page of Pentime 1, book 2. We never did finish book 1, but book 2 goes over each letter again AND adds words and sentences. He's totally ready to do that, so we split up the page into two days.

Grammar: We started FLL1, which he enjoyed. I had one little issue... When the book says, "Everyone has a mother and a father," The Brute said not everyone has a father. Our preacher had done a sermon recently and mentioned the problem of many kids not having fathers. He was talking about cases where the father is absent (not involved in the kid's life). So I had to explain that everyone has a father technically, but some fathers aren't a part of their kids' lives. Oh, the joys of teaching a very literal child who thinks too much. :)

Writing: We started WWE1 this week, and he did very well! He loves Little House in the Big Woods, which was the first passage. His first "narration" was the same as his copywork from the day before: "There were no roads." :) He technically can't read the copywork when he first sees it, but we go over the phonics involved, and I think it will only serve to help his reading. So it's all good.

Mischief

Math: We started Singapore Essential Math K this week. He did at least 30 pages in the first 3 days. He loves it! He also insisted on doing much of it on his own, unless he needed me to read the directions to him. :)

Reading: He did all of that first section of Phonics Pathways with the two-letter blends. He loves that section and does it VERY fast. He actually did that all on his own too. In fact, one day I got out of the shower, called up to him to ask if he was ready to start school, and he said, "I've already started school." Crazy child.

The Brute and Mischief demonstrated recently that they can both read Go, Dog, Go! The Brute is a good bit faster at it, but both can read it. Yay!

Weekly Report - Year 3 Weeks 27-28

Forgot to update last week! We did do school though, and we've had a productive TWO weeks. :)

Tornado Boy

Math: We finished the geometry section of Singapore 5B. Now on to average and rate.

Reading: He read Martha Washington: America's First Lady.

Grammar: We worked on Adverbs the last two weeks.

Writing: In week 27, we wrote a letter to Grandmama. The little ones joined in this adventure, and Grandmama was very happy to see letters from all 3 of her grandchildren. :)

Also, R&S English had a writing assignment this past week where he was to retell the story of the feeding of the 5000 from the Bible. He did well with this assignment, though we had some issues with the directions at first. R&S gives you a topic sentence that kind of sums up the story, so he used that sentence, then put one more sentence and was done. LOL. I said that wasn't correct and he'd have to redo it. He couldn't get past that topic sentence, so I had him leave it out. He then wrote a wonderful paragraph, retelling the story nicely. We used IEW's Story Sequence Chart to help us, except we made it one paragraph instead of the 3 that IEW does. This gave us a nice outline to work from, and he had no problem writing the story after that.

I never did get around to having him title it...

Handwriting: He worked on some letter strokes individually the last two weeks. We're nearing the end of the workbook!

Spelling: Completed lessons 6 and 7 in R&S Spelling. Lesson 6 was a review lesson with 50 words on the test! He got them all right. I just had to split the test over two days. He also aced the lesson 7 test.

Latin: We have learned "ambulo" (I walk), "ad" (to/toward) and "acta" (seashore).

Read-Aloud: We started reading Little House in the Big Woods as our bedtime story. Tornado Boy said, "I recognize two parts of what you read." Yep, those parts were from WWE1! I've actually read at least half the book to him back in first grade, but he only remembered the WWE1 sections. We're also reading Carry on, Mr. Bowditch! for history.

Bible: Still harmonizing the gospels. Jesus has talked about what's about to happen to him, and said that someone will betray him.

History: We read a couple stories in American Adventures Part 1 and started reading The Story of Eli Whitney.

Science: We lost our Brain last week! But thankfully, we found it and were able to do Chapters 3 and 3.5. We learned that Tornado Boy leans more left brained, but has some right brained tendencies. I'm more left brained than he is. These results didn't surprise me. :)

The Brute

Math: We've been adding and subtracting numbers within 40, using our basic facts under 10 to help us. The Brute is looking forward to getting to multiplication soon!

We also completed Life of Fred Cats and started Dogs.

Reading: Big news here is that this past week, READING HAS CLICKED!!!!!!!!!! He is no longer painfully sounding out every single phonogram of every single word. Woohoo! I knew it was coming because the previous week, he had started to blend the first two letters of the word like Phonics Pathways has you do. This was very helpful! This past week, he has been reading some of his Star Wars Phonics readers (the whole thing on his own, mostly), some A Beka "I Do Read" books, and some Scholastic "High Frequency Readers". He is very excited that he has this new found skill! Yipee!!!

Writing: We worked on "A", "a", "U", and "u" the last two weeks. And of course he wrote a letter to Granmama:

"We saw Jack Hanna at the VBC."

Other: We completed 2 weeks of Sonlight P4/5.

Mischief

Mischief has been in a reading and writing mode the last couple weeks. He is orally sounding words out for fun, figuring out how to spell some CVC words. He is also writing his alphabet, though I realized that he gets J and G confused.

Writing the alphabet... sort of...

"Granmama"... sort of...

Mischief also wrote a page that said, "Love <name>", and he wrote that perfectly (me telling him the letters). Granmama was surprised at how well he wrote for a 3 year old. Now if he'll just pick a hand to write with... :)

Weekly Report - Year 3 Week 26

We've had a busy, but good week! Tornado Boy got braces Wednesday, then two of the brackets fell off the next morning during breakfast, so we had to go back in Thursday after speech therapy to get them put back on.

On top of that, Tornado Boy and The Brute were leaving town with their Daddy later that afternoon for a Nashville Predators (hockey) game. So we had to get all of our schoolwork done Thursday shortly after lunch and still have time for those two to get in a short nap before their trip, since they'd be staying up late. Oh, and our wonder pup, Keiko, had a skin issue that we needed to get checked out at the vet. Tuesday. It's a wonder we got school done at all this week, but we did!

The Brute lost two teeth this week as well, so he's our toothless wonder!

Tornado Boy

Math: He finished the percents unit and did Review 9. He found the review to be quite easy and finished it in one sitting. Hooray! We'll be getting to some geometry next, and he likes geometry (unlike his mother).

Reading: He finished George Washington: Young Leader.

Grammar: We did possessive pronouns as adjectives this week.

Diagram (review sentence)... and that should say "Joel's"

Writing: We did week 27 of WWE.

Handwriting: He did 4 pages in Pentime 2. He's working on capital letters now.

Spelling: Finished week 5 of R&S Spelling 4. He aced the test plus got two bonus words (I never tested the first week, so I took the two hardest words from that week - he remembered them;). He also did very well on the work itself this week. He often has several that he misses, because the exercises can be pretty hard, but this week he got most of them right.

Latin: We did lessons 48 and 49, and had much 8 year old boy giggling as we learned "sed" ("but"). I had to say, "No, not that butt..."

Read-Aloud: We finished Toliver's Secret and Mr. Revere and I. I think I only got to one chapter in Five Children and It this week.

Bible: Still harmonizing the gospels.

History: We learned about the writing of the Constitution and the issues involved with big states vs. little states, the setup of the 3 branches of the government, etc.

Science: We did Chapter 2.5 of "The Brain", learning about the layers surrounding the brain, the blood brain barrier, and cerebral-spinal fluid.

Art: YES! WE DID ART!!!!!!!!!!!!! Ok, we did it on Saturday, but it still counts! :) We did the first activity in Usborne's Art Treasury, doing a swirly landscape after learning about Van Gogh's "Starry Night".

Before

After

The Brute

Math: We worked with 2-digit numbers and did several exercises. This stuff is still super easy, so we usually did 2-3 lessons per day.

Reading: We did a couple pages in Phonics Pathways and read more Star Wars Phonics readers. Ah... bribery. :)

Writing: We worked on the letter 'u'. I think we only did handwriting one day this week.

Other: We did a week of Sonlight and another chapter of Life of Fred Cats. We're almost done with Cats.

Art: Same as Tornado Boy.

Before

After

Mischief

Mischief did a few words here and there in Phonics Pathways plus his little workbooks. He also played Starfall a lot, since he didn't go on the hockey game trip.

Sitting on the arm of the chair...

 And of course, he joined us for art. :)

Before (Mischief and Mama)

After (Mischief)

After (Mama)

Weekly Report - Year 3 Week 25

Whoops! I haven't updated in 2 months! We HAVE been doing school. I promise! :)

We took about 3 weeks off at Christmas, then started back up a month ago and have been going strong. I think the only major change we made in curriculum use is to add in Ellen McHenry's "The Brain" for our science right now. We are really enjoying it so far!

Tornado Boy

Math: We are doing percentages in Singapore 5B right now. This has been pretty easy for him, and sometimes he's done 2 lessons in a day. We are also catching up to that spot in CWP5, so we'll need to slow down there (I like it to be a BIT behind where we are in the textbook/workbook). We're in Volume in CWP5.

Reading: This week, he began reading George Washing: Young Leader.

Grammar: I must say, I'm absolutely loving R&S English 4 these days. Go figure. :) We are now in the Adjectives chapter, having just finished Pronouns. I usually assign roughly half the written work... yes, written. It is stretching him in good ways. He is also learning to write properly from a textbook on loose leaf paper.

Diagramming... and getting silly with the end letters falling into the seas. :P

Writing: We completed week 26 of WWE2, and we also mailed some letters we had written the previous week for a R&S English lesson. His assignment was to write a letter to a friend, inviting them over. The younger boys decided that they, too, would write letters. So Tornado Boy invited his friend D, The Brute invited D's younger brother J, and Mischief invited the Mom Lori. :) Tornado Boy addressed the envelope himself and did quite a good job. The family did receive the letter this week.

Tornado Boy's letter

Spelling: We have completed 4 weeks of R&S Spelling 4. This book is definitely a step up in the difficulty department! He struggles with some of the exercises, but he's acing the tests, so the exercises are clearly working. :)

Latin: We did lessons 46 and 47 of Getting Started With Latin this week. It had been a few weeks since we last did Latin, but he did very well anyway.

Read-Aloud: We are currently reading Five Children and It, which the boys are quite enjoying! For Sonlight history read-aloud, we are also doing Toliver's Secret, and since we skipped it when it came up as a reader (didn't own it yet), Mr. Revere and I.

Bible: We are still working through the harmony of the gospels. We have gotten through the triumphal entry.

History: We haven't had to read Landmark for the last 2 weeks because we read ahead 3 weeks ago. :) We did do 2 chapters of Story of the USA book 2. I personally like Landmark better. We also started If You Were There When They Wrote the Constitution...

Science: We have done 2 chapters of "The Brain". The first chapter included learning a bit about Phineas Gage and Albert Einstein. This week's chapter taught us the different parts of the brain and what each of them does.

The Brute

Math: The Brute is cruising along in Singapore 1B now. He often does 2 lessons in a day because they are so simple right now. He loves math and is good at it. Yay! Right now, we are reviewing numbers up to 40.

Reading: We have recently started using Phonics Pathways, which The Brute is liking ok. We still pull out Dancing Bears sometimes, but I felt like he needed something "different" for a bit. I have also been bribing him with Star Wars Phonics books - he gets to read one after he does his phonics lesson. ;) They have been wonderful, and he really loves that he can read a "real" book, even if he's only reading the bold words.

Writing: I started him on Pentime 1 Book 1 a couple weeks ago. So far, he has focused on the letter A/a and U. And of course, he wrote that letter to his friend:

The Brute's letter

Other: We have consistently been one week behind in P4/5 compared to Tornado Boy's Core D lately, so this week, I finally caught us up! We read all of week 18 in one day, then did week 19 across 2 days. The boys enjoyed listening to a couple Jim Weiss stories on a Tall Tales CD one day.

Mischief

Mischief is working through Phonics Pathways also, just a bit behind The Brute. He sometimes does just 4 words in a day, which is fine. He also has various workbooks that he does independently. He, too, wrote a letter, as already mentioned, and he drew the "Where's My Water?" board game on the back. I love his alligator!!!! He also wrote his name very nicely, but I've blanked it out in this picture. ;)

Mischief's letter - "Dear Lori, Come play." (and some practice D's in the middle)

Pretty good alligator for 3.5 years old! :)

Weekly Report - Year 3 Week 17

And the holiday season begins! We took 2 weeks off for Thanksgiving, when I had intended to only take off that actual week. Oh well. We had to put our dog Kira to sleep the week before Thanksgiving. She was old and had had neurological problems for the last 3 years, so it was expected. She was a sweet girl.

Kira

So that derailed our school plans, and frankly, I just wasn't in the mood to teach the rest of the week. I declared it a week off. We then prepared for a new adoption... We got Keiko that Saturday. Her name in rescue was actually Kira, so of course we changed it. Keiko was dropped off at a shelter with 2 1-week old pups back in September. The pups are weaned now, and one has been adopted (yay!). The other is still waiting. Keiko has the BEST temperament! She's a really great dog. She is a dark sable German Shepherd.

Stalking Aerial, the cat

Ok, so after Thanksgiving, we got back to school work. We had a good week, and our main interruption was getting a piano - finally! We had been planning to get one last April, but then the garage fire happened literally within 2 weeks of our planned piano purchase date. DH had to set up his "office" in the space that the piano was going, so the piano had to wait until the garage office was fixed up again. The day before Thanksgiving, we stopped by a piano store and purchased a digital piano. It was delivered Monday. In the piano store, I taught Mischief where middle C is. He still remembered it on Monday! He proudly tells everyone where it is. :)

Mischief playing piano

Tornado Boy

Math: We covered multiplication and division of decimals by whole numbers and multiplication and division of decimals by 10, 100, and 1000. Most of this was review. We also did several pages of CWP, finishing up fractions and getting most of the way through area and perimeter. Tornado Boy loves CWP time.

Reading: He read Benjamin Franklin of Old Philadelphia two weeks ago when all this was originally assigned. It's a library book, so I had him read it on our way to get Keiko (4 hour drive). He finished it pretty quickly and liked the book, as I thought he would.

Grammar: We did some usage lessons in R&S this week: raise vs. rise, lay vs. lie, set vs. sit. These lessons were a good reminder to me as well. ;)

Writing: We started to do a rewrite of the Princess and the Pea for Unit 3 of IEW SWI-A. Unfortunately, the unit 3 thing just didn't make enough sense to me in this one. I pulled out the example outline and was thinking, "Huh?" So I've decided to shelve unit 3 until I get/watch Teaching the Classics. Perhaps that will help some. I think we will move on to Unit 4, which I can handle and Tornado Boy can handle. So in lieu of IEW this week, we did a R&S lesson on writing a report, which happened to use key words from multiple sources. He wrote a paragraph on Bobwhites (a type of quail). I didn't have him add any dressups or anything like that. He did ok.

Spelling: We did the review week 30 this week.

Latin: We did 2 lessons - puella (girl) and amo (love/like).

Read-Aloud: We started Johnny Tremain this week for Sonlight. We are at the part where he has just injured his hand very badly. We are also still working through I, Robot and should finish it this week. We're in the last "story". Tornado Boy is enjoying it, as am I. The little ones... not so much. They tend to fall asleep while reading. :)

Mischief during I, Robot

Bible: Still harmonizing the gospels. It's now the last week of Jesus' life. We also did Proverbs daily.

History: We read the Landmark book 2 weeks ago, so I can't remember the topic now. We also learned about the French and Indian war in the Story of the USA book.

Science: Skipped this week.

The Brute

Math: We practiced addition and subtraction within 20 this week, doing two exercises in the workbook and some mental math strips (the latter focused on facts within 10). We also finished Life of Fred Butterflies and started Cats.

Reading: We continued with Dancing Bears and did very well. We also worked on saying /ch/ properly, and his SLP also worked on that during speech therapy. He then told her toward the end, "Can we stop making that sound now?" :)

Writing: We did several new words in WRTR this week, writing them in print and cursive on a lap size white board.

Other: We finished Sonlight P4/5 week 13.

Mischief

Our biggest accomplishment was taking a NAP on Wednesday so he was pleasant in Bible class that night! :P I'm not really sure what Mischief did academically this week, as Tornado Boy was "teaching" him. He did join in on the WRTR lessons with The Brute, often saying the word before The Brute even tried. Sigh. I know at one point, he copied the word "stop", then sounded it out and told us it was "stop". Good job, kiddo!

Mischief writing/reading "stop"

Weekly Report - Year 3 Week 16

This week has gone very well! We used our brand new school room for the first time, and I can't believe how much that helped us stay on task and be productive.

The Brute and Mischief helping Daddy put shelves together

All moved in!

My husband plans to put a big white board on the wall those desks are facing. Currently, I just have my old 2'x3' on an easel in the corner by that wall.

The white shelves separate the "school area" from the "toy area". I wasn't sure how well that would work, but so far, it has been fine. Library books are on the back side of the shelving unit also, so sometimes the kid that isn't doing school can be back there reading. In fact, one day, Mischief was reading so quietly there that I forget he was back there! :)

Tornado Boy

Math: We did Exercises 3-7 in the decimals unit. They were pretty easy, but it was good to practice those concepts a bit. We also did 2 pages per day of CWP5. This week was Fractions, and those problems were mostly easy for Tornado Boy. He loves fraction word problems!

Reading: He finished reading The Matchlock Gun.

Grammar: We did 3 lessons in R&S English 4, including action verbs with and without direct objects and learning about predicate nouns. These are all review topics for Tornado Boy, but it had been a while since he diagrammed, and he likes diagramming. :)

Writing: I had intended to do IEW this week, but when I made the schedule, I forgot to put it on there, and I had already messed up the first printing of the schedule and reprinted once, so I decided to let it go one more week. We'll do the rewrite of the Princess and the Pea the next two weeks before our Thanksgiving break. I did not replace the writing this week, but I did have him do the exercises in R&S that included writing a couple original sentences based on a picture. He had those in two of the lessons and did them with ease, with all words spelled correctly! Hooray!

Spelling: We finished week 29 of R&S Spelling 3. 100% on the test. I had forgotten to test week 28, but I gave him one of the harder words from that list, and he got it correct also. Next week is a review lesson.

Latin: We did 2 lessons this week - tabula and aqua.

Vocab and Poetry: Just here for placeholders in case we ever get back to them. :P

Read-Aloud: We finished the 5th story in I, Robot and started the 6th.

Bible: Continued harmonizing the gospels. Our daily reading schedule has dates, and we finished September this week. Ha! We're a bit behind, but that's ok. I'm not in a hurry. We just plug along at our pace. :) We also read Proverbs each day.

History: We read a lot about the House of Burgesses and the Virginia Aristocracy this week in the Landmark book. It was interesting reading about some colonial times elections in Virginia while the US elections were going on for us. Some things haven't changed.

Science: I forgot to put this on the schedule also. :P

The Brute

Math: We did exercises 12 and 13, plus Mental Math 2 and 3. We are now adding and subtracting within 20 pretty well. My biggest challenge during math time is getting him to write numbers properly instead of big, scary numbers or numbers that are eating other numbers, etc. :)

Reading: We finished a whole page of Dancing Bears.

Writing: I started the WRTR word list this week, doing both print and cursive. The Brute sits at his desk with his lap size white board, and I write the words on the board and have him read and copy them in manuscript and then cursive. This is NOT how Spalding is supposed to be done, btw. So don't copy this and think it's Spalding. ;)

Other: We finished P4/5 week 12.

And we have bad news about our pet "Astronaut"... When you see a caterpillar make an upside down 'V' like this, it's a virus:

He stayed up there for a couple days, then finally died, hanging on by only one pair of legs in the middle. Dr. Google said virus, and sure enough, he didn't make it. :(

I still need to move some leaves around to see if Flower is still alive. I'm hoping he's in chrysalis form now.

Mischief

Tornado Boy worked with Mischief a few days this week, using a variety of preschool to first grade workbooks, including The Brute's Singapore 1A (no, Mischief is not actually ready for 1A :P ). He also joined in on The Brute's WRTR lesson, reading those words.

And the funny for the week... Thursday, Mischief came out saying, "Ok, I have my clothes on!" My reply was, "I wasn't planning to rob anyone's house today..."

He did change again before taking The Brute to speech therapy that day:

And later, I found another hat (or toque, for the Canadians) and put it on Tornado Boy, who was complaining that he was cold:

Doing school work so they don't have to have a life of crime...

Weekly Report - Year 3 Week 15

To contrast with last week, we hardly did anything this week. :) I've been busy cleaning house and planning for a big birthday party. We do a large party for 6th birthdays, and The Brute turned 6 on Thursday! So several families came over for a cookout Saturday, and I had to do errands two days this week, with cleaning the other days.

So...

Tornado Boy

Math: We did the first 2 exercises of Singapore 5B, and we also did all of the non-challenge problems in the first unit of CWP5, working them together at the white board. We'll do the challenge problems next week!

Read-Aloud: We finished The Witch of Blackbird Pond Friday, and we also finished the 3rd chapter of I, Robot - Reason and the 4th chapter - Catch That Rabbit.

The Brute and Mischief

No school work, but we did find another caterpillar in the flower bed, sitting on a piece of drift wood. It's an American Dagger Moth. I read that they eat maple leaves, so I stuck some in the habitat and caught him. He's doing well, and he's been climbing all over the sticks and leaves, chomping loudly on the leaves. Mischief named him Astronaut. Our other caterpillar, Flower (named by The Brute), is likely in chrysalis form now. I'm not completely sure. I know where he is, under some leaves, and I have seen some web-like stuff down there, so I'm hoping that's what he's doing. :)