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 12

Next week, we are on break!  Yeah!

This is how Hyrum sometimes entertains himself during our schoolwork.

Preschool

Ellie wasn't into much workbook or letter themes.  This week, she built a lot with Duplo blocks.

A lot of her creations were pretty neat little buildings!

I just hate picking the blasted blocks up!

Junior K

Reading

Emmett worked through I See Sam books 18-22.  Because of the repetition of the words, he has added a few sight words to his repertoire!

Math

He also built a Four Tower.  He knows his sums to four now.

First Grade

Language

Grammar

Abby worked with verbs and abbreviations this week.  She abbreviated the months of winter and spring.

Writing

This week was a poem/song that I'd never heard that involved the days of the week.  She could remember what Monday through Thursday were for, but had a harder time remembering Friday and Saturday.

Reading

Abby is still working through Ramona, the Pest.  It's a longer one for her at times, but I've noticed her speed is picking up.  She's enjoying the story as well.

Spelling

She applied the "find gold" rule to her spelling this week.  The only word she struggled with was "old."  She wanted to reverse the l and the o.

Handwriting

Abby worked on J and also not holding her pencil or marker too hard.  This has been an off-and-on issue.  We pulled out the white board and I showed her how if she pushes to hard there is a break in the fluidity of the marker.  We worked on making scribble lines that can eventually morph into some cursive letters.

After a bit of this, her scribbles eventually turned into a snail!  She really liked that, especially since we were also studying snails this week.

Math

Abby worked through the introduction to multiplication this week.

She's encountered multiplication before in SM 1 and also in Miquon.  It's not difficult for her as she thinks of 3 x 5 as "3 fives" or "3 of 5."  I did let the lesson naturally segue into division and it being the undoing of multiplication.

All Together

Science

One day this week, Hyrum was playing outside and he found a little snake!

We didn't get to keep him very long as he was mysteriously missing from our yard a bit later.  That was a big bummer because Daddy and I were very much looking forward to watching him eat some slugs!

Formally, we studied mollusks.  The curriculum called for snails, but we couldn't find any.  We've hardly ever seen them here in the seven years we've been here.  BUT, we found a slug... He was close enough.

(When Emmett brought him in, all I could think was, "Ewwww...")

We also surfed some youtube videos to see some squid and octopus type mollusks.  The kids also watched Magic School Bus Goes to Mussel Beach.

History

We learned about the Exodus this week.  We topped it off with watching Prince of Egypt.  The kids thought the story of Moses parting the Red Sea was fascinating.

Week 27

Last week I wrote that I was worried that we would all get sick after Hyrum had been sick. And get sick we did! Sunday night Ellie, Emmett, Daddy and I were all up throwing up. It was MISERABLE.

Monday, just as everyone felt that we were on the mend, Abby started complaining of the backs of her legs hurting, she spiked a fever and had a cough. Her fever was really high, so I took her in. Her strep test was negative, so we took her home thinking that she just had something viral and she'd get over it quickly. While she had the virus, though, we did only light schooling. We did some math, skipping a few sets of problems, and we did a bit of reading. Come to find out, her flu swab was positive.

I guess I'm a mean mom making her work through light school while she was positive for influenza, but she was capable of playing in the back yard and running, then she was capable of a few math problems! Never fear, though, there was plenty of TV watching...

...story reading...

...and good ol' imaginative play!

Tot School:

My two-year-old is busy learning things and I think I'll start adding a bit of a learning update on her in this space... :)

We watched a lot of LeapFrog Letter Factory...and I realized she already knows a fair amount of her letter sounds.

She loves to play the iPad and do puzzles.

She also got a big kick out of our Tag Jr. this past week.

She is the perfect age for it to be fun!

She also is learning to navigate a computer with a mouse. She plays Starfall and once again I'm happy that I paid for the upgrade. So. Worth. It!

PreK:

Emmett is really getting good at reading some CVC words. I started him on the I See Sam readers and he has read the first two. He is really pleased that he is learning to read and was happy he could do these books (on the iPad, no less) all on his own!

He is also beginning to show an interest in writing.

So, I'm slowly introducing the proper way to form certain letters.

He has beautiful handwriting for a four-year-old boy.

He's also getting faster with his rods, especially building a staircase.

Math:

Like I said, we skipped a fair amount of math problems in our lessons this week. I'm not too concerned about doing this since Abby's computation and understanding are good.

MEP focused on number bonds for 18 and 19 this week. Each time I let her skip problem sets, she immediately chose to skip the drill-ish problem and kept the puzzles.

She did pull out the wrap-ups one day and was pleased that she could manipulate it enough to complete a stick!

We did do some money problems out of a typical first grade workbook this week as well. MEP is British, so I figure we've got to introduce US currency somewhere. I'm not too worried, though, because I think we'll be working some through SM 1B (which is American) this summer.

And, for a bit of surprise... This evening we were playing board games and Ellie wanted to play. We pulled out Candyland. The older kids had to answer questions to get to draw their cards. I wrote down a few two-digit addition problems to see how Abby would tackle them and she was able to completely solve them mentally! My husband was surprised that she did problems such as 18 + 32 = 50 and can even regroup tens mentally...albeit a bit more slowly. (For you old fogies, regrouping is the new name for "carrying" past a ten.)

Reading:

Because Abby's already read the next selection on our schedule, I let her pick her own library book to read through this last week. She is currently in the middle of a Magic Tree House book: Twister on Tuesday. During her own time, she reads plenty of picture books and also loves to read on my kindle (currently reading Cam Jansen: The Catnapping Mystery).

We also finished the Wonderful Wizard of Oz this week! I already have the movie from Netflix and we'll be watching it on Sunday. Both kids really enjoyed the book.

After finishing Oz, we took a day or two off and now we've jumped right into Pinocchio. My kids have never seen the Disney version, but Abby knew a bit about the storyline from a VeggieTales parody.

*****

And that's our week! I do believe we should be full steam ahead next week...at least I'm hoping we're done with the flu that quickly!