Week of 07 August

School starts the 22nd of August! That week, I think, I'll start numbering our weeks... So I guess this coming week is our last of summer...

Phonics/Reading:

Abby and Emmett tried out Reading Eggs this week. The Homeschool Buyers Co-op has it on sale and I thought we'd try it out. It was really a good game for Emmett, but Abby was pretty much past it.

We haven't done any formal phonics instruction for a while...we've just been having Abby read to me. She's working on Balto, but I haven't been great about having her read it to me everyday. She has been reading pages here and there randomly during our story time when we're doing our picture books. She's only 5. There's lots of time for more formal reading. :)

Emmett surprised me this week. For the last couple of months we've been playing a game we call Say It Fast. I segment CVC words into their separate sounds have him blend them together. So, when we were playing with our letter magnets and we had the magnets B, A, and T he did the sounds, "/b/" ... "/a/"... "/t/." And then I said, "Say it fast!" thinking it was probably a little beyond him. Imagine my surprise when said, "BAT!" His face was nearly glowing with excitement when I said, "Good reading!" He was so pleased with himself. :) I guess we'll add in some CVC sounds with his letter review.

Math:

I have been reviewing what we'll be doing for math in preparation for school starting. I had a hard time deciding between RightStart and Miquon. RS has had GREAT reviews for a good foundation. Miquon, I've heard is a very different, but awesome program as well. I LOVE Miquon for its use of Cuisenaire Rods. I LOVE C Rods because they are somewhat of a visual display of how I manipulate numbers and math concepts in my head. I finally decided that it wouldn't hurt if we did both. :)

So, I ordered RightStart Level A. It got here and I quickly read through some of the lessons and felt a little nervous because it all seemed really simple for Abby. I made my way over to the RightStart website and took their placement quiz thing and it said to place Abby in Level B. Whoops. I emailed the RightStart people and the lady that (quickly) got back to me said it truly did sound like Abby was ready for Level B. Well, sheesh! I got lucky and found someone who was selling Level B and the worksheets for a steal. It's a good thing I ordered the extra manipulatives for B with the A starter pack. (I was really trying to reach $150 to get free shipping from Rainbow Resource...) I'm still not bummed that I have A. I think it will be perfect for Emmett in a few months.

While all this was going on, though, we played and built with our rods. Abby hasn't seemed nearly as interested in the rods as Emmett, but since I was playing with them too, she joined in. We played some games that encouraged the building of trains and stairs and she amazed me with how aware she was with the rods even if she hadn't sat and familiarized herself with the colors and relationships between them. She seemed to intuitively "get it."

And the abacuses have been already claimed, even though we've only had them for a few days.

The standard came with the starter kit we got, and I ordered an extra junior one. I guess I should order another one because these are a hit!

Five in a Row:

This week we rowed The Story of Ferdinand. The older kids happily sat for this one!

Social Studies:

We found Spain on our map and talked about the Iberian peninsula. Then we discussed what a peninsula was. It really did sink in because even this afternoon Abby was pointing out different peninsulas on our map.

Language Arts:

In the manual, one of the language arts lessons in interjections. I tried to tell Abby that it would be easy to find an interjection in our book because it was a short word followed by an exclamation mark. And Abby looked at me like I had three heads. Apparently, Abby had seen exclamation marks, but she didnt' know what they were. So, I dumped the lesson on interjections and we talked about exclamation points.

We also talked about repetition in stories. The kids pointed out a few repeated phrases. The kids noticed this carried over to another book we had checked out of the library, What's the Magic Word? by Kelly Dipuchio.

Applied Math:

We measured ourselves.

Art:

We acted out a few different scenarios from the book.

This one is Abby sitting on a bee:

And this one is Emmett being the matador after Ferdinand would not fight:

Science:

We discussed about flowers and labeled their parts. Emmett's paper was on trees and Abby's on flowers. Abby asked, "So, Emmett's has a trunk...is that like a trees stem?" Love the natural discoveries kids make!

And here are Abby's notebook pages for Ferdinand:

Life:

We had crazy wind this week and the kids found a bird's nest in our yard after one of them. They thought it was so neat and loved to pick it up and inspect it. We looked on the internet about birds and how they built their nests. It was a neat impromptu lesson.

I got these cookie sheets on sale at Target and I think they'll be nice for entertaining kids while I'm working with another. (I'm thinking magnet play, rice, sand, play-dough, etc...) Yes, there will be mess...but when is there not when you have four kids five and under? I made magnets out of pom-poms as one option to play with them. The kids thought they were a neat blast too. This will especially good for Ellie and some of her fine motor skills work.

I glued eyes on a few pom-poms too. Emmett made a caterpillar out of his.

Read-Aloud:

We've been reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Abby has been loving it. We're about 50-60 pages from the end. Abby's asked me if we can read Harry Potter next. I guess we'll see. LOL I did ask her if she liked Charlie and she said she did, "It's much better than those other books...you know...the ones without chapters." LOL