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.