Week 7

I toyed with the idea of doing a rotation of six weeks school and one week off, which would have put us off this week...but we were just feeling like we were going somewhere. So, instead of taking the week completely off, we did a lighter version of school and dropped FIAR this week. We just read lots of library books in the absence of a FIAR book.

Also: Abby got her first pair of footed pajamas for the winter this week. If she was at home, she was in them. So, even though she's in jammies, these pictures did occur on different days and different times. Another unspoken benefit of homeschooling.

ABCs:

We are running out of letters...after this week's letter (Z), we only have four left. We made zig zags for Z this week. I have specialty scissors that cut jagged edges. They're originally supposed to be used for scrapbooking and cardmaking...but let's be realistic: I'm not crafty like that.

PreK:

Mostly we just played around with classification this week. We sorted by big and small, short and small, shapes and colors. The favorites was colors, of course. Ellie also joined in on these activities as she is still learning her colors (or maybe it's just that's she's finally starting to care about colors).

Emmett also used the iPad to trace some letters and even attempt some Rocket Math. And, because Emmett did it, Ellie had to try it too.

There was one day, where I was teaching Abby a math lesson, Hyrum was asleep, Ellie was in the way (as usual!) and I realized I hadn't seen Emmett for a few minutes. When I went looking for him, he was up on Abby's bed, "reading" Little Critter.

Reading:

Abby is still working through Magic Tree House 5 with me. She also is constantly reading throughout the day too. Her favorite time to read is before bed, though. After reading for about an hour, she usually comes out and tells us she can't sleep. Of course not!

Math:

We took a week to just review and go over number bonds. From what I understand, number bonds are crucial to being able to succeed with Singapore Math. I had been led to believe that it might be a bit of a conceptual leap for Abby since she is still only 5 (and a young 5 at that). Mostly, though, it was a bit underwhelming, though. I showed her what the bonds were, how they were notated and then let her work on them. And she totally gets them in almost a "What's the big deal?" fashion. I attribute this really to the Cuisenaire rods and being able to see what I'm talking about.

One day we did number bonds on the sliding door with dry erase. (They love to write on the glass with dry erase markers.)

Abby caught me reading about a game, Math Rider, this week and asked me to play it. It went over okay, except Abby doesn't have the keyboard skills to be as quick as she'd like. So, I sat and typed the answers for her. In her zeal to be quick, she'd sort of freak out before sitting and remembering the answer. I think we'll put games like this on hold for a bit.

On Thursday, built sum towers. We basically used our rods and flats to build towers. Our pillars started as only 1cm high, then we progressed to 2cm, all the way to 10cm. This was awesome, though, because we only used an introductory set of rods which only have 4 rods each of the 5-10 rods. So then, because we ran out on the first level, we had to build the numbers in a different way. She really liked this lesson and I have a feeling it will be one we repeat to review our number bonds. While it was a lesson in building different numbers for Abby, it was a lesson in patience for me because the two-year-old wanted to help too!

This is our "seven" tower.

Spelling:

We reviewed our previous rules and completed lesson 20 which discussed the digraph /ng/.

Extra:

Because we had had a stomach bug run through our house all last weekend, we discussed germs and the importance of washing our hands. I demonstrated how our hands are dirty even if they appear clean by having them handle two peeled potatoes.

We also found some kind of seed pod after swim lesson on Thursday. I had the kids grab a few and told them we'd open them up for a science project. All I have to do is say "science experiment" and they are all running towards me with excitement in their eyes.