Week 17

My parents were in town this week so we made our best effort to get schoolwork out of the way as quickly as possible each day.  I'm pleased to say that we had skill subjects down and finished within 60-90 minutes most days.  :)

BUT, because we were trying to quickly finish lessons, I was not as focused at taking pictures.  Therefore, this post will be picture-less.  Oh well.

Preschool

Letter Craft

Skipped this in favor of hanging out with Grandma!

PreK Activity Book

I read the Little Red Hen to Ellie and she sequenced the story.  She also worked some on drawing lines and dots.

Junior K

Language

Reading

We worked through some 100 Easy Lessons again.  Emmett is flying through these lessons that we've already done.  BUT, I have seen some improvement with fluidity.  He's now capable of looking at a word, thinking about the different parts, and blending it all together before speaking.  He can now "say it fast" if he thinks about it, without sounding out.

He has complained that the stories are long and there are no pictures, but he's not sounding nearly as many words, and if he is motivated, reading is done for him in ten minutes.  Right now this feels like a sweet spot with him.  I don't want to try and push him mostly because I know it will be pointless.  When he is developmentally ready to make that jump to automaticity, he will spurt forward again.

Spelling

He is still LOVING the idea of spelling.  We continued to review the sounds all different letters can make.  I am taking this slowly, but he is doing really well.  I also am connecting spelling a bit with his handwriting practice so he is partly dictated by how well he can form the letters.

Emmett did spell his first word this week.  Grandpa has always affectionately called him "Punk" and he even spelled it!  He looked confused about which /k/ sound to use, but after I told him that we hardly end English words in "c" he correctly chose "k."  He was pleased with himself.

Math

We worked through some simple number bond games.  I tried to keep him sums to ten, but at this age, he loves grabbing the bigger rods to see what it is.  LOL

First Grade

Language

Grammar

We worked through Lessons 76-78 which focused on some review, abbreviations in an address and titles of respect.

Writing

This week's narrations and copywork were from The Reluctant Dragon.  Abby didn't love the story, but didn't struggle with any of it either.

Reading

Abby finished up Beezus and Ramona like I expected.  She was pretty insistent that she wanted to read Ramona, Age 8 so that's what we checked out next.  She's almost halfway through that.  When she finshes, I think I might encourage her to try something else for school and let her read Ramona on her spare time if she wants.  We'll see...

Spelling

We focused on the soft sound of C this week.  Abby seemed confused about when to use s or c (followed by e) for some sounds.  I'm sure part of that will resolve as she's exposed more to these words.  Regardless, she'll have a bit more review of these words next week than normal.

Handwriting

She worked on letter n and some review, I think.

Math

We are coming to the close of Singapore 2A.  Abby worked on the chapter that focuses on division by 2.  I'd like to keep the momentum we've got going with Singapore rather than switch back to MEP quite yet.  Today, though, we did work on some MEP puzzles.  I'm wondering if maybe this next semester it would be ideal to drop the IP/CWP from Singapore (which we use a year behind, so there's no real challenge) and add in half a lesson of MEP puzzles prior to her Singapore lesson.  We'll have to see what will work when we get the next Singapore set (sometime next week).  Traditionally, the B set of books have a lot of easier topics (money, geography, time) so it might be fine to have some challenging problems by way of MEP...

All Together

History

This week we read about the Mycenaeans.  I need to find some common household items made out of bronze and iron.  The kids understood that the barbarians were able to conquer the Mycenaeans because they had stronger weapons.  They have a hard time remembering that the barbarians had iron weapons and the Mycenaeans had bronze weapons.  I'm hoping we can take them to home depot or something and see/feel the difference.

Science

We did studied crustaceans this week.  The kids even enjoyed checking out our own crustaceans: roly polies!  These are their favorite bugs ever, so it was really easy to encourage them to work on some science this week.  LOL

Week 3

We are on vacation next week for my sister's wedding!  Yeah!

Preschool

Letter Themes

This week's letter was I.  We used ice to paint (frozen, watered-down tempera paints).  She loved the painting part, but did not love that it left her hand all dirty... Ellie does not like to have dirty hands.  (Remember this post?  Hahaha!)

PreK Activity Book

This week we introduced the story of the Goldilocks and the Three Bears.  We've read it before, but it's always fun when "schoolwork" involves a story!  We read it, she retold it (with figures), we made porridge, Daddy read it to her, then she played it on the iPad even!

Junior K

Reading Lessons

Emmett finished up to lesson 70 this week.  He also read a fair amount of Cat in the Hat with me one day.  I printed out a phonics concentration game that he loved playing.  Our rules were a bit different: If you could sound out the word correctly, you earned a hot cheeto. If the word was a real word, you got to keep the cards and go again.  Emmett LOVED it.  Even if the word wasn't real, he'd still say, "But I get a hot cheeto!" Then I'd sound out a nonsense word and he'd say, "You don't get the cards, but you get a hot cheeto!"  It was every bit as neat for him as if he had made all the matches with real words and I had lost every turn.

Math

Emmett's now moving through the pages of Miquon Orange where addition and subtraction problems are on the same page.  Soon I'll have to buy the workbooks for Singapore Level 1.

First Grade

Language Arts

Grammar

Abby has the Months poem completely memorized.  We worked through three lessons and have finally finished the sections on nouns (hallelujah!) and have moved on to pronouns.

Writing

This week's focus was Rumpelstiltzkin.  Abby had a few days where she couldn't focus on anything, so some of her narration this week was harder than typical.  Usually she flies through these types of exercises.

Phonics

Abby is at the very end of her review of Webster's Speller.  She is confidently reading sixth and seventh grade words.  She still tries to guess an entire word sometimes, but when I require her to slow down and do the words a syllable (and sometimes even a sound) at a time, she's more than capable of decoding them.

Reading

Abby finished Mummies in the Morning and then moved on to Pirates Past Noon and finished that one as well!  It's obvious these Magic Tree House books are too easy since she finishes them in one night.  But at least she enjoys them!  For our trip next week, she's picked a Box Car Children book.

Spelling

We completed the first set of multisyllable words in spelling.  She made two errors on Friday, so she'll have review words.  The first error was starting "contest" with a K and the second one was replacing an i with an e.  Like I said, she had a few days with her head in the clouds, so I wonder if these errors were part of that...

Handwriting

We worked through the letter C in New American Cursive.

Math

It was painfully obvious that the math in the section of MEP we were in was too easy.  So, I took a look at the scope and sequence and moved her along a whole four weeks or so.  Still, the work was bordering on too easy.  The only issue we had with math was the same she had the rest of the week.  I think Abby's just looking forward to vacation next week...or something!

All Together

Science

Because we're planning on breaking this coming week, I didn't want to stop our science studies in the middle of a unit.  So, we did three sections of science this week, which allowed us to pause right before we dive into studying the respiratory system.

We studied how our muscles work with a working model that illustrates that our muscles only pull.  I caught Abby sharing that information with her Sunday School teacher later on, so it definitely settled in her brain.

From there, we moved on to discuss how our heart is a very important muscle that pushes blood through our bodies.  We learned that the more oxygen and food our muscles need, the faster our heart pumps.  The kids did different exercises and we monitored their heart rate to illustrate this.  (Can I just say how extremely difficult it is to measure a kid's heart rate while he's squirming around and two other kids are yakking at you at the same time?!)  It was painfully obvious that Abby does not correctly do push-ups since her heart rate for that exercise was the same as her resting heart rate... But, look at Emmett's form!

Finally, we made a working model of blood and illustrated the parts of our blood and why it appears to be red.  We watched a Magic School Bus episode (Inside Ralphie) that was a great introduction to this topic.  Even Emmett can now tell us the four major parts of our blood.

History

We started our week by completing our project from last week.  We made a working model of the Nile River.  When we made it, before we poured the water in, Abby started jumping up and down talking about how we should flood the Nile so there would be crops going on the side "like it really happened!"  This afternoon, she noticed that there is indeed some seed growing and she and Emmett pranced around for fifteen minutes exclaiming that they were just like Egyptian gods for making the Nile flood.

There was only one section in chapter three, which is a good thing because we wanted to do all of the activities surrounding it.  It was on the first writing and comparing the cuneiform of Sumer and the hieroglyphs of ancient Egypt.  

We first made a scroll for our hieroglyphs.  We used paper from our easel.  Abby told me we should have used papyrus to make it more realistic.  

Then, we used oven-bake clay to carve our own messages in cuneiform.

We put them outside to brave the elements while we're gone for this next week.  When we get back, we'll simulate the conditions of leaving these items in the desert for several hundreds of years by placing them in the oven on low heat.

Week 2

Things are really starting to get going pretty smoothly!

Preschool

Letter Themes

This week we worked on remembering the letter "L."  We went on an L hunt one day that had Ellie shouting, "L!  Look!  L!  Hey!  L is for look!"

We made ladders out of our Ls.

 

PreK Activity Book

This week focused on the color red, which was a good review for Ellie.  Every once in a while she mixes red up with green still.    It also worked with her on recognizing her name in print.  I think after we complete "I" next week, we will make a name bug for her.

Junior K

Reading Lessons

Emmett doesn't seem to struggle at all with what is expected of him in reading.  He doesn't necessarily love the lessons, but does them pretty well.  I would imagine we will see a big jump with him reading early readers here in the next few weeks.

Math

Emmett has most of his math facts to ten memorized.  This has definitely caught me by surprise!  The ones he doesn't know with confidence are the facts that aren't +1s, doubles, or near doubles.  So, he doesn't remember 5+3, 6+3, 4+2, and a few others.  I'm more than happy to let him continue to use the rods until he's really solid with these.

I introduced him to the idea of number bonds earlier this week.  From there, I moved him into figuring missing addend problems which he had no problem with.  Then, I introduced him to subtraction.  At first he was adding the subtrahend and the minuend, but he's doing it properly now.  We talked extensively how adding is putting things together and subtracting is breaking apart.  He really seems to get it from that discussion.  Now looking at a number bond, he can tell me the addition sentences and at least one subtraction sentence for the bond.

First Grade

Language Arts

Grammar

We sort of slacked here this week.  I need to print off "Monday's Child" and review it plentiful with Abby.  We still reviewed proper and common nouns, which went fine.  We're ahead in this book, so I'm not too worried about having had a lax week here.

Writing

Not much to report here.  She did two days of copywork and two days of narration focusing around Pinocchio.

Reading

Abby began Lulu and the Brontosaurus this week.  She seemed to really enjoy the book.  She and I are also buddy-reading Mummies in the Morning to go along with our history studies.

Phonics

Nothing introduced here is new, but some of the word-reading is good review.  She has a tendency to glance at the whole word and either panic or guess, even though she knows her phonics.

Handwriting

Abby really struggled with the cursive b this week.  If there was one thing we could change about New American Cursive, it would be introducing the letters in a more systematic way.  In some ways I was thinking I'd change the order of introduction, but in other ways, I do want her to get good at the bs because they are a part of her name.  Regardless, she really seemed to get it this week.

Spelling

We're taking spelling slowly since we're also still reviewing phonics.  This week, we reviewed step 3 which deals with using why to end short words that end in the long i sound.  

Math

MEP is still fairly easy for her.  She completes the lessons within an allotted amount of time (40 minutes) and usually without complaint.  On Friday, she chose some Miquon sheets to work.  The sheets she chose asked her to divide eight snowmen into halves, fourths and eighths and draw certain things on them.  I wasn't sure if she would understand it, but that was all for naught.  She wanted to complete the entire little booklet and enjoyed her fraction work.  This is where Miquon really shines because it takes things that most people shy away from teaching first-graders and allows it to be attainable (and fun!) at these young ages.

All Together

Science

We learned that all living things are made of cells and discussed the differences between animal cells and plants cells.  We read a few books about cells and made our own (simplified) edible cells.

After cells, we moved right to talking about skeletons and bones.  We have a few fun books from the library and we constructed a skeleton and talked about important bones and their names.

A little bit later, we played bone Simon Says and also watched a youTube video singing a bone song.

History

This week we began talking about ancient Egypt.  We learned about the Nile flooding, upper and lower Egypt, and we learned the myth of Osiris and Set.  The kids did some mapwork that showed the Nile River, the Nile Delta, and Upper and Lower Egypt.  We were planning to make our working Nile River model this weekend, but I forgot potting soil.  I think we'll be doing that tomorrow afternoon...

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.

Summer Fun Weeks 5-9

Well, it's been a bit of time since I've written here.  Summer has kind of created it's own routine.  On Mondays, we go to the movies (the inexpensive kid ones).  Tuesday is gymnastics.  Wednesday I have a meeting.  Thursday we have playgroup.  Friday is our only free day!  Luckily, though, we only have one more week of gymnastics and then the kids will be off till the school year starts again.

The Math

Abby is cruising through MEP y2.  By the end of this week, she'll be done with the first six weeks of lessons.  She has really enjoyed this session of math and it has come fairly easier to her.  Must be nice!  She also has gotten really good at mental math.  She can add and subtract three-digit numbers with relative ease!  She also is capable of working out simple multiplication and division.  I'm sure by the end of this school year, she will have her multiplication tables memorized.  She can already easily figure the x2, x3, and x4 tables.  Today, I asked her what the smallest 3-digit number she could think of was.  She thought for a bit and said, "Negative one-hundred!"

Emmett has started Miquon Orange.  He really enjoys the autonomy the rods give him to figure out the problems all ON HIS OWN.

Ellie begs to math every time one of the older kids pull out the rods.  She has started to play with them, and especially likes to use the ABC book we have for them.

The Reading

Abby has read through plenty of longer picture books, her favorite being the Billy and Blaze series.

Emmett made it to lesson 60ish in 100 Easy Lessons.  He started getting really fidgety during the lessons, so I started splitting them in half.  One day, I thought he might like Funnix, so we gave it a try and he loves it.  There is less fidgeting, and he is flying through.  I jumped back to lesson 40 in Funnix because it has a different scope and sequence.  It's a good thing, because he is double-timing it through and sometimes does two lessons a day.

Ellie, I am realizing, knows a very large amount (if not all) of her letters/sounds.  She plays around on Starfall, but is more frustrated by the mouse than the actual letter parts.

Unplanned Summer Fun

We've taken a bit of time to just enjoy summer.  This week (the last of June) has been the first week where we've been consistently in the triple digits.  As a result, we've done a lot of fun things!

• We've been to the zoo a few times.  One time we even went while it was raining!

• We pulled out the easel and the kids had a great time.  Hyrum thinks it's a buffet table with all of those crayons.  We were surprised to find a cute little drawing Abby must have done over a year ago!

• In our scripture study one week, we read about Captain Moroni and the Title of Liberty.  So, we used tissue paper to make our own "coats" which we then rent into our own titles of liberty.

• All of our tadpoles turned into frogs.  Rather than buying mini crickets or meal worms, we opted to release them.  The kids loved growing tadpoles!  Last week, we saw a few little frogs that were bigger than the ones we released, but not full grown, and wondered if they were our "pets."

• Our blackberries produced a ton of fruit! I didn't get to eat much because the kids were constantly back there nibbling!  Ellie and Hyrum loved it.  Ellie ate nearly anything that resembled black.  Hyrum, on the other hand, was not that particular.  If it didn't break off into his hand, he ate it off the cane.  He ate a few crunchy ones and didn't seem to be bothered one bit!

• The pool has a new aqua climb that Emmett loves to do.  He can actually make it to the top square!  He had to pass the swim test to be able to do it.

• One week, the library had a Reptile/Amphibian day.  The kids loved seeing all the different animals!

• Hyrum is not only a walker... he is now a climber too!

(...and a stripper too!)

• Emmett has been bug-hunting all summer long.  He finds bugs, holds them, names them, and even build them little homes/nests.

• We've been to plenty of parks.

• We've played in plenty of splash parks and water areas trying to stay cool.

• We took advantage of $3 bowling (including shoe rental!).

• We painted.  We even let Hyrum paint.  He did a pretty good job for the first little bit...until he decided to eat the painter.

• We worked a bit in the garden.

• We even learned what happens when you try to jump a car with the cables on the wrong ends.  Whoops!