Weeks 16 and 17

This is going to be a pictureless post because I am already behind and it's quicker to just write out what we did. I did take pictures, but they've already been transferred to the external hard drive.

PreK:

Emmett worked through a few pages in What Your Preschooler Need to Know. He did quite a bit of coloring with us too.

Math:

Abby continued to work through Singapore 1A's Intensive Practice and Challenging Word Problems. I also threw in a few problems from MEP Year 1. She still has some work to do in those, but they are mostly review. We are probably going to take a break with learning new skills and allow her brain to mature because math is a lot of work when she's trying to hold a bunch of numbers in her head to do mental math with regrouping past a ten. I'd prefer for her not to memorize her facts to 20 by rote repetition, rather I'd like for her to work these certain problems so much that they've stuck in her head. The only sums past ten that she can remember with consistency are the doubles.

Spelling:

It seems all of the rules Abby learned in All About Spelling Step 1 are solid. It is time to move on to AAS2...but I have to buy it. For now, we're just reviewing words.

Reading:

Abby is still reading whatever ends up in her book box at night. She reads anything posted on walls or signs. Reading is still work for her at times, but her fluency and comfort level is raising.

She's also excited to get back to the book All About Sam, which she started before we left and didn't bring with her.

Unit Study:

The week before Christmas we paused our regular scripture reading for a focus on the Christmas season. We discussed symbols of Christmas and hunted them the entire week.

Scriptures:

Besides Christmas, we also learned about Enos and King Benjamin.

Swim:

Yes, we were those parents and enrolled our kids in swim while we were on vacation. My parents' gym is actually where my kids first took swimming lessons. The instructor is awesome! We enrolled them in semi-private lessons and in just six lessons, we saw massive improvement in stroke, kicks, and side breathing. Yay!

Week 14

Our week 14 was actually the week of Thanksgiving, so 21 Nov through 25 Nov.

Math:

Abby reviewed some math, but didn't do anything new. I did teach her to subtract past a ten by breaking up the subtrahend. For example, 17-9 she subtracts 7 to get down to 10 and then subtracts 2 more to subtract the whole amount to get 8. This seems to be easier for her to do in her head than decomposing a ten. It'll be interesting to see which one she'll adopt as her main method.

Spelling:

Abby wrote some dictated sentences and words. It was nothing fancy.

Reading:

Abby is continuing to read Me and My Monsters. I did finally get to read the Radish Cure to her. We also finished off How to Eat Fried Worms.

Unit Study:

Because it was the week of Thanksgiving we learned about the history of Thanksgiving. We talked about the Mayflower, the pilgrims, Squanto, the Wampanoag people, etc. We read a few picture books, including one I had as a kid: Sarah Morton's Day.

Religion:

We studied the Tree of Life and Nephi's broken bow this week. Abby has been begging to move on. We repeated following the Iron Rod as well as singing the Iron Rod.

We took a break the next week (the last week in November) to get ready to go on vacation. We did complete some scripture study around Nephi building a boat and their journey to the Promised Land. I'm currently typing this from our hotel room, so no pictures because I loaded those onto our hard drive to make room on my camera's card.

Week 13

ABCs:

Well, I really am slacking on this. This week I have no excuse for not doing it...except fot hat it's really hard to think of a fairly simple craft using k or x. I think we'll have to do a hokey "xylophone" or something for x... and maybe kick for k? We'll see what I come up with.

Math:

We reviewed addition over ten with "making tens" and subtracting when there aren't enough ones by "decomposing a ten." Abby understands these concepts, but is slow to complete it. She'd much rather solve the problem using an addition sentence she knows: "Eight and two is ten. So...eight and four is twelve!" I'm okay with this as long as she understands HOW to make ten. We call it having the numbers "share."

We are scheduled to really finish up Singapore 1A this week. I need to buy Challenging Word Problems and Intensive Practice. I think those are what we will take on our three-week-vacation next month.

We have also been fiddling with a few puzzles from MEP math. They should be review, but they are a different type of problems than Abby is used to seeing. She's not sure she likes them because they do make her think.

We also did a few review questions that involved having multiple addends. Again, we are trying to do a few things "out of the box" so she is exposed to different types of problems and solutions.

Emmett did some more sums and counting, but nothing formal. He wasn't up for any of that and I don't want to push.

The rods still get played with by Ellie too. Her favorite one is the purple one she tells me. She likes to do what the older kids do. She has no clue she's younger than they are.

Spelling:

We finished off All About Spelling 1 this week. It has been a long time coming since I really dropped how frequently we used the program and also slowed down to a crawl on the lessons we did do. We'll keep reviewing what she's learned, but won't pick up AAS 2 until January.

Reading:

We have been listening to How to Eat Fried Worms on audiobook. We have read a ton of picture books. I still have yet to read the Radish Cure to Abby. I'm really hoping to get to that this week.

Abby has chugged along in her Me and My Monsters book. In her free time, she's been reading Mr. Putty and Tabby books by Cynthia Rylant.

FIAR:

Like nearly everyone using FIAR, we thought it would be a good idea to row Cranberry Thanksgiving this week to prep for Thanskgiving. It's out of print, so I had to request it from the library. I'm actually amazed we got it in in time to row it this week!

Social Studies:

• We could have reviewed the history of Thanksgiving, but I'm planning that for next week. Instead, we discussed where New England is.

Language Arts:

• This book has text all over the place! During one reading, I had Abby point out the different places the manuscript can be placed in a book.

Art:

• One of the last pages of the book has Grandmother, Maggie and Mr. Whiskers sitting in front of the fire, done in silhouettes. We made our own silhouettes and talked reviewed what are considered warm and cool colors.

Science:

• The book has a line which reads, "Mr. Horace was starched" or something to that effect. We discussed starch and what it does.
• We extracted starch from a potato.

• We tested various things with iodine to see if they contained starch. I first showed the kids how the iodine would react with the remnants of our potato project. Then, we tested different foods with the iodine.

• Of course, discussing starch meant we had to play with some oobleck.

Other:

• We also tried out some craisins and cranberry apple juice.

Swim:

This past week was the last week of swim for the year. The next session won't start up again until February.

Emmett did okay in his Level 3/4 class. He is physically capable, but having difficulty honing the maturity needed to really excel with a group class. He worked on dives and endurance most of this session. Next session we will see if he's matured a bit more to really focus in the class. His teacher tells us no four-year-old should be able to do like he does and affectionately calls him a freak of nature.

Abby did okay with her Level 2 class. Her teacher doesn't seem to get through to her with the what is required...she still needs to figure how to breathe during freestyle as well as work on her breast stroke.

Ellie has done well with splitting her time between a preschool class and a mom-and-tot class. She's advanced to the point where she can go a few body lengths on her own and has started to really enjoy swimming. She likes "going under water."

Religion:

This week we read about Nephi retrieving the brass plates. We read the story in several different places. We made Jerusalem with blocks and then destroyed it.

We made brass plates out of graham crackers and frosting and wrote on them with tooth picks.

We also watched the animated version from the Living Scriptures, Nephi and the Brass Plates. While we watched, we each chose a picture from the activity book and colored that page. Then, after the movie, we reviewed by putting our pages in the order they happened.

Other:

I actually enticed Ellie to color a picture the other day. She doesn't care for coloring much, but this was a picture of Baby Jaguar and she is currently in a Diego-is-the-neatest stage.

We made Thanksgiving cards one night. They came out pretty cute.

Lest you think that the older kids are the only ones learning anything, here is Hyrum and his new-ish trick!

(While he looks pretty steady here, the truth is he only sits for about five minutes max before he either folds in half or topples over. Small and steady steps and he'll get better and better!)

Week 12

Well, right when we're starting to wane and I was thinking about pausing for a break, we got word that my husband is slated for a TDY (military-speak for business trip) to Florida. He will have his own hotel room, so we are planning on driving down there and spending time in Florida that week! After that, we'll be heading to my parents' house for Christmas. So, in effect, we will be gone all of December. Which means, I'd like to get us up to speed to basically take all of December off of our regularly-scheduled stuff to do interest-led units. But yay for vacation!

ABCs:

Daddy was off this past Friday, so we skipped our ABCs this week. Instead, we played with Daddy!

Math:

I took a pause with Abby to explore a bit of multiplication and even/odd. They're her interests and I'm letting the other just percolate in her brain. We did review some problems with sums over tens. She grasps adding a single-digit number to the teens really well, though. When she has an addition problem with a sum over ten she either has her "numbers share" (make a ten) or she reasons it another way ("Well, seven and seven is fourteen...so seven and eight must be fifteen!"). I'm fine with either as long as she is still manipulating those numbers rather than rote memorization.

Emmett reviewed counting and placing things in the correct place. I'm slowly starting him with some Miquon and a few things lifted from MEP. He loves the MEP material...probably because it feels a bit like figuring a puzzle.

Spelling:

We did step 23 (of 24!) in AAS this week. It discusses plurals and adding "s" or "es" to make something plural.

I could have moved on further, but I'm trying to have AAS level 1 last until January, so we're going slowly with lots of review. Lately I've been dictating the dictation phrases, then having her use them for some copywork too.

Reading:

I hardly got to read any Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle aloud this week, which was a big bummer. We are still on the Radish Cure, which is my favorite part!

Abby did read some to me. I read about the series Me and My Monsters and thought Abby would like it. I downloaded the Kindle version because I thought she'd think it was fun to do some of her reading on the iPad.

I just found out it is also the basis for a show in Britain. It's not the greatest literature, but as long as she enjoys it, it'll be good.

FIAR:

We were expecting a big storm on Monday, so we rowed Storm in the Night this week. Apparently I was slacking on taking FIAR-related photos, though.

Social Studies:

• In the book, there is a big storm and Grandfather tells a story about when he was a little boy and afraid of a big storm. We discussed fears and bravery and wrote down some of our own fears.

Language Arts:

• We revisited the onomatopoeia! One reading, we just counted all of the words we could find that sounded like a sound. Abby counted over 10 words!

Art:

• The FIAR manual has a great lesson for art on acrylics. I didn't have any so we pointed out how the droplets are white and why the illustrator could paint them like that. Then, we talked about the difference with watercolors and did some color resist paintings.

Science:

• We reviewed the water cycle and storms a bit.
• We also discussed electricity and thunder.

Extra:

• Of course, I let the kids watch and play in the rain!

Religion:

Emmett has been a bit of a handful of late--part of it is being four, and part of it is his innately strong will. I've been struggling with him obeying, and not just out of fear, but for the right reasons. I've started taking him aside and each morning just reading one article from the Friend.

The first day I did this, I noticed an article talking about how Primary children around the world now number one million. There is a song to go along and video of 30 kids around the world. So, in addition to being read an article from the Friend, Emmett listens to the song, sings it, and then we watch a video. He then colors a star for that child and places it on our world map. We currently have six stars in different places: Alaska, California, Minnesota, Ontario, Nigeria and Madagascar.

He was very resistant to this in the beginning: "Why do I have to?" "I don't wanna do this..." and trying everything to annoy me into stopping. Within the last week, though, he has been excited to watch his video and asks to do more than one a day. Unfortunately, he has not been very open to me documenting such happenings with the camera. Maybe this next week he will be...

Abby and Ellie watch along, but this is particularly Emmett's thing. I'm wanting to spend some one-on-one time with him, teach him to love and know the Savior, and also encourage him to realize and understand that he is an awesome little boy who is "uniquely individual - one of a kind" and hopefully he will continue to strive to "be what Heavenly Father has in mind."

One day, they wrote notes to the kids they have seen on the videos. Emmett's was a bunch of scribbles and was demolished before I could snap a picture. I did get one of Abby's, though.

We have also started a bit more of an intensive study of the Book of Mormon. We began our own Book of Mormon notebook and this week we discussed Joseph Smith and how we got the Book of Mormon. We came at the story a few different ways to really cement the story and how it happened into the kids' heads. We watched the scripture story video, we read the story in our My First Church History book, then again in our Book of Mormon Stories book. We watched The Joseph Smith story, and, of course, read the account in Joseph Smith--History. I had the kids draw pictures and we all memorized James 1:5. Retention was pretty high! This week we'll be moving on to Nephi retrieving the brass plates.

Week 5

This week was a success for me not because of what we accomplished school-wise, but because I made great strides in my ability to keep the house somewhat put together and still get school done. We didn't really feel it start to deteriorate (thank you, entropy!) until Friday afternoon. And, because Saturday is our cleaning day, that's not too bad!

ABCs:

We made Ps with Popcorn! I did throw a little sugar and purple dye in there. I didn't add nearly enough sugar to coat the popcorn, though, so you can hardly see the purple in the pictures. Rest assured it is there! We did this craft before lunch, though, and I didn't want them all filled up on sugar popcorn before we ate.

PreK:

Emmett didn't want to do much of anything this week. He did listen in on what I did with Abby. We also read the Three Little Pigs and had him role play those with our storytime figures, but mostly he wanted to play outside.

Reading:

Abby did a fair amount of reading to me and her little sister.

On Friday, we got Magic Tree House books 5-8 in the mail. I picked up the package and handed it to her to open it. She tore into it and then excitedly ran to tell Emmett, "Emmett! We have more Magic Tree House!" She begged to read it right then, and so we did. She read half the first chapter to me and I read the other half. We alternated pages so she gets more comfortable with the longer pages. And she loved it.

I got another set of books on Friday: Grade 1 Pathway Readers. These look really fairly easy for her, which is good. They'll be easy to read, but I will also require her to complete the coordinating workbook. I think we'll toss those in the mix next week.

Spelling:

Abby continues to zoom through All About Spelling. Because she's moving so quickly through it, and I was aiming to have the curriculum last through December, we have moved it to twice weekly. She only has six lessons left to complete and those do have good rules to learn and go over. This week we reviewed when to use c or k at the beginning of a word and also learned that the letters f, l, and s are usually doubled after a short vowel in a single-syllable word.

Math:

This week we talked about other ways to add and subtract besides using the rods. We added on our number line...

...and on a non-traditional number line.

On Friday we discussed addition being when we want to know the whole of two parts and subtraction being when we have a whole and a part and want to know the other part. We did part-whole pictures and expanded them way down. Here's one she did for 10, though it looks like 100 because she added a face to the top circle and called the very bottom circle feet and it was a spider. LOL

She also continues to build with the rods independent of math lesson. This one's a table...

...and here she is measuring her candies.

Memory Work:

We memorized One, Two, Buckle My Shoe. The sayings that I wanted to get to...well, we didn't get to them. LOL We did memorize 2 Ne 2:25, though.

FIAR:

This week we rowed Three Names. In some ways, I wish we would have rowed this one during our first official week of school because it is about a boy and his dog who go to school in a one-room school house.

Social Studies:

• We talked about what a prairie is and located the Great Plains on our map. Emmett placed the book cover on our map and was excited that he could place it in Oklahoma.
• We also compared Three Names' school adventures to ours. We talked about how we use cars to get places instead of a wagon. Abby said they used a stove to heat their school room and we used something else..."By the way, Mom, what do we use?" I explained the idea of a furnace that is turned on by a thermostat. We discussed electricity and lightbulbs vs candles. She remembered back to a time where we were without power and compared that. I started to respond that we still didn't use candles as much then, but used something else. "Flashlights!"

Language Arts:

• There are a few examples of hyperbole in the book and we discussed how the author uses them to emphasize that even though it wasn't "a hundred years ago" we know that it was really a long time ago.

Art:

• In the book, Martha plays the fiddle for special occasions. I pulled out my violin and we discussed the difference between a violin and a fiddle (they are the same thing). I told them that even though they were the same instrument, violin music and fiddle music are very different from one another. I let them (very, very carefully) try my violin. Then, we got on YouTube and looked up some fiddlers. (We would have looked up violin music, but they're aware of how that sounds because I am a classically-trained violinst.)

Math:

• We talked about the correlation between inches, feet, yards, and miles. Then we measured how many inches in a foot and how many feet in a yard.

Science:

• We talked about wells and why things under the ground are colder than other areas on earth.
• We also discussed animal classification a bit and determined that dogs (and humans!) are mammals.

Other:

• On Wednesday, we went to the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum. We looked at depictions of prairies in art. They have a great mini-town where you can see what a one-room schoolhouse might have looked like. Abby loved this part. They also had a pump for a well. It was neat for her to see to draw connections from the book to actually seeing some of it.

Life:

• We did entertain the idea of putting all the kids' beds in one room so we had a schoolroom, but I have reservations because I don't think it would be something that would last very long...a year max. So, I reorganized our school supplies. Now the older two each have their own crate that holds all of their supplies. When I say we're doing a lesson, they grab their crate and sit at the table. At the end of the lesson, they're responsible for putting things away and putting their crates back on the bookshelf. So far, that's working nicely. Maybe one day we'll have a schoolroom...

• We visited a park where the kids devised a game where two of them stay at the bottom of the slide and place sand on the bottom while the other slid down after the sand was all piled at the bottom of the slide. Then, the slider stayed down to place more sand and one of the sand-placers took his turn as a slider. They were the only ones at the park that day, but they still played together and had a great time. My kids may have their squabbles, but I love that they can play together and are friends. In this picture, Emmett was the slider and now Ellie is running off screaming, "My turn!"

• Ellie is also a little reader. She loves books and all things puzzles.

• I bought Monopoly Jr. this week and we played it for the first time last night. I'd much rather play this than Candyland, and this has the added benefit of Abby sometimes needing to come up with a sum with her money. I think the next time we play, we'll use two dice so as to require the addition of two numbers before they move.

• In my post about why we homeschool, I apparently forgot to add one. Because who would want to corral this one into getting changed from her jammie shirt, fix her underwear (it's actually on right, just way wedged in there!), put on some pants and do her hair all with a baby in tow? That's exhausting. LOL

• And, perhaps Abby's topper on the week: We took her training wheels off her bike! It's so interesting to watch her learn something like this. Emmett excels with physical activities. He swims well (across the pool) and has been riding his bike sans training wheels since we got it. Abby relied heavily on her training wheels. Then, Emmett went on a ride with Daddy while Daddy ran...and Abby decided that she wanted to do that too. We said she could when she had no training wheels on. So, this week, she has been working on it. She would go a few feet and then stop for what seemed like no reason. Her progress with the bike has been so incremental. Whereas, Emmett learned in leaps. Abby has no problem committing things to memory (so much that I really have to be cognizant of checking for understanding instead of her just spitting back the answer). Emmett does not memorize as quickly (it could be because he'll just be 4 next month, but I'm not sure), but he sure does excel when it comes to just observing, taking a leap of faith and doing it. It'll be interesting to see what Ellie's learning will be like.