Week 13

Last week was a scheduled break.  It was also Emmett's birthday.  He turned five years old!

Preschool

Letter Themes

Seeing as this was the week of Halloween, we did some Halloween stuff instead!  We read a ton of Halloween books.  One of the favorites was Go Away, Big Green Monster by Ed Emberly.  So, we made monster masks.  Ellie enjoyed this, and even Hyrum got a big kick out of putting the monster to his face and then letting out a pseudo scream.

The older three constructed their own monster faces.

PreK Activity Book

The book focused a lot on reviewing our senses and then patterns.  I was surprised that Ellie could continue AB patterns with relative ease.  Imagine that!  She loved doing it with her Halloween candy even.

Junior K

I didn't get many pictures of Emmett doing schoolwork this week.  He doesn't cooperate half the time to take a picture.  BUT, the highlight of his week (besides Halloween) was his swim class.  He's LOVING it!  He just wishes there weren't as many kids in his class because they're all bigger and he gets bowled over occasionally.  He is at least three years younger than any other kid in his class.

Reading

Emmett is continuing to work on his fluency.  This week he read books 22-26 in the I See Sam readers.  He also worked on a few other books on his spare time.

Math

He moved into numbers above 10 and number bonds.  He is a bit of a know-it-all when it comes to math.  He, of course, doesn't know it all, but he likes to think he does.  LOL

First Grade

Language

Grammar

We continued on through and finished up some work with months of the year and seasons and abbreviations.  I should accelerate Abby through this stuff, but she loves that it's easy and she is only six.

Writing

Her selection this week came from The Saturdays.  Abby really enjoyed listening to the story selections from this book.  It might be a good read-aloud in the near future.

Reading

Abby finished Ramona, the Pest!  She loved it.  To celebrate, we redeemed her next coupon for Book-It on Friday.  She went to the library and picked out her next book: Meet Molly, An American Girl.

Spelling

Abby learned "/er/ as in her," and applied that sound to words.  She that we call such a syllable an R-controlled syllable.  Now she points them out in reading.  LOL

Handwriting

We continued to work on marker/pen/pencil pressure and some cursive work.  She worked through the letters K and L and their review parts.

Math

This week was a scheduled review week.  She only missed one or two problems the entire week, which was pretty good.  She did have to review the meaning of division a time or two on Monday, though.  I guess taking a week off'll do that to you.

She's also started annotating her regrouping when she needs to hold a lot of it in her head.  She even does it for problems in the horizontal representation.

(She's moving her hand up to erase the two and change it to a one, here.)

I knew that eventually she would adapt and change how she solves problems.  That's fine with me.  As long as what she's doing is mathematically correct, she can work it however she'd like.

All Together

Science

We learned about echinoderms this week.  The kids thought it was a really interesting unit.  They thought it was wicked that a sea cucumber can spit out its intestines and asked to watch video after video of it on youtube.  LOL

History

This week we moved back to Mesopotamia with the Phoenicians.  The kids really retained the part about them making glass, especially since we watched videos of people today blowing glass.

We made our own purple dye and dyed some yarn.  No stinky snails here, please!  No way!  Instead we used kool-aid and the crock pot to dye some yarn.  When it is sufficiently dried and I have a second, I will knit it up for Abby and she will have her own hat that is the color of the kings.

Week 10

We had a very full week, just not full of school!

Daddy had Monday off and we went to Chuck E Cheese to celebrate Emmett's birthday. Before that, though, we took Hyrum to the doctor because he had been MISERABLE. It turns out he had pharyngotonsillitis. He was happier with a bit of tylenol. He was prescribed an antibiotic for a budding ear infection which seemed to take care of other things because he was like a new baby on Tuesday!

Daddy flew on Tuesday which meant I was with the kids all on my lonesome until about five minutes before bed. That was also a long day.

Wednesday we had a mega-clean. The house has been a mess with a two-year-old to mess it up and a baby to prevent me from cleaning it too much. Daddy's been pitching in, but it needed an over haul.

Before:

After (the carpet even got steam cleaned!):

Also, on Wednesday night we went grocery shopping as a family. We were ending our shopping trip when Ellie stood up in the cart and then fell out and landed on her head on the concrete. She had a severe breath-holding spell and we felt it prudent to take her to the ER to make sure she was okay. Her x-ray and CT came out normal, but it made for a long night.

This left us recovering from that on Thursday...

(You can kind of see the huge knot on her forehead here.)

Friday, Daddy was off and we ran a lot of errands.

Because it was such a long week with many unplanned interruptions, we skipped spelling completely this week and our unit study is stretching into Week 11. We also skipped ABCs and did a lot of crafts in preparation for Halloween this week. That's the beauty of homeschooling!

Crafts:

We were gifted this haunted house activity last year. It's just stickers of windows and doors and boards to stick on the house. Perfect for a two-year-old.

This was a repeat from last year. We use tacky glue on the shiny side of freezer paper and when the glue dries, we peel it off for an awesome spider web. This year, we made thumbprint spiders to put on our webs.

We made spiders out of egg cartons and pipe cleaners.

We made a spiderweb fort that the kids climbed in and out of. Our egg carton spiders hung out on here too.

Abby wove a spiderweb with some yarn.

We also made spiders out of our palms, but for whatever reason, I don't have a picture of that one in action. I do have a picture of our displayed crafts where you can seem them, though. You can also see the glue webs dry. They really come out neat.

Our last craft was the monster we traditionally make out of all the kids' outlines. They think it's awesome with all of that paper on the floor and the markers spread out.

Reading:

I'm still reading Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle as our read-aloud. In the car, we listened to Pippi Longstocking. Abby loved this one almost better than Pooh. We finished the entire audio book within a week. Abby read an assortment of picture books to me for her reading.

Math:

Abby finished off the first unit in Singapore that deals with addition and subtraction. This week the focus was on position and ordering, which was almost like having a break in math.

She continued to review pairs that make ten. She liked playing pyramid solitaire this week.

She also did some measuring pages in her Miquon Orange book.

I've started a bit more formal time for Emmett to work with the rods so he is more familiar with them. He is ready for beginning Miquon/Gattegno stuff, I think. Abby was much older, but having done it with her, I think I could have started her earlier if I had had the resources.

Unit Study:

We've been reading How to Make a Cherry Pie and See the USA and have been talking about symbols of the United States. We discussed the White House, the Liberty Bell, the Pledge of Allegiance and Old Glory. We didn't get through everything I had planned with everything that happened, so we'll continue on with it.

We did watch National Treasure on Thursday...I figured it tied in. And it's a good movie. :)

Swim:

Emmett moved up to a Level 4/5 class. His teacher commented about how he teaches to the group and then to Emmett. He gives the group 2-3 things to work through, and Emmett 9-10 things to work through. Emmett is just that skilled. And he's the youngest by at least two-and-a-half years. LOL

Ellie's kick is coming along. Once she becomes more efficient with it, she will be swimming. She can float with the best of them.

Abby is still working through her breast and butterfly strokes before she moves up to the class Emmett is in.

The kids don't mind waiting through one of their sibling's lesson because it is the only time they get free time with the iPod/iPad and don't have to "pay out" to do it.

Life:

The older two had an impromptu lesson with what bitter is when we were doing our mega-clean on Wednesday. Daddy had left some baking cocoa out and I let them try it out.

They also have been working on doing handstands while playing.