Week 2

We're hitting our stride! This week I implemented the rule that the kids are not allowed to watch TV or play on the iPad until AFTER their lessons are done. It doesn't take long to complete everything...but it does take all day for me to work through cleaning the house a little bit (The Husband has been a huge help lately!), feeding the baby, dealing with our Toddler Tornado, etc. For the most part, Emmett is one of our "older" kids, even though he's three. Abby wouldn't see it as fair at all if the screen time rules didn't apply to him. So, he has "reading lesson" and "math" to complete as well. His "reading lesson" usually consists of talk about letters and the sounds they make. We may complete a worksheet, do a letter craft, do some rhyming, find something that starts with that letter, whatever. Math for him involves playing with our cuisenaire rods.

ABCs:

We reviewed the letter G this week! We made Gs and then covered them with glitter and glue. Who doesn't like glitter? (Besides Daddy, of course...)

PreK:

We did a bit of left and right discussions. We danced a lot of the Hokey Pokey this week!

Reading:

We are still slowly working through Charlie. Abby has also completed The Bravest Dog Ever this week.

Spelling:

We completed step 10 this week. That took us to the end of spelling with short vowels. So far, it has been a lot of review. I have a feeling that the next few steps will take more than one lesson. Mostly it's a good thing...it means that level 1 will last us longer.

Math:

This week, on the Well-Trained Mind forums, there was a discussion about C Rods and someone posted a video that illustrated why I love the idea of these rods. The video is called Mathematics at Your Fingertips and it's on YouTube in three segments (one, two, three). So, I've been taking some ideas from Gattegno's first textbook and using them in our math lessons to emphasize more familiarity with the rods. It gives me a bit of direction for activities to do with the rods before we jump into more formal arithmetic. I really want Abby to be aware of the relationship between them all.

This week, we worked on the stairstep order of the rods. Here she is telling me the order.

We also discussed "complements" and found each train of two rods to make orange. This was an eye-opener to her in some ways. I explained to her that each rod could only have one complement and asked her to demonstrate. I gave her a black rod and told her to find me it's complement, she rummaged through our box and then pulled out a light green. Next, I gave her a brown and asked for it's complement. She correctly pulled out a red. Then I placed a light green down and asked her what its complement was. This is where she realized what I was talking about and understood that the only color rod that would fit there would be black. At the end, I asked her what orange's complement would be, and she thought for a second and said, "zero!"

On Friday, we tested to see if we could cover each rod with just red rods...then just green rods, etc. I explained that when we could cover it with just red rods (2) we call that even. When we have to use a white rod (1), it is called odd. Abby liked this game. The last one we did was an orange rod (10), and when Abby realized it was even, she said, "Look, Mom! Five twos make ten, but so does two fives!"

In her Miquon book, she finished off section A and earned herself a special night. I'm going to hold off section C (addition) until we finish Gattegno's section on really familiarizing ourselves with the rods. That should only take us a week at the maximum.

Five in a Row:

We rowed Wee Gillis this week.

Social Studies:

• We found Scotland on our map, looked at images of Scotland and watched videos on YouTube of bagpipe players.

Language Arts:

• We discussed our names and where they originated them from. We talked about how Wee Gillis' name was SO LONG that they shortened it. Abby can understand that since her full name is Abigail, but we call her Abby. We completed this cute little family tree with full names and also discussed where our kids' names come from.

Art:

• We compared the two pictures in the book of Wee Gillis eating his oatmeal. The pictures are pretty similar, but we did find some differences! To reinforce this, we found a "Spot the Difference" picture online and I had her circle what was different in each picture.

Science:

• This was a big hit this week! In the end of the book, Wee Gillis is able to play the bagpipes. We talked about air and our lungs and how they work. Then, we completed a science experiment that allowed us to demonstrate blowing out our air with our lungs.

• I'm asthmatic, so we have a peak flow laying around. We tried our hand at that too.

• We also made musical instruments out of different lengths of straw and blew into them with our lungs.

Applied Math:

• We graphed how many breaths it took to empty our two-liter bottle!
• We also used our base ten flats and rods to really see the numbers of our peak flow. It was a good practice in place value because Daddy's was as high as 590 and Ellie's was only like 50. LOL

Extra:

• We also enjoyed a Wee Gillis meal of oatmeal and shortbread (cookies). I thought for sure that Abby wouldn't care for it, but she loved it. Probably because I allowed her to put a massive amount of brown sugar on hers.

Memory Work:

Our memory work this week has been memorizing the continents. Each kid got a chance to point out the continents. Abby picked it up fairly quickly and, after the full week, Emmett can point out all the continents too.

Life:

1. We enjoyed our first watermelon out of our garden!

2. I took the kids to the zoo on Thursday. They played in the little water/river area that is in the children's zoo. Abby immediately started building a dam. She even started with big rocks first and then placed small rocks to fill in the holes.

The other kids helped, of course. :)

3. Emmett spent some quality time with his brother, too.

4. Abby played some with our geoboards this week. She was really excited about her house!

5. The kids got bikes yesterday! Emmett has mastered the balance bike. So we went and picked up regular bikes. Abby is still using training wheels, but Emmett can ride his bike without!

Because Emmett got a new bike, we passed the balance bike down to Ellie. She's still a bit little to run with it, but she loves having her bike.