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

Weekly Report - Year 2 Week 14

We took a break last week to go on family vacation to Pensacola, Florida. It was really fun! We saw the U.S.S. Alabama (Mobile, AL area), which Tornado Boy LOVED. He actually wanted to go back on the ship again later. He had so much fun! We also did the Gulf Coast Zoo, the Naval Aviation Museum (Pensacola) - getting to see the Blue Angels practice (very cool!!!), and the Montgomery Zoo (AL) on the way home. The Brute loves zoos.

When we got back, we had one day off, then Friday we dropped the kids off at Grandma and Grandpa's for the night so DH and I could go to a Weird Al concert out of town. I managed to fit 3 car seats in Grandpa's CR-V, though I had to forward face Mischief (I can't find the rear facing base for the Radian):

This week, we were back to school and we had a new semi-official (though not reporting yet) student! We'll get to him in a minute. ;) We also got a new family member, a 2 year old female Maine Coon mix named Padmé (Tornado Boy named her). She should be a great distraction during school, as she insists on being pet constantly. :)

Tornado Boy

Math: We finished chapter 2 and started working on chapter 3 (Multiplication). It starts out easy, so we breezed through some of it - multiplying by 10s, 100s, 1000s is stuff he's done since he was 5 during a van math conversation. So we did a few practice problems and moved on. The hardest thing this week was the balance scales problems. They were really algebra in scale form with shapes instead of letters. He did very well with them until we got to a hard one that had 2 balance scales and as far as I can tell, you have to multiply one scale by 2 to solve it. He didn't think to do that (or know he could do that). There is no solution for the problem (just the answer), so I had to figure it out myself, and that was the only way I could find to do it. It was pretty hard! The others he was able to do though, even with two scales and two unknown shapes involved. He really liked this section, as it was something new. Plus I figure he'll like algebra anyway. :)

Reading: He did library books and the Greek Myths book.

Grammar: We learned about adverbs that tell how often and did some review lessons. Lesson 24 had to be split up over 2 days. That was just too much for one sitting!

Writing: We did day 4 of week 7, and then took the rest of the week off.

Handwriting: Didn't practice this this week.

Spelling: Slacker.

Read-Aloud: Oh! Oh! Thanks to a read-aloud thread on the WTM forum, I got the motivation to start a read-aloud again. Friday night, we sat on the couch close to bedtime and read two chapters of Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. I have this on my phone via Google Books, and it has the pictures and everything. The kids enjoyed it. Even Mischief sat on the couch and listened (while sucking his thumb).

Bible: We only did The Brute's Bible this week, but next week I'll add Egermeier's back in. I have to retrieve it from the van, since Tornado Boy took it in there to read through it.

History: We started SOTW2! This time, we're doing a SOTW Lapbook. I wish I'd known about this earlier for SOTW1! It's quite doable, as you only do one mini-booklet per week. We did chapter 1 and started chapter 2 this week, learning about Barbarians and early Britain.

Science: Skipped it this week, though Tornado Boy has been reading some science books this week in the van. :)

Art: Skipped it, but did some "art" via The Brute's K stuff, so that counts, right?

The Brute

First, our official first day of K picture:

Math: We did 1 page of Singapore EM K book B per day. This is a very nice pace for right now. I also have been using the Cuisenaire Rods to help us. It is amazing how much those help! We were mostly doing how many more or how many less - eg, "5 is ___ more than 2". Instead of counting, I have him use the C-rods as pictured below.

Reading: We worked a bit through Webster's Speller. I expected to do 2-3 lines, but he insisted on doing whole lessons. So I think we got through Lesson 9, and also went back to do the r-controlled syllables each day to review, as those will take longer to sink in.

Other: We are using My Father's World Kindergarten this year. It's a very gentle K program, and should be just right for starting a bit early and being easy about it. I found an All About Me booklet in the MFW K yahoogroup, so we started with that. Here is The Brute's self-portrait, complete with mustache... This kid is going to be fun to teach...

He said he was drawing a picture of himself drawing the picture. LOL.

For Bible, we did the Creation Unit at double speed. The Brute has the days of creation well memorized and recently did it in Bible class anyway, so we're anxious to get to the actual lessons next week!

The Brute has wanted to paint for a while, so we got the paints out to do hand prints for the All About Me booklet, plus we just did some random painting on paper plates.

The paint setup...

Fun with hand prints :)

Tornado Boy colored Earth and Neptune (recently read Apologia Astronomy)

Tornado Boy's random Star Wars picture

The Brute's attempt at making planets

I also got some Kumon cutting books for the boys to practice. They're easy at first, but the boys need it!

 

Mischief

Reading Magic Treehouse! ;)

(no, he isn't reading yet:)

Weekly Report - Year 2 Week 13

Yet again, a little late posting this, but here goes...

Tornado Boy

Math: We worked this week on place value in the thousands and adding/subtracting large numbers. Tornado Boy is good at this, so we didn't dwell on it very long.

Reading: I just had him read library books this week. I need to pull out Phantom Tollbooth again.

Grammar: We learned about adverbs that tell how, when, and where.

Writing: We did 3 of the 4 days for Week 7.

Spelling: We did Lesson 11 in Wheeler's.

Read-Aloud: We got to read one day this week at bed time! I read the Lang's Blue Fairy Book version of "Cinderella". It was excellent!

Bible: I can't remember what we did (this was 2 weeks ago at the time of writing), and the Bible story book is in the van. :p I believe we learned about some of Jesus' early miracles, calling apostles, etc.

History: We finished SOTW1!!! And as we learned about Constantine, I played the youtube video "Istanbul Not Constantinople".

Science: Skipped it.

Art: Skipped it.

Spanish: Skipped it, and I'm thinking I'll just drop this for now. We don't get to it often enough, and learning Spanish just isn't a high priority right now when it's so NICE outside!

The Brute

I have no clue what, if anything, we did this week. :)

Our First Lapbook

As most new homeschoolers do, I've been reading about lapbooking and drooling over the cool things you can do with them, though I was scared of the amount of work for Mom. Finally, I decided to give one a try and see how it goes. As I suspected, it's cool, and it's a lot of work for Mom. :P

Our first attempt is the free Multiplication Facts Lapbook at Homeschoolshare.com. I did not use a legal size file folder. I just used what I had, and made an extension per the instructions in the Hands of a Child lapbooks (click on the freebie one for instructions).

A friend had texted me to show off the lapbook she and her DD had just done (with fancy color folders and colored paper), and she asked me how mine was going. This was my reply.

Then I started cutting...

... and cutting...

... and cutting...

... and cutting...

You see, I have a 7 year old boy whose fine motor skills are NOT his strong point. There is no way he's cutting any of this.

Next we started gluing. I let Tornado Boy do most of the gluing. After he washed his hands between 3 things he was gluing, I gave him a paper towel to wipe his hands on. He did most of the gluing, then he lost interest after a while. I did the inside flap myself. Oh well. Results:

I cut the 100s chart in half and stuck it on the front flaps:

The inside:

Lift the flap:

He started filling in the numbers. I think he did a couple sets so far. He likes his lapbook! We'll plan to do the SOTW2 lapbook this year for history, since it's just one little booklet a week. I can handle that much cutting.

Homeschool Tracker Plus Referral

This weekend, someone PM'd me on the Well Trained Mind to ask if I had a referral code for Homeschool Tracker Plus. I had answered a lot of questions on the forum, so they figured maybe I had a code. Well, I didn't. I had never even thought of it. Didn't really realize they had a referral program.

Well, since I do refer a lot of people, I figured why not? I got a code. It's now on the right side of my blog. So if you feel like I helped you with HST+, feel free to use my referral code and earn me $5. :) Of course, I'll answer questions whether you go through my referral or not. I just really love HST+ and enjoy helping other people!