Week 26

Daddy only had a two-and-a-half day work week, so our school week was accordingly light.

Also, my camera has been in the shop for the last couple of weeks. I've been relying on iPhones and it is really difficult to get good pictures. I tried, though!

PreK:

For the last few months, Emmett hasn't been interested in the idea of anything academics related. I've been fine with be very unschool-y because he is only four.

This week he started building CVC words with our word whammer and has started asking to learn to read. I started out with the Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading, but he seems to need a bit of help blending beginning sounds (the ends are no problem). So, we are working through some of Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. We will keep OPGTR as a complete phonics guide, but probably work through 100 Easy Lessons for a while. He is super pleased with his progress and his ability to sound out CVC words.

Math:

Abby worked through week 28 of MEP 1B. This week was a daydreamy week. While her pages weren't a struggle and there was no crying, there was really no focusing or real paying attention.

She also worked through some problems in Singapore's Challenging Word Problems 1 and she loved those.

She did make me laugh on Thursday, though. She had an appointment at the doctor's for some warts. The doc said she wanted to see her in three weeks for a medication application. Abby said, "Three weeks. That's seven days three times..." As we walked out she waved to the pediatrician and said, "See you in 21 days!"

On Friday, I handed her a few challenge problems. Even though we haven't really covered two-digit addition yet, she knew that she needed to add the tens and the ones separately. I was pleased with that.

Language Arts:

We completed three lessons in grammar this week. Abby has no issue with the difference between common and proper nouns now and FLL is already starting to seem repetitive. I also read her the story of the Lion and the Mouse. Her narration was thus: "The mouse saved the lion from the net." I haven't finished listening to Susan Wise Bauer's lecture on the writing process, but I do believe this was an okay narration for this story for a five-year-old.

Our next step in AAS2 has us learning the beginning processes for spelling words with more than one syllable.

We did mostly review this week in cursive. We had a beautiful week weather-wise and cursive was the first thing to be dropped in favor of parks. You're only five once! We did learn the rock curve in preparation for other letter formation.

This week Abby read Nate the Great. She moaned when we went to reading it, but did enjoy the story after the fact.

The kids and I are reading the Wizard of Oz before bed. We are only four chapters out from finishing the book and Abby and Emmett are really enjoying the time spent reading. The chapters are short enough that Emmett can pay attention for that amount of time, and the book we have has good pictures.

Geography:

Since we finished our continent unit study, we moved on to talking about different landforms. We're working out of Beginning Geography and I'm requiring Emmett to sit in a bit while we do it. They both enjoy it as it is very gentle and there is a lot of coloring and cutting and pasting. This week we worked on hills, mountains, volcanoes and islands. Even Ellie wanted to color a volcano! The first time they sat to it this week, Abby exclaimed enthusiastically, "This is so much fun! It's better than schoolwork!" LOL

Extra:

Daddy had Monday off and it was a beautiful day. So, we went to the zoo! The highlight of the zoo that day was feeding the giraffes!

This Friday was Dr. Seuss's birthday. We celebrated by having brownies for breakfast, reading a few of his book, coloring some pictures and then we surprised the kids and went and saw the first showing of the Lorax that day. It was definitely a good day!

Hyrum came down with a tummy bug Saturday morning, so we've spent much of the weekend catching vomit. We were hoping that he would be an isolated case, but this evening, Eleanor is telling me she has to throw up. To make up for Daddy's short week at work last week, he has a 12+ hour day scheduled tomorrow. I am praying that we don't have a vomit week this next week...