Week 1

After a few weeks of unfettered summer fun, we started school again this week.  It's just way too warm here in Oklahoma to do much else but sit inside...and if we're sitting inside, we may as well be schooling so then when it is nicer, we don't have to worry about school as much.  I should post this year's curricula in a separate post... Until then, just know we've picked up where we left off and then added Story of the World, Webster's Speller/Blend Phonics, New American Cursive, Writing With Ease, and RSO: Life.

Preschool

Letter Themes


We are beginning letter themes with Ellie.

This week our letter was "E".  We did a few tracings, push pins, rolling it with play-doh, etc.

We painted Es for our letter craft...

Even Hyrum got involved.

Then, we made them into elephants!

PreK Activity Book

She also has her own What Your Preschooler Needs to Know Activity Book.  She was super excited that she had her OWN school work and begs me to complete it each day.

This week, we sang a lot of I'm a Little Teapot.

And, she decorated a teapot in her activity book!

Junior K

Reading Lessons

Emmett is halfway through Funnix Beginning Reading.  Truth be told, it's probably a little easy for him and he could accelerate... BUT, we all like easy things, and he's a boy with a shorter attention span...so easy is good.  :)

Math

I've been having Emmett match up pairs to ten, and he's getting really good at it.  Most recently, he only needed to check what paired with seven.  He's got some facts memorized that I didn't even know he did.  I attribute all of that to the rods!  He is slowly working through Miquon Orange.  He does NOT want my help, so, at the very least, I may show him what the page is asking, but then he figures the rest out.  Miquon is proving to be a good program for him.

First Grade

Language Arts


Grammar

When I told Abby on Monday that we were going to go back to the full amount of language arts work, she cheered because we would start grammar again.  That girl loves grammar!  This week, we backtracked and did a few lessons on proper and common nouns.  It is almost as if she hadn't lost anything, though.  She could also recite all three poems thus far perfectly.  At the end of this week, she started memorizing "Monday's Child."

Writing

WWE is definitely an incremental and slow approach.  We completed week one and it seems fairly simple for her.  She's just got to get more stamina for writing longer sentences.

Reading


Abby's currently working on a Martha Speaks chapter book.  She was excited to find it at the library.

Phonics

I'm hoping we can do a quick run-through of phonics at the beginning of this year.  Elizabeth, of The Phonics Page, has gracefully added an accelerated version of this on her How to Tutor Page.  Abby's already about a third of the way through the checklist.

Handwriting

We only got one page of cursive done this week as we were late in getting the book.

Spelling

Since it's been a few weeks, and we didn't get very far in level two, I thought I'd take Abby back to the beginning of level two.  This week, she completed steps one and two and passed off all of the blend words from step two.

Math

We are back to MEP y2.  Abby completed lessons 31-35.  Most of them focused on numbers beyond 100, so it was fairly easy for Abby.  She likes that.  The only thing that she stumbled on was the terminology that 50 is 10 times 5 and 5 is one-tenth of 50.  I'm sure MEP will spiral back to that a bit later and she will have this great coming-together moment.  I love that about MEP.

On Fridays, we are planning "fun days."  Today, she did a bit of measuring in centimeters in Math Mammoth and then some Miquon fraction-work (mostly halves).

She also continues to create things with the rods.  This little person is her.  Her body is six, and she chose three for her arms because your armspan is typically you're height, so it made sense that the two arms would equal six as well.

ALL TOGETHER

Science

This week we studied what it means to be alive.  We learned that all living things do certain things and compared living things to non-living things.  

We visited Martin Park Nature Center on the northeast side of town.  It was fun to see.  I think Emmett's favorite part was the visitor's center.  Though, you wouldn't know by the way I have no pictures of him...he was just all over the place and I couldn't snap anything that wasn't a blur!

 

Everyone but Abby enjoyed the plot study we did there.  Abby was too busy complaining about it being dirty and being freaked out by the bugs.  What a girl!

We did see turtles poking their noses up out of the water.  Everyone thought that was fun.

We also learned that all living things are made up of building blocks of cells.  We inspected a cell up close, even!

Later, the kids were really excited to tell Daddy they saw the blastodisc!

I was impressed by Ellie's dogged insistence that she participate in all things school too.  Even though I've give her her own "schoolwork" she insists on participating in science.  She even did a great job coloring her sheet!

Abby's:

Ellie's:

History

We completed both the introduction and chapter one of STOW 1.  We learned about what archaeologists do.  The book Archaeologists Dig for Clues is EXCELLENT here!  We learned about nomads and how they ate and slept.  Then, we learned about the first farmers in the fertile crescent.  Following the Activity Guide, the kids colored a farmer using a shaduf and then did some mapwork dealing with the fertile crescent.  We decided to skip any projects this week, but I do believe next week we will be building a working model of the Nile River.