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.