Weeks 32 and 33 - the last of the "school year"

I randomly declared that we would be "done with school" at the end of last week.  We will continue to review our math, Emmett will have reading lessons, and we'll review phonics (via OPGTR) for Abby this summer.  We will have unit-study-ish themes where we can do crafts and fun things, but otherwise, we will play and play!

Tot School:

Ellie worked on her own little Veggie Tales lapbook these last two weeks.  She loved having her own "book" and carted it everywhere.  It accidentally got spilled on and she had the biggest conniption when she had to throw it away.  We did make another, though.

She worked on spelling her name.  Now she points out Es wherever we go: "E for Ellie!" she says.  

She worked puzzles and also did these Melissa and Doug Pattern Block things.

She inserts herself into the older kids' activities whenever she can.  She's pretty insistent that she colors the same sheet when the older two do geography.

She played on the iPad plenty.  (This little thing was on sale at Target for $8.  It's called DuoPlink.  We also are enjoying the GameChanger, though it's a bit much for a 2-year-old.)

She loved that we visited both the zoo and the science museum this last week.

Language Arts:


Emmett completed just past lesson in 100 Easy Lessons.  He is doing well still.

It was a great time in spelling to pause school because Abby just finished the last step that has to deal with vowel-consonant-e words.  She spells them better than she reads them sometimes.

Abby loves her grammar - she even asked to do it over summer break!  She has memorized Hearts are Like Doors completely and is set to move on to a different poem this coming week.  She is still reviewing proper and common nouns as well.

This week, she focused on memorizing her complete address (including zip code) and my cell phone number.

She has read through a fair amount of lesser known Dr. Seuss works, her favorite being On Beyond Zebra. These are long books with lots of nonsense words!


Math:


Emmett is still familiarizing himself with the rods.  He is a great staircase-builder now!

I'm starting him on a bit of Gattegno-esque things that I worked on with Abby back in the fall.  He seems to enjoy these lessons...probably because I try to "stump him" and he likes to be un-stump-able!

Abby worked through sections in Singapore Math 1B that have to deal with multiplication, division, and fractions.

She did surprisingly well with these, though division was a newer concept.

We pulled in some Miquon Red to work through talking about "how many fours are in twenty-four?" and that really did help.  We still love Miquon!

Daddy also read her some Life of Fred, which she still really loves.  She was inspired to draw her OWN picture of Archimedes, even!

Geography:


We learned about South America and Europe these past two weeks.

Gymnastics:


The kids are still loving gymnastics.

Abby even participated in a cartwheel clinic.

She loves to practice her cartwheels and handstands.

Ellie even did the class without me tagging along next to her, which is awesome because Hyrum is becoming more busy as the days go by!

FIAR:


We even did a FIAR unit to go along with our bear theme-ish study.  We rowed Another Celebrated Dancing Bear.

Social Studies:

• We learned about Russia, including Tchaikovsky.  The kids loved listening to the Nutcracker and the 1812 Overture.  Abby told us frequently that she was putting on a ballet.  :)

Language Arts:

• We didn't do a huge formal language portion.  We mostly discussed the words that the kids didn't know (glum, samovar, etc).

Art:

• We tried our hand at etching and printmaking.  It finally evolved into etching into play-doh and then stamping.

Science:

• In the book, Max puts the samovar on to boil.  Thanks to a love affair with ramen noodle, my kids are familiar with what it looks like when water boils.  Instead, we discussed what happens when things boil and how things are made of molecules.  I had them be the molecules for the solid, liquid and gas phases.

Life:

• We saw this huge bubble idea online somewhere and thought it would be neat to do.

Later, we filled it with water!

Then, we sprayed water on top and it became a big, bouncy, waterbed-slash-slip-and-slide!

• We planted our garden!

• We also are planning on watching a tadpole on his journey to becoming a full-grown frog!

• The kids have also spent a lot of time outside, where they've seen plenty of caterpillars!

Hyrum has no fear of creepy crawlies!

Safety goggles are optional!

• And Hyrum is fully into the stage of pull-everything-off-the-shelf!

• Hyrum is also learning to walk!  

He just has to become braver about taking those steps!

Week 3

Daddy was off this week! We maintained our basics, but skipped FIAR to do a light unit study on fire safety.

ABCs:

This week's letter was Y.

PreK:

We read the Goldilocks and the 3 Bears and sequenced the story. I am loving the activity book that goes with What Your Preschooler Needs to Know! It comes with all of the stickers and cutouts you could need. For Goldilocks, there were cutouts of the bears' porridge bowls, the chairs, and the beds. We added magnets to the back and they are now at home on our dishwasher. We have a Goldilocks figurine and Emmett will tell the whole Goldilocks story.

We also did a section on faces and placed stickers of eyes, ears, and noses where they belonged.

We've also spent hours this week at certain parks bike-riding. Emmett loves it and asks us every day if he can go ride his bike.

Reading:

We read a fair amount of picture books this week, but none from Charlie. Having Daddy home sure does throw off our routine! Abby did some reading to us as well.

Spelling:

I'm kind of at an impasse as to how long our spelling lessons should take. The lessons still contain fairly easy words for Abby. We completed step 11 in two days, we made a spelling notebook on a separate day. We were supposed to do spelling on Friday, but it didn't happen. We'll pick it back up this week.

Math:

Daddy actually did a bit of rod play with Emmett this week. He and I also played war. He loves playing war with me because he typically wins. :)

We finished the "Literal Work with Rods" section in Gattegno Mathematics. From there we worked a bit with the number application and have now moved back to the Miquon lab sheets. We've only done the first two in section C (which is addition), but it was fairly quick and painless for Abby.

Finding the difference:

Making the pattern of five:

Because we started a new "unit" in her math stuff, we are taking the advantage to try this out. Each time she completes a worksheet, she uses the fun paper puncher to punch out a shape. Then we stick the shape on a piece of paper. The shapes missing out of the corner allows me to see quickly which sheets have been completed and I'm hoping the shapes on the paper give Abby a sense of accomplishment.

Abby also likes to add a bit of fun to her math. In this step, I asked her to find if the math sentence was true. I told her to draw a smiley face if it was, she chose to draw a cat smiley face.

Unit Study:

With Daddy home, we took a bit of break from Five in a Row and talked about fire safety. We discussed fire extinguishers, firefighters, smoke alarms, important things to know in an emergency, etc.

We own the book No Dragons for Tea, which is an awesome introduction to fire safety for kids. We also rented Billy Blue Hair - Why are Fire Trucks Red? and the kids got to watch it as a free show (as in, they didn't have to pay out to get to watch it).

We visited the Oklahoma State Firefighter's Museum.

We tested our fire alarm and ran a fire drill. We let the kids crawl out of their windows as an illustration of an alternate route out of their bedroom. They had a blast with that!

We camped out and had our own little fire to cook hot dogs and s'mores. (This led to "tent schooling" the next day!)

We discussed stop, drop and roll and practiced it by rolling down a hill.

We reminded the kids of our family meeting spot.

Emmett has really enjoyed this unit study. When asked what he wants to be when he grows up, he immediately replies, "A firefighter!" On Monday, we'll be visiting the Oklahoma City Fire Department and touring their station!

Memory Work:

We memorized our personal information for part of our fire safety unit!

Calendar Time:

Monday through Thursday we do a "What's the Word?" moment where I introduce a new word. (I've been using Evan-Moor's First Grade A Word A Day for the lists.) I've made a word search every three weeks to review our new words. Abby remembered what each meant and would say it as she found it on the search. She is beginning to really like word searches.

Life:

We got a new kitty yesterday! He is still very much a kitten (3 mos). He's been very skittish, but is slowly warming up to us. Our other cat, Drift, is still asserting his dominance over the kitten, but the kids already love Swirl!

And Hyrum just gets cuter day by day!