Week 8

Daddy is finally feeling better to the point that we are out and about more frequently.  We still got all of our school work completed this week, even though we took a day at the fair and had other adventures out.

Preschool

Letter Themes

Ellie wasn't very interested in doing her letter craft this week, so we didn't push it.

PreK Activity Book

She made up for her lack of interest in crafting by completing last week AND this week in her book.  I guess now she's "caught up" (even though I didn't really feel as though she was "behind").

Junior K

Reading

Emmett's moved into reading real books.  We began the Cat in the Hat this week, popcorn style.  He didn't finish it, though.  Next week, I guess.

Math

He's still counting things.  We're just going to work on correctly counting with math names rather than worry about English varieties right nwo.

Handwriting

We worked on forming ms with the correct size when compared to his capital E.

First Grade

Language Arts

Grammar

We hit a section in First Language Lessons where Abby is reviewing a lot of previous memory work and ideas.  I'm pleased with Abby's retention so far.

Reading

We are still working through Stuart Little.

Spelling

We began the next step in AAS that introduces the idea that the long sound of U in VCE words sounds less like "U" and more like "ooo."  She also learned one word that is spelled with a z at the end of the word: size.

Handwriting

Cursive is usually the first thing to drop if we get busy. I think we got some review writing done, but that's it.

Math

We worked with place value and started the section on renaming.  It seems that since Abby is familiar with renaming ten ones as one ten, she has applied the same concept to ten tens as one hundred and ten hundreds as one thousand.  This next section shouldn't be too rough except that we will be introducing the vertical representation of adding with renaming.  She does get stuck with doing things just one way.  I guess we'll see...

All Together

Science

We finished up the section on genetics with a lab on fingerprints.  The curriculum told us to draw a dark mark on a paper with a pencil and then rub our fingers on the graphite and pull the fingerprint off with tape.  I'm glad we followed that instead of doing a stamp pad because it was very easy to see the characteristics of each fingerprint.

Genetics was the completion of our study of the human body. So, we moved on to the next section which illustrated the difficulties scientists might have in classifying animals into different groups.  This activity was a little harder for the kids to grasp until I started drawing the chart on our big sliding door.

History

This week we read about ancient China.  For our project, we created our own Ming Dynasty plates.  We grabbed some plates from the dollar store, then used specialized blue paint to paint on them and fired them in the oven.

We even took the plates to Panda Express to eat "Chinese food" (or the closest the kids will eat) on our plates.

Week 7

Tuesday of this last week was September 11th. That morning, we told the kids (in an age-appropriate way) what that day stood for. Then, they helped Daddy put out the flag.

Preschool

Letter Themes

Ellie chose to do z this week.  Zebras are one of her favorite animals, so of course we had to make zebras!

She still loves putting her letters on the coconut tree.

Of course, Hyrum loves it too.

PreK Activity Book

Ellie didn't request to do much of her book this past week, and I didn't push it.  She much preferred to hang out with Daddy.  When she does ask to do it, she usually wants to do more than one page, so she should "catch up" (whatever that is for a three-year-old) within a few days next week.

Junior K

Reading

Emmett still needs work on fluency.  For his reading this week, we broke up his stories into sections and printed them off. Then, he used a highlighter to find "teams" such as "ai."  He's doing really well.

Math

I realized that Emmett counts to twenty just fine, but skips fifteen.  When he uses "math names" he counts appropriately, so he obviously understands the progression of numbers.  Somehow, though, he's constantly forgetting fifteen.  We're working on counting normally and NOT skipping fifteen.  He counts snacks, lines, stairs, food, whatever.

Handwriting

We didn't work on any proper letter or number formation this week.  If there was something he was writing that we noticed was off, we fixed it.  We didn't do anything formal, though.

First Grade

Language Arts

Grammar

We still worked a bit more with verbs.  I'm sure I could accelerate through FLL, but I don't really want to do any rigorous grammar at this level.

Reading

Abby began reading Stuart Little this week.  She's really enjoying the book.  I preread the chapter, then work through any unfamiliar words with her.  She'll be reading it for the next few weeks.  I purposefully am treating it like a "school assignment" so she doesn't zoom through this book like she has others.

Spelling

This is the last week of review through AAS Level 2.  She did fine remembering that with VCE words, we have to use K at the end rather than C because they DO end in E.

Handwriting

We only got through some review and I this week.  Slow and steady wins the race.

Math

This week was more review.  Abby wanted to go further, but we slowed it down and pulled out the manips and really looked at comparing numbers.  It's nice for me to only do the one easy lesson a day because we are done REALLY quickly.

All Together

Science

We finished up the section on the nervous section by doing a lab about the five senses.

One of the things they used smell for was vinegar.  Our kids couldn't tell us that it was vinegar, but both Abby and Emmett said that it smelled like painted or decorated eggs.  We counted that as correct because we do use vinegar when we dye eggs on Easter.

Vinegar was also a sight item, but it was in a jar.  Of course, the kids all believed it to be water.  After the lab, we talked about what other lab could help them know for sure.  They eat chose to taste the liquid.  Abby scrunched up her face, but Emmett liked it and kept dipping his fingers and eventually took the jar outside.  LOL

On Thursday, we moved on to discuss genetics.  Our kids have never actually asked how babies are made, so we very gently introduced them to the idea that a dad gives a cell and a mom gives a cell and then those two cells grow into a new baby.  They enjoyed the lab sheet where they checked out different features mom and dad had and then seeing which they got from each parent.

History

We learned about the people of the Indus River Valley.  The Story of the World introduced the idea that ancient peoples all lived near a river and used the river not only for water for their crops and to drink, but also to use as roads.  We also discussed citadels and the mystery of Mohenjo-Daro.  One of the activities in the activity guide was to make our own mud bricks because the houses surrounding citadels were made with bricks.  Well, we know what happens when our kids get near mud and we didn't wanna' open that can of worms.  So, we used food to create our own little replica of Mohenjo-Daro.

Our chicken mummy's salt was not wet enough to change this week, so we're waiting till sometime next week to switch it out.  

Week 6

Daddy had surgery on Tuesday, so I was a lot busier this week.  Besides the surgery and busing him and then the kids back and forth to the hospital, when he got home I had to take care of him on top of the kids.  He had a microdiscectomy/laminectomy to take care of a prolapsed disc in his back.  The relief of the sciatic nerve issues has been almost immediate, but the rest of the healing is taking a little longer than he'd like.  It's actually amazing the progress he's made in nearly a week, but he would still have liked to come home and be back to his daily routine in a couple of days.

When he's awake during the day, some of the kids will migrate towards him.  Sometimes they get a quick cuddle and head back off to play.  Other times, Daddy's feeling up to letting them watch a show on the TV in our room.  This is a rare treat in the middle of the school day.

For having dealt with major surgery in our family, I'm amazed that we missed as little school as we did.  On Tuesday, we basically missed the whole day.  But, because Friday is a light day, we were able to make up the excess without too much issue.

Preschool

Letter Themes

Ellie chose the letter C this week.  So, I hauled out the glue and pom poms and we made caterpillars.  She did this one all on her own and was very pleased with her caterpillar.

Having the pom poms out led to Hyrum wanting a turn.  He enjoyed our magnetic ones.  :)

PreK Activity Book

We did some color review, which was super easy.

The book introduced the story of the Three Little Pigs this week.  As I read the story to Ellie, I was reminded of when Abby was three.  She was OBSESSED with the three little pigs.  They played it in the back yard, she drew them on paper, we read the story over and over, she even made a huge cardboard box her very own brick house.  That year, for Halloween the three kids (at the time) were even the three little pigs and Daddy was the Big Bad Wolf.  Oh, memories! (Squee!  Look how TEENY they were!)

Anyway, Ellie enjoyed the Three Little Pigs.  Of course, we pulled out our three little pigs and the big bad wolf and played with them.  When Abby heard Ellie, she wandered over to join in the fun.  It's still fun to do those things!

Junior K

Reading Lessons

Emmett was still giving me grief over reading lessons.  He's got most of his basic phonograms down, so this week we moved back to 100 Easy Lessons.  I'm hoping that just reading the stories at the end of the book will give him a bit of fluency.  That is ALL he needs.

He has also been reading Daddy some of the rookie readers we have.

Math

We're still just playing games.  Sometimes Daddy will play war or something with Emmett.  We're trying to coast sideways because he still is not-quite-five

Handwriting

Emmett worked on forming numbers properly.  Eight and five still give him troubles.

First Grade

Language Arts

Grammar

We're still working with verbs.  This week, we put some nouns on different cards and action verbs on their own cards.  Then we paired nouns and verbs and made short sentences.  She's had some copywork where she is required to identify the noun(s) and verb.,

Writing

This week focused on copywork and narration from Mary Poppins.  I wonder if she would enjoy the book because she seemed to really enjoy the selections this week...

Reading

Abby read Miss Nelson is Missing and a few other picture books.  I have been searching for another good reading book for her.  She loved Miss Nelson, though.

Spelling

We worked the next step of vowel-consonant-e words this week.  She tested them all correct on Monday, but since it was a tumultuous week, we were both grateful to just sail through spelling this week.



Handwriting

We got through G and H this week, which was pretty good... We do lowercase than uppercase and then repeat with the new letter.



Math

We got Singapore 2a this week!  Abby completed the first unit this week, which was basically three weeks of assigned work.  The first few days she was flying through it, but the last couple of days I slowed her down and we are going to plod through slowly the 2a book.  (When I say slowly, I mean at the designated pace.  LOL)  I am hoping to slow her down with math.  She has really enjoyed being back in Singapore.

This week the focus was on extending the number line up to 1,000.  She loved trading out her tens for hundreds and figuring out was 63 tens make.

All Together

Science

Because Daddy had his surgery on Tuesday, we skipped a day of science.  That left one day for science, which we used to introduce the nervous system.  We did a lab where we tried to catch a ruler to test how fast our nerves worked.  I would have thought that Emmett, who has great hand-eye coordination, would have done great at this.  However, he could hardly catch the ruler!  I guess his nervous system isn't as developed as I had assumed!

History

We learned about Hammurabi and his Code as well as the Assyrians this week.  I checked out the Gilgamesh trilogy from the library.  We are planning on reading those this coming week for some review as well.

Our chicken mummy is coming along well.  A few days after surgery, Daddy was able to sit long enough to help change out the salt.  Here it is after two weeks!

Week 5

Preschool

Letter Themes

We did letter K this week. For our K craft we kissed our ks with lipstick. BIG hit with our girly girl!

PreK Activity Book

The book this week introduced the idea of separating activities we do in the day to ones we participate in at nighttime.  While it wasn't difficult for her, in a few activities, it will split even further into morning, afternoon, evening, and night.  These are concepts she is just starting to understand.  I tried to use this same book with Emmett last year, but he was basically a whole year older and it was beneath him.  I've really hit a good sweet spot with it this year with Ellie.  Some of the concepts are new, some are review, but she still loves it all.

Junior K

Reading Lessons

Emmett read a series of stories this week called the Hill of Mud.  He started moaning and groaning about the monotony of reading lessons, so I bought some tootsie rolls to sweeten the deal.  The lessons are not too difficult, he just does not want to do them.

Math

We're taking a math break with Emmett.  He plays some games (War, Make 10, Go to the Dump), but nothing formal is going on here of late.

Handwriting

This week we worked on making sure our ms begin at the top.  Emmett has gotten lazy with writing his ms and tends to just make the two humps.  Because he has two in his name, I want them to be especially legible.

First Grade

Language Arts

Grammar

We have moved on to verbs!  We started a list with action verbs and repeated what a verb is a lot.

Writing

We worked with some copywork and narration from the Frog Prince.

Reading

Abby read Ivy and Bean and really enjoyed the book.  I'm not sure she'll continue with the series, though.

Spelling

We began the first step in vowel-consonant-e words.  These are still review, so she did really well with it all. I did have her reread the word banks as well.

Handwriting

We made it through E, F and some review letters.  She was fascinated with NAC's teaching that there are two floors, an attic and a basement in the "house" in which letters live.  Through her lowercase fs, she constantly chanted, "First floor, second floor, attic, basement, first floor."  LOL

Math

We completed some nice and easy Miquon work.  It was a good confidence booster to go back and review concepts and have them come easily to her.

All Together

Science

This week we focused on the digestive system.

The kids already knew most of the parts (thanks to Magic School Bus and Brain Pop), but they were amazed to find out that their digestive tract is 5 times their height.

We even measured it all out on a string and talked about how it fits in our body (some parts are all coiled up) and then tried to squish that string in our shirts.

History

In history this week we discussed Sargon, the first Sumerian Dictator, and Abraham and the story of Joseph and the Coat of Many Colors.  The kids enjoyed watching Joseph in Egypt and Joseph's Reunion.

We also changed out King Cluck's salt a couple of times.  He is definitely drying out nicely after only one week in the salt concoction.