Week 21

PreK:

Emmett didn't do much formal this week. He enjoyed tagging along where he wanted to, but mostly played with Ellie while Abby did her thing. I did get him playing with some C rods a bit.

Math:

We worked through Week 23 of MEP 1B. Our focus number was twelve this week. Abby was off this week, though, and we had lots of resistance.

You can sort of see her daydreaming a bit here:

So, each day we quickly worked through our MEP 1B sheet and then jumped into some Miquon. Miquon is a lot more fun for her right now.

I do want her to continue to work through the MEP because there is so much practice and problem-solving in those lessons. I think she's just getting bored with the focusing on just one number. I am getting to a point where I'm starting to believe that she is telling me it's "too hard" and she "can't do it" not because she can't, but because she doesn't WANT to. I think it is her way of asking for a challenge. At first that seemed counterintuitive. Why would she tell me it was too hard if she is ready to move on? But the more I evaluate, the more I realize she is more capable of doing things she struggled with a bit ago. A few weeks ago, she was struggling to get through the process of adding past ten. This week I realized that she doesn't know those facts off the top of her head, but she can figure them without a problem. Soon, they will become rote.

Besides...when in math do you get to build little sheep pens with your manips?

Spelling:

We reviewed some words from AAS 1. She still is retaining the rules that she learned. We will work through How to Spell Simultaneously with AAS 2 (I think) until I decide which we want to continue with. Which means...I need to order AAS 2.

Reading:

Abby completed week 23 in Sonlight's grade 2 readers this week, which means she read Frog and Toad are Friends. These books are still really easy for her, which is fine as they are confidence building. She does not like to sound words out at all and gets frustrated when she doesn't know a word right away. For as much as she loves to be read to, you think she'd love reading. She does, to a degree, but it is very frustrating for her because she wants to know every word at first glance.

On her free time, she read several different books in our library box, including books with a reading level as high as 4.9. When compared to this, it's painfully obvious that grade 2 readers are a easy for her. But sometimes it's nice to have "work" be easy.

We finished up The Boxcar Children this week and have moved on to Mr. Popper's Penguins. We've done this one before, but we're reading it again so we can watch the movie for movie night.

Science:

I was planning on finishing up our magnetism mini-unit this week, but that didn't happen. Whoops! We'll move it on down to next wek.

Geography:

We discussed North America this week. We discussed the Grand Canyon, the Great Lakes and the Panama Canal. Of course, we also talked about animals native to this region.

When we do these studies, we listen to the Teacher and the Rockbots song called "Continents." Abby loves it because we dance around and it ties in quite nicely to the continent of the week.

Extra:

• Our weather has been chilly here, but despite that we took the kids to ride their bikes this last week. Abby has been running around with Emmett's old balance bike and the improvement has been remarkable. Her confidence is soaring this way.

• Monday was our 100th day of school! We celebrated quite well. Daddy took the day off, we had friends over, ordered pizza, made 100-day hats and even went to the movies! It was quite the party!

• On Fridays, I try to let the kids do a fun craft/art project that is completely geared toward the process. This week, we did stamps and everyone loved it.

• We also got Life of Fred this week. We're going to work slowly through the first book, but Abby already loves it. She thinks it's silly and definitely fun. We even made her her own "turn to play" book.

Week 20

PreK:

Emmett worked a bit through his workbook, enjoyed riding his bike, and played with our rods some. His favorite game was when I made pictures for the base ten flats and put them on the flats for "buildings." He made a road with the rods and pretended he had a doctor who got in his car at his house, drove to the hospital and then went to McDonald's for lunch.

He's actually surprised me with knowing a select few addition facts.

Math:

We're still working through MEP 1B with Abby. There wasn't a meltdown at all this week. One day took forever, but the rest only took somewhere around 15-20 minutes. What changed? I set an hour for math and told her if she finished early she could play on the iPad. Her motivation sure did change!

MEP 1 focuses on the building of certain numbers at a time. This week the focus was on eleven.

She's not counting on her fingers, she's just excited that she built 11!

Thursday's lesson had her working problems like 20-8-?=11 and 15-?+3=7. At first she panicked, but when I told her she could use a number line, she was able to complete them with no problem.

She completed week 22 without any issue.

Reading:

I ordered Sonlight's Reading Schedule to give us a bit of direction in our reading. When I gave Abby the placement test, she placed into grade 4-5 readers.

For the last little bit, we've required her to read to us without any real direction. And while she enjoys reading, there is lots of why-do-I-have-tos when we asked her to read aloud. I know she enjoys it (she reads in her bed for about 45 min at night)... In light of this, and because she's only 5, I chose to start with the grade 2 readers. Though, we did jump into the grade 2 ones about halfway through with Owl At Home. The first day we had a bit of resistance, but when she realized I was asking her to read aloud easy books to me, she became a lot more agreeable. Last night she told me her favorite part of the day was reading to me. And no, I'm not worried about the readers being too easy because they'll ramp up soon enough. And like I said, she's only five.

For read-aloud, I began reading the Boxcar Children to her right before bed. She's enjoying the extra time that she's allowed to stay up to listen to the story.

Emmett is a bit more difficult to read aloud to. He constantly moves, zones out, and has a hard time imagining...or something. When we talk with him about the story, he is not able to remember as much as one would expect. Because of those things, we've decided to focus on reading Emmett things that he would like rather than things that we think most of the children would be okay with. We think maybe he is just enduring storytime sometimes. So Daddy's been reading Dragonology and the Dragonology Handbook to him and he has been loving that.

Science:

We continued our unit on magnets this week and focused on the poles of a magnet. We made them float, we pushed a car without touching it, and we felt the push of two north poles trying to touch.

Geography:

We moved on to Africa this week and learned about the pyramids and the the Nile. We learned about different animals in Africa (elephant, lion, giraffe, camel, etc). Abby was fascinated with the pyramids and mummies. When I opened our DK Eyewitness book on Mummies and looked through some of the pages she seemed grotesquely fascinated. I was expecting that response. She also seemed a little scared and looked up at me and said, "Mummies don't come back to life, do they?" LOL Someone's been watching a bit too much Scooby Doo.

Extra:

• I've been slowly sorting through what things we'll be using with first grade and wondering how I'm going to not go insane when we add in a few more pieces of curricula. I'm also excited to start certain ones. After seeing Abby's fascination with mummies and some Ancient Egypt things, I'm excited to see how she reacts to Story of the World. I will also admit to being slightly nerdy and enjoying history and being excited just because I like the subject. LOL Because I'm trying to get my ducks in a row, though, I decided it was time to layer on some more responsibility for the two-year-old. So, this week, Ellie got her very own chore board.

• We also visited the zoo this week. It was busy because the zoo was packed and free (our zoo is free on Mondays in January and February). We got there about feeding time and saw this awesome snake with his food in his tank. We were hoping to watch him eat it, but the kids were too distracting to him.

• This coming Monday is our 100th day of school! Daddy is taking the day off and we are going to have a party. The kids are pumped!

Week 19

We are getting to point where FIAR will be a fill-in-the-gaps or school-lite type of program. We started FIAR stuff about a year ago and have gone through quite a few books. A lot of the books left are ones that are either out of print, I don't own and our library doesn't have, or about subjects I'm not quite ready to introduce to my very naive five-year-old.

So, we will be dropping FIAR soon as a main program. We are awesome about completing some reading and some math each day. Soon, we will be adding in science (twice a week), history (twice a week), music/art (once a week), grammar (daily), and writing (daily). History and science will be the big add-ins, though, and will affect our afternoons. I don't want to shortchange Abby the chance to have "summer break" or my chance to plan, though. So, I thought we'd try out doing some "school" in the afternoons by working in some geography/history/community helpers type social studies and science-ish unit studies. In a couple of months we'll take a long break so we will be able to be on break when the nice weather peaks here.

PreK:

Emmett is enjoying his workbook. It's something like this and it's perfect for him because he is still required to "do school" but he enjoys the puzzles. The stickers are perfect because his fine motor schools aren't quite where he'd have an easy time writing answers. I don't know why they make preK books that kids are supposed to fill out page after page...even Abby didn't do workbooks like that at this age!

Emmett is also still tagging along where he is interested.

Math:

On Tuesday, Abby and I were working some through Singapore Math's Intensive Practice. She picked a page and I hopped in the shower because she had told me she wanted to do it herself. She chose a page that had problems like "I am less than 5+2 and more than 6-3." She'd completed three problems and was moving on to number four when I got back to her. She was sitting at the dining room table and I moved to unload the dishwasher when she had a Math Meltdown. "I can't doooo iiiiit! It's tooooo hhhhhaaaaard!"

So I sat next to her: "Abby, what's 5 and 2?"

"I dooon't knowww!" (Which is totally untrue because she's known those facts for a bit.)

"Here are your rods. If the white is one, pull out five and two."

"I can't find them!"

"Build your staircase." *sigh*

After working through problem four, she went and happily completed five and six. I have no clue what was up with just that one problem... and six was harder than the others!

A different day, we did math with the iPad and our new styluses. I didn't correct the problems, the monsters in the drawing app did. That drew Emmett in and he wanted to do it too.

Mostly for math, though, we completed lessons in MEP 1B (Week 21). MEP 1B is a perfect segue from Singapore 1A to Singapore 1B for Abby. Her ability to add past ten is coming, though. It is becoming a lot less convoluted for her.

Spelling:

I picked up How to Teach Spelling this week. I'm waiting for the workbook and hopefully we'll jump into this. Both All About Spelling and How to Teach Spelling are based on the Orton-Gillingham approach. HTTS is more workbooky, which is fine for Abby. If we like it, HTTS will be cheaper...and I like cheaper. :)

Reading:

Abby's been reading books of her choice of late.

For our Seuss unit-ish study, we read through Did I Ever Tell You How Lucky You Are?

We also finished up Mrs. Piggle Wiggle and picked up The Boxcar Children.

Science:

We've started our science talks with magnets.

We learned about what magnets pick up.

We found some ways we use magnets in our everyday lives.

We discussed the force and strength of magnets and measured the strength of different magnets we had.

We also found that our magnets weren't as strong when we tried to pull a piece straight up.

I asked the kids if they knew what force was preventing the magnet from moving as easily and Abby immediately responded, "GRAVITY!" We haven't formally discussed gravity, so it was nice to hear that she has been exposed to the idea somewhere.

After our "experiments" we did some playing with our magnets.

Geography:

As an introduction to our new add-ins, we are working through the continents specifically. Soon, we will be ready for history.

This week we studied Asia. We learned about Mt. Everest, the Great Wall of China, and animals of Asia (giant panda, arctic fox, Asian elephant and tiger).

Abby loves to get on BrainPop Jr., so we watched any pertinent videos on there.

Extras:

We got a chance to play with some Moon Dough on Friday.

Daddy's been training the kitties to stand for their treat. He never thought he'd like having a cat this much!

It's obvious that science was the new exciting thing here this week. It's work for them at all. All I have to do is mention "science" and they get giddy to find out what we're doing that day!

Week 18

We took Monday off this week to get things together and unpack after being gone for a month. I kind of am seeing the beginning of January as a beginning of "second semester" and made a few changes that I'm hoping to stick with.

Firstly, our calendar notebook has kind of fallen by the wayside since we were gone. Instead, we have been working our calendar work with the main things on our fridge. We are still counting days, doing a word a day, writing the date and the weather, etc.

PreK:

I found this sticker workbook when I was cleaning out our school closet. It's mostly just fun "work" for Emmett.

We've also been working through capital letter formation with the white board. I write the letter, he erases it with his finger. He likes this. We have done letters A, F and E.

Math:

This week I noticed we had RightStart B left when I thought we'd do that for math. I tried it again since memorizing her facts past ten is work for Abby. I realized that it is way too spiral for my liking. Anyway, we are going to continue to move sideways with it. We'll finish up Miquon Orange and work through some puzzles with MEP 1.

So, this week, we worked through some Miquon. At the beginning of the year, I tested the waters with Abby and the concept of halves. She didn't quite get that halves had to be equal, even though stressed that we needed to split whatever number into two FAIR parts. This week, though, I explained the concept and gave her an orange rod and asked how we could break it up evenly. She said, "Oh, that's easy. It's five!" After going through ten and eight, she then commented, "The odd numbers can't be broken fairly with the rods here. We'd have to break the white rod in half to make it even." Have I sung the praises of C rods lately?!

We played a bit on Dreambox math. We're trying out the free trial.

Spelling:

We are still working through dictated phrases. I have come into a bit of paypal, though, so I'm going to be looking for AAS level 2 now. Yay!

Reading:

Abby still is reading on her spare time. I'm not requiring any amount of reading. She reads plenty at bedtime. (Our rule is that they have to be in bed and quiet, but they don't have to be asleep.)

We are still working through All About Sam. I need to see if I can put the audio on her DS...or maybe sync my old iPod so she can listen to it in the car when Emmett is wanting to listen to music (which he seems to prefer). The next time we make a trip to the library, I am hoping to pick up some Jim Weiss audios.

We have been working through The Boy on Fairfield Street: How Ted Geisel Grew Up to Become Dr. Seuss by Kathleen Krull and have been fascinated with it. We are going to put FIAR on hold for a while and do a Seussian theme for the next few weeks before Seuss's birthday in March. Then, we will throw a big Seuss bash and invite a friend or two. Abby is chomping on the bit to get started with that.

Of course, read-alouds happen daily here.

Extra:

In the great clean-out of January 2012, I cleared and reorganized our school supplies. Hopefully it is better suited now so I can use our materials better. I've decided that we will be coloring heavy for a while. I'm hoping that between some snippets of handwriting, and lots of coloring, hand muscles for writing will be strengthened.

I'm also hopeful that group coloring will encourage Ellie to sit and enjoy some "schoolwork" with us. This week Abby colored a myriad of unicorns, Emmett did Toothless (from How to Train Your Dragon) and couple of unicorns (can we say follower?), and Ellie colored Dora and WonderPets. (Have I mentioned how much I loathe Dora? She doesn't watch it much, but she definitely knows she exists.)

The Baby:

Hyrum is also joining in on the learning fun! He has finally figured out how to stay on hands-and-knees rather than belly crawl. He has been army crawling for a while and would push up onto his hands and knees, take a few "crawl" steps and get annoyed with his speed (which is about as fast as cold molasses) and get back down on his tummy. He also has figured how to pull up! And now, he is learning how to fall without knocking his noggin.

52 Books in 52 Weeks! - Week 1

I'm not sure if I'll be capable of this if I am back in school, but I'm not this semester (yay!), so I will at least try to keep up with a book a week.

This last week I enjoyed Loving the Little Years: Motherhood in the Trenches by Rachel Jankovic. The book had great reviews and I loved the idea of the title.

So often the grandmotherly type tell me to enjoy these years because they go by so quickly. I am trying very hard to really enjoy the time at home with my littles. They are only so little for so long! I want to remember laughing with them and playing with them and creating with them. I DO NOT want to remember being so worried about having the kitchen cleaned perfectly or the living room in magazine condition. (Un?)Luckily, I have no problem dropping a cleaning project to get my hands dirty with my kids.

I am also trying to wholly and completely put myself aside during their waking hours and attend to their needs. That's a bit more slow-going than I had hoped. As I have been taught, "the natural man is an enemy to God" (Mosiah 3:19, and this is an excellent article on that same topic). I am trying to learn from my children the behavior that I should model for them. In essence, we are a circle: them teaching me how to become "as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love..." and me teaching them to love the Lord and gain their own testimony.

Wow... Okay, back to the book...

The book was enjoyable. It didn't provide many insights or "tricks" that I haven't known or done before. It was nice to hear that other people have and are proponents of "allowing" us to enjoy our children. So often, in our world today, we try to force our children to become little adults.

Up next, The Power of Positive Parenting by Glenn I. Latham.

Weeks 16 and 17

This is going to be a pictureless post because I am already behind and it's quicker to just write out what we did. I did take pictures, but they've already been transferred to the external hard drive.

PreK:

Emmett worked through a few pages in What Your Preschooler Need to Know. He did quite a bit of coloring with us too.

Math:

Abby continued to work through Singapore 1A's Intensive Practice and Challenging Word Problems. I also threw in a few problems from MEP Year 1. She still has some work to do in those, but they are mostly review. We are probably going to take a break with learning new skills and allow her brain to mature because math is a lot of work when she's trying to hold a bunch of numbers in her head to do mental math with regrouping past a ten. I'd prefer for her not to memorize her facts to 20 by rote repetition, rather I'd like for her to work these certain problems so much that they've stuck in her head. The only sums past ten that she can remember with consistency are the doubles.

Spelling:

It seems all of the rules Abby learned in All About Spelling Step 1 are solid. It is time to move on to AAS2...but I have to buy it. For now, we're just reviewing words.

Reading:

Abby is still reading whatever ends up in her book box at night. She reads anything posted on walls or signs. Reading is still work for her at times, but her fluency and comfort level is raising.

She's also excited to get back to the book All About Sam, which she started before we left and didn't bring with her.

Unit Study:

The week before Christmas we paused our regular scripture reading for a focus on the Christmas season. We discussed symbols of Christmas and hunted them the entire week.

Scriptures:

Besides Christmas, we also learned about Enos and King Benjamin.

Swim:

Yes, we were those parents and enrolled our kids in swim while we were on vacation. My parents' gym is actually where my kids first took swimming lessons. The instructor is awesome! We enrolled them in semi-private lessons and in just six lessons, we saw massive improvement in stroke, kicks, and side breathing. Yay!