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!