Week 20

I was very busy this week with a lot of orchestra rehearsals and a concert on Saturday, so Daddy took the week off.  We were out a lot because Daddy was home, but we made sure to get our schoolwork still done!

On Tuesday, we drove a bit of a ways to go to the Jasmine Moran Children's Museum.  Of course, the kids loved it.

While there, I found the perfect opportunity to take pictures of our little students.

The Tot

The Silly One

The Reluctant One 

(not just for schoolwork, just reluctant to do ANYTHING that isn't his idea)

The Studious One

Of course, there was a lot more to do!

Fix a car...

Go grocery shopping...

Play with some bubbles...

Learn a bit more about the human body...

...and a bunch more!

Of course, we also completed our regular work as well.  I just didn't take as many pictures of the boring stuff.  LOL

Preschool

Craft

We made reindeer antlers!  After we finished, we danced around to Rudolph!

PreK Activity Book

Ellie did all of her bookwork with Daddy this week because he was home.  She counted out music stickers (one-to-one correspondence), she listened to instructions about where to place farm animal stickers, she did some more or less work and she made a road with shapes.

Junior K

Language

Reading

Emmett is still reviewing stories from 100 Easy Lessons.  He is jumping to more fluid reading and a lot less sounding out.  It took him a longer time to make the jump, but I'm pleased with his progress.

Spelling

Emmett worked through Step 5 this week.  He changed CVC words by changing their vowels.  He learned that every word has at least one vowel.

We hung the spelling whiteboard for him.  Abby got to a point where we weren't using it to teach the lessons.  Emmett seems to thrive on the actual manipulation of the tiles.  Instead of storing it under the bed, we hung it (and another one for the littles).

Math

We skipped anything that even looked like math this week.  Besides living math, we just basically skipped it.  :)

First Grade

Language

Grammar

Abby worked through lessons 83 through 85.  She's now got the first two stanzas of Mr. Nobody memorized.  We also discussed the proper time to use is/are.

Writing

Abby's selections this week came from A Child's Geography of the World by V.M. Hillyer.  Abby really enjoyed these selections.  I also think Emmett would.  I'll have to keep my eyes open for a used version of this book.

Reading

We picked up Ramona and Her Father from the library.  I could've gotten it a lot quicker on my kindle, but she wanted the book this time.  She's working through that for her "school" reading and Charlotte's Web on her spare time.

Spelling

Abby completed step 22 this week.  It taught about the third sound of a: the /ah/ sound.  She learned that a will traditionally make that sound before and L and after a W.  She is now capable of writing sentences such as "Put the water in the tall glass."  I love that she's not memorizing a bunch of lists, but learning a rule and applying it!

Handwriting

She focused on the letter P this week.  Since the formation in manuscript is similar to the cursive formation, it was not a difficult letter for her.  We also went back and reviewed Bs because those are really difficult.

Math

Abby has completed Singapore Math 2A!  She worked through some end of semester review.  I also added some addition review from Math Mammoth 2B.  I've seen vast improvement between fluidity with multi-digit addition with this review.

All Together

Science

We learned about reptiles this week!  We went to the zoo to get a good glimpse of some reptiles and amphibians in the herpetarium.  We also saw GIANT reptiles at the Galapagos turtle exhibit.

We focused on how reptile bodies are specially designed to endure harsher conditions than amphibians and did an experiment to illustrate how have scales/thick skin can be an advantage.

History

We moved back to Greece this week.  We learned about two important ancient Greek cities: Sparta and Athens.  Emmett told me he would have loved to live in Sparta, but Athens might have been a little bit boring.  LOL

We also began listening to D'Aulaires' Book of Greek Myths on audiobook.  Abby really enjoys these.  She's stayed up late a few nights listening and following along in the book.

Week 19

It looks like I took all of one picture of schoolwork this week...

Preschool

Craft

We cut out snowflakes this week!  Scissors are a great exercise in fine motor skills and Ellie struggles with these as well. We have these scissors where she can grip the whole of the scissors with her hand.  She LOVED them for this activity.

PreK Activity Book

Ellie reviewed patterning and drawing dots and lines.  The book also had her color in a boat.  She is our first child to have any interest in coloring and staying in the lines at this age.  The older two were just interested in drawing, no coloring please.

Junior K

Language

Reading

Emmett has made the jump to self-identifying as a reader!  He climbs in bed and starts to sound out/read books.  He usually reads Little Critter books on his own.

Spelling

We introduced the letter tiles and sound cards this week.  Emmett focused on identifying vowels and consonants.

Math

We played some games as a family in the evening...but adding two dice together was about all he did this week.

First Grade

Language

Grammar

Abby did lessons 82 and 83 this week, which focused on Mr. Nobody.  This poem is longer than others that she's memorized, so we're taking it in chunks.  She's already got the first stanza down (and so does Emmett!).

Writing

Her selections came from The Light Princess by George MacDonald.  She was intrigued by this story and might be one we have to read together in the future.

Reading

I was a bit slow in getting to the library, so she read a few picture books that were history and science related.  She did begin Charlotte's Web on her own on Friday.

Spelling

Here is where my only picture comes in!  This week Abby learned that words don't end in u or v.  Now she knows that "English words don't end in i, j, u, or v."  In order to save the words from ending in u or v, she learned that we typically add a silent e at the end of the word.

Handwriting

Abby did O this week.  O has a harder connector in cursive so I thought it might be difficult for her, but with the simplicity of the letter shape, she did just fine.

Math

She did the section involving dividing by 3.  This was frustrating for her because she doesn't have her 3 multiplication facts memorized.  So, in order for her to figure it out, she had to either skip count or pull out her rods...which apparently made her feel dumb because she couldn't just KNOW the answer.

All Together

Science

This week we discussed amphibians.  We compared the metamorphosis of frogs and butterflies or incomplete and complete metamorphosis.  The kids made life cycle wheels for that.  They also learned about how newts "hear" with their legs.  We did a lab that displayed how sound travels and that really it's just movement.  Part of the lab involved playing with a slinky, so of course that was fun!

History

We learned about the Medes and the Persians this week.  The kids learned about Cyrus the Great and how he became the leader in Persia and then moved over and conquered all the way to the Indus River and then back through and even conquered Babylon!  (Apparently, Babylon is Abby's favorite.)  We left off with the cliffhanger that there was one country that the Persians didn't conquer - Greece!

Week 18

Preschool

Letter Craft

We are forgoing letter crafts this month for Christmas activities!  This week we strung Fruit Loops for the Christmas tree.  Abby and Emmett also strung, of course, but Ellie zoomed past them with her strand.  She loves stringing things.

PreK Activity Book

Ellie worked some with one-to-one correspondence (with stickers!) and drawing some more lines and dots.  We're working on proper pencil grip as well.  It looks like she might adopt a quadropod grip.

Junior K

Language

Reading

Emmett is still working well with reading me the stories from the last half of 100 Easy Lessons.  It's nice to have found a place where it's challenging, but not too challenging.

Spelling

Emmett did Step 2 this week, which was segmenting words into their different sounds.  When I did this step with Abby, she looked at me as if I was joking her because it was so easy for her.  She had been "spelling" her own words for a while.  Emmett, on the other hand, struggled for the first day with this exercise for the first day.  After that, he sailed through it.

Math

We did some work with number bonds again.  I'm not doing anything real formal with him because he's working fairly diligently with his reading.

First Grade

Language

Grammar

We worked through lessons 79-81 which reviewed titles of respect and her memorized poems.  We also introduced the poem Mr. Nobody, which will be her last bit of memory work for first grade grammar.

Writing

This week's selections came from A.A. Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner.  Being very familiar with Pooh, this was rather exciting for her.

Reading

Like I expected, Abby finished up Ramona Quimby, Age 8 this week.  She took the test and passed with 100%.  I think she's saving her points for a chocolate bar.

Spelling

Abby worked through step 20 this week, which talks about the soft sound of g.  This wasn't hard after last week discussing the soft sound of c.

Handwriting

We just got through some review this week.

Math

This was the last new section of Singapore Math 2A.  It deals with multiplication and division with 3 facts.  We just worked through the multiplication section this week.

All Together

Science

We peeked in on the world of fish this week.  Of course, this meant that we had to go get our OWN fish for observation.

We did an experiment that demonstrated how fish can stay at a certain level of water without working hard.  The kids thought this was almost magic.  This is why they love science!

History

In history this week, Greece got civilized again!  We discussed the writings of Homer, which the kids were somewhat familiar with because we read Mary Pope Osborne's Tales From the Odyssey.

We also learned about the Olympics.  We had our own mini olympics outside with footraces and discus throwing.