Summer Fun - Week 1

Theme - Under the Sea!

Our themes this summer are going to focus on things Ellie might like, including crafts and activities.  She is very often folded into the older kids' work, but this summer I'm hoping to fold the older kids into whatever it is that she's doing.  She's been really enjoying it.

This week, we've read books about fish and shells.  Ellie loves the Rainbow Fish, but she also enjoyed the Let's Read and Find Out book What Lives in a Shell?

We made a starfish out of construction paper, glue, and cheerios.

After our starfish dried (a day or two later), we used them to stamp paint!

I was really pleased with how they came out!

Of course, we had to eat hot dogs made into octopus shapes!

The Routine

On Monday, I created these activity cards so the kids could pick when we do which activities. I wanted it to be to scale time-wise so when we placed them in order, we knew when to move on from whatever thing. This keeps me moving through everything and making sure that things are getting done with each kid.  It runs from 10 to 5.  Each kid has two hours' worth of playtime, 30-60 minutes of chores (depending on the house), 45 minutes of math and phonics/reading for the older two (which is definitely an overshoot), 15 minutes of reading, 15 minutes of quiet time, half an hour for lunch, an hour for "something fun" (a catchall for activities outside of the house), fine motor play and story time for Ellie, etc.  The kids are enjoying our little "routine builder" and I'm finding it helps me be more of an effective parent.  If it works through the summer, we'll make some school cards and use it during the school year.

The Two-Year-Old

She is fascinated with the letter E.  "E for Ellie," she says.  Yesterday, though, she told me, "E for Ellie...and exit," as he pointed to an Exit sign.  LOL

For her fine motor activity this week, she shoved pipe cleaners into our colander.  Then she would exclaim, "Where'd they go?"  When all of them were shoved in, she'd turn it over and shout, "Surprise!"

She has enjoyed princess stories this week.  She chose two different princess books and asks me to read them.  She only makes it about a third of the way through, them, though, because there is a lot of text on each page and she gets restless and starts asking questions about them: "Why is that witch mean?" "Oh look, she has a baby!  Is that a girl baby or a boy baby?"  "Am I a princess?"

The Reading

Abby is struggling with larger, multisyllabic words.  There is a lot of guessing and frustration because these words aren't coming easier.  I am quickly taking her through the last half of the Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading where the lessons are about breaking apart and decoding these words.  She has done something crazy like 40 review lessons this week.  And now that I've started it, I realize that a large part of her problem is partly vocabulary-related.  If she's never heard or seen the word before in her life, why would I expect her to know it?!  Still, the phonics review that she'll get from OPGTR is solid.

Last Saturday we went to the library.  We picked her up the first Mercy Watson book because she enjoyed the one we own.  Sunday night, I encouraged her to read it.  She looked at it and dismissed it.  I correctly surmised that she was feeling anxious about the unfamiliar and the thickness of the book.  I told her she didn't have to read it all at once.  She still looked nervous.  So, I grabbed one of her favorite Dr. Seuss books (with which she feels comfortable) and showed her that there was MORE text on the Seuss pages and MORE pages.  So, she apprehensively took the Mercy Watson book to bed.  When I went the girls' room to tuck Ellie in, she asked me for help with one word.  By Monday, she was asking to go back to the library to pick up another Mercy Watson because she had finished the first one...in one night!  These books are well below her decoding capability (at an early second grade reading level), but are right on for interest level and pictures.  And I'm okay with her reading things below her level because they will increase fluency.  And she likes them!  She read the entire second Mercy Watson on Monday!  The next time we went to the library (twice in the same week!), I picked up the last three.

Emmett is still working through 100 EL.  He loves tackling the word lists and story in each lesson, but does not like being asked to repeat the words.  I believe this is partly because he feels like it's a waste of time.  I feel like they will help him recognize the words, so I make him repeat them anyway.  He completed up to lesson 44 and is surprising me with how easy he's read a few of these stories on the first go.

The Math

I was planning on using Singapore Math's Primary Mathematics 1B for the summer for Abby.  I was hoping it would be kind of a fun little review with the concepts and she'd enjoy having something "easy."  She worked through the clocks section as well as beginning addition and subtraction in numbers up to 100.  This is almost like a review for her because we have been doing these problems mentally for a bit.  Singapore also went through and worked with numbers up to 40 and, to Abby, these problems aren't much different.  In the last three weeks she's gone through about 10 weeks of lessons.

We did also throw in a few Miquon sheets.  Abby loves division.

Emmett is still working with his rods.  I very gently introduced the idea of a number bond.  He was rather excited that he was going to do some math like Abby does!

He is now working on remembering which rod is which number when the white rod is one.  The only rods he occasionally mixes up are black and brown.

Unplanned Summer Fun

Of course, part of the fun about summer is just oodles of free time and play.  My kids get plenty of that during the school year as well (the joys of homeschooling!).

This week, we...

• ...enjoyed strawberries.  The kids ate nearly an entire Sam's Club container in one afternoon!

• ...weeded our garden.

(The big ones are our bush beans.)

• ...played outside plenty!

• ...went to the Science Museum.

• ...caught a caterpillar.

• ...went hunting for tadpoles.

We even caught a few!

We had originally mail-ordered a tadpole, but they kept dying.  Instead, we went and caught some at a local park/creek/pond.  These little guys seem to be a whole lot sturdier...and we have a lot more (~10)!

• Hyrum even got his first pair of shoes!

Week 26

Daddy only had a two-and-a-half day work week, so our school week was accordingly light.

Also, my camera has been in the shop for the last couple of weeks. I've been relying on iPhones and it is really difficult to get good pictures. I tried, though!

PreK:

For the last few months, Emmett hasn't been interested in the idea of anything academics related. I've been fine with be very unschool-y because he is only four.

This week he started building CVC words with our word whammer and has started asking to learn to read. I started out with the Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading, but he seems to need a bit of help blending beginning sounds (the ends are no problem). So, we are working through some of Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. We will keep OPGTR as a complete phonics guide, but probably work through 100 Easy Lessons for a while. He is super pleased with his progress and his ability to sound out CVC words.

Math:

Abby worked through week 28 of MEP 1B. This week was a daydreamy week. While her pages weren't a struggle and there was no crying, there was really no focusing or real paying attention.

She also worked through some problems in Singapore's Challenging Word Problems 1 and she loved those.

She did make me laugh on Thursday, though. She had an appointment at the doctor's for some warts. The doc said she wanted to see her in three weeks for a medication application. Abby said, "Three weeks. That's seven days three times..." As we walked out she waved to the pediatrician and said, "See you in 21 days!"

On Friday, I handed her a few challenge problems. Even though we haven't really covered two-digit addition yet, she knew that she needed to add the tens and the ones separately. I was pleased with that.

Language Arts:

We completed three lessons in grammar this week. Abby has no issue with the difference between common and proper nouns now and FLL is already starting to seem repetitive. I also read her the story of the Lion and the Mouse. Her narration was thus: "The mouse saved the lion from the net." I haven't finished listening to Susan Wise Bauer's lecture on the writing process, but I do believe this was an okay narration for this story for a five-year-old.

Our next step in AAS2 has us learning the beginning processes for spelling words with more than one syllable.

We did mostly review this week in cursive. We had a beautiful week weather-wise and cursive was the first thing to be dropped in favor of parks. You're only five once! We did learn the rock curve in preparation for other letter formation.

This week Abby read Nate the Great. She moaned when we went to reading it, but did enjoy the story after the fact.

The kids and I are reading the Wizard of Oz before bed. We are only four chapters out from finishing the book and Abby and Emmett are really enjoying the time spent reading. The chapters are short enough that Emmett can pay attention for that amount of time, and the book we have has good pictures.

Geography:

Since we finished our continent unit study, we moved on to talking about different landforms. We're working out of Beginning Geography and I'm requiring Emmett to sit in a bit while we do it. They both enjoy it as it is very gentle and there is a lot of coloring and cutting and pasting. This week we worked on hills, mountains, volcanoes and islands. Even Ellie wanted to color a volcano! The first time they sat to it this week, Abby exclaimed enthusiastically, "This is so much fun! It's better than schoolwork!" LOL

Extra:

Daddy had Monday off and it was a beautiful day. So, we went to the zoo! The highlight of the zoo that day was feeding the giraffes!

This Friday was Dr. Seuss's birthday. We celebrated by having brownies for breakfast, reading a few of his book, coloring some pictures and then we surprised the kids and went and saw the first showing of the Lorax that day. It was definitely a good day!

Hyrum came down with a tummy bug Saturday morning, so we've spent much of the weekend catching vomit. We were hoping that he would be an isolated case, but this evening, Eleanor is telling me she has to throw up. To make up for Daddy's short week at work last week, he has a 12+ hour day scheduled tomorrow. I am praying that we don't have a vomit week this next week...

Week of 10 Apr

Phonics/Reading:

We are keeping going with Funnix 2. I keep looking at the library to see if they have a copy of The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading. I was thinking I'd go over some sound combinations and find a few game ideas to play to keep things interesting... We are getting close to taking a break with Funnix 2 and I think OPGTR might be a different option to do during those breaks. If I had a ton of money, I could find other options, but seeing as it is supplementary, I'll just wait till I can get it from the library. She doesn't mind Funnix and it is building her fluency, confidence and speed, but a break is always nice too...

ABCs:

Emmett did the letter H this week. We watched some Leapfrog, wrote Hs in the carpet, did some wet-dry-try, pasted our H on our coconut tree, and then topped it all of with a worksheet. He still loves doing his letters.

Five in a Row:

Emmett was ecstatic when I pulled out Harold and the Purple Crayon on Monday. Once upon a time (probably sometime last year), Abby pulled a DVD off the shelf at the library that was based on this book. It's done by HBO Family and we now own a copy of it because they love it. So, there was much excitement that we were reading the book (again!) and doing a unit on it.

Here they are watching the DVD. The first episode actually stays fairly true to the book, which is neat.

For Family Home Evening we played what we called a "Harold Game" using our dry erase boards and purple markers. It was mostly just Pictionary, but the older kids really enjoyed it.

This is Abby's dog:

Emmett insisted that Daddy show him step-by-step how to draw each item.

We watched some YouTube videos on how crayons are made and then we tried our hands at melting down and mixing some of our own crayons. This turned into a bit of a talk about primary and secondary colors and experimenting with what colors we get when we mix certain ones.

Before:

After: (You can't really tell from the picture, but the crayons really did melt into orange, purple and green!)

We even did some fun swirly crayons:

We let the older kids draw with their newly-shaped/created crayons, but it didn't last long. Ellie loves them, though. She loves to take them out of the containers, place them in different spots, stack them, color with them, place them back in the container, repeat, etc.

We talked about the setting of this story and where it takes place. Abby was the first to pipe up, "In Harold's imagination!" So, of course, we drew our own imaginary story. Sadly, I don't have pictures of those, but they came out pretty cute.

We also observed how Harold gets around in the story and what other ways we get around. Emmett's favorite was the hot air balloon. Abby's favorite to remember was an AWACS (it's the jet Daddy flies on for work).

We have been loosely keeping things together in notebooks for the kids. I guess you could call it notebooking. I like the idea of keeping everything together in one central place. We've done one for each story, but apparently am only now getting around to type about it. If we write anything, or create anything, or what-have-you, we just stick it in their notebooks. We have since come to love double-sided tape (much better than glue sticks)!

This is Emmett's for Harold:

Handwriting:

I didn't think we'd do a specific handwriting for a while. I learned to write without one. My mom just showed me how to form the letters and I did a lot of copying her. Abby, however, is totally a workbook-loving kid and it's easier for me to give her a sheet to do...only because she doesn't complain at all. In fact, she asks to do more! So, she is currently doing the kindergarten-level book from Zaner-Bloser and she loves it.

Read-Aloud:

Because we finished up My Father's Dragon last week, we just did some picture books this week. Here's Daddy reading Purplicious to all three kids. The Pinkalicious books are favorites around here.

We did pick up The Littles for our next chapter book. My kids have seen the TV series thanks to Netflix. I hope they enjoy the book just as much!

Church:

I think I have found something for Church-related activities for the kids. I'm not sure exactly how it will go because we haven't implemented it yet, but I am thinking the School of Abraham's review of Gospel Principles will fit in nicely. Instead of bouncing around in their scriptures, like they are now, we will do each day's lesson right before bed. It's all very tentative, though, because Daddy heads up scripture-time with them. As long as I have it prepared, though, it shouldn't be too much...