Week 25

Preschool

PreK Activity Book

Lately Ellie asks me, "Is it a school day?"  If I answer in the affirmative, she says, "Yippee!" and grabs her activity book.  She only has a few pages left so I'm trying to slow her down a bit.

She's also been drawing people!  This is the first person she drew.  It's actually a picture of Emmett.

Letter Craft

We did H is for house this week.  The kids had a good time constructing their own houses.  Ellie even put her door up high and then asked me to make her a ladder for it.  LOL

Junior K

Language

Reading

I started Emmett on the first grade Sonlight Readers this week.  We jumped in reading Little Bear.  The first reading seemed rather frustrating, though I'm not quite sure why.  By the end of the week, he was sailing through most of the reading.  He loved that he could watch the same stories after he finished them.

Spelling

We took a break this week to review words Emmett has spelled in the past.  His ability to segment CVC has improved drastically in the last few weeks.

Math

We played War and read a few math stories.  I am beginning to think that we should start Emmett in Singapore Year 1.  The EM K is too easy for him and I think he'd really thrive with math.  He already has his addition facts to 5 and doubles facts memorized.

First Grade

Language

Grammar

We zoomed through the last five lessons of FLL 1 this week.  Abby was too excited to wait any further.  She finished up her sentence work and reviewed everything she learned within the first book.

Writing

Abby narrated and did copywork from Pollyanna this week.  Abby had a hard time keeping characters straight, but otherwise didn't mind the story.

Reading

Abby finished Poppy this week! She even read some at the doctor's and in the evenings to finish it up!

Spelling

Abby's list this week worked with vowel teams "ai" and "ay."  She probably will need to read through the list a few more times to gain some visual retention of these words verses a-e words.

Handwriting

We moved on to writing capital letter R!  She also did some review of letters in the past.

Math

These multiplication sections are fairly straightforward.  I'm not requiring memorization of the facts because, well, she's only six.  AND, we're planning on moving on to Beast Academy next year which will have a whole new section on skip counting and multiplication.  To solve most problems now, she's skip counting or using rods, which I'm fine with.

All Together

History

We began a long chapter on Rome.  This week we learned about Gods and Roman builders.  The kids were fascinated about constructions of roads so we drew a lot of roads and looked at a lot of pictures of famous roads such as the Appian Way.  I told the kids their Uncle Joey served a mission in Rome.  They thought that was really neat.

Science

We did a bit of RSO on chloroplast and why leaves appear green.  After that, though, we have basically stopped RSO: Life.  It's going to take a month or so for spring to spring here so we can finish studying plants more extensively.  Until that point, we are working some plant pages from the Giant Science Resource Book.

Chess

Skipped again this week!

Week 24

Preschool

PreK Activity Book

Ellie was all about her workbook this week.  She worked with some prewriting skills, and some story sequencing as well as a ton of extra read-alouds.

Letter Craft

We did Y is for yellow yarn this week.

 

Even Hyrum got into decorating his y!

Junior K

Language

Reading

Emmett read some more in the Free and Treadwell Primer.  I think next week we will move on to the last few Sonlight grade 1 readers.  He will like reading from real books, I think.

Spelling

Daddy was home most of this week, so we skipped spelling.  :)

Math

Emmett worked through some Miquon pages and we played some dice game for sums.

First Grade

Language

Grammar

Abby worked through lessons 92-94 this week.  We began learning about sentences.  She should finish up volume 1 next week!

Writing

Writing focused on the Happy Hollisters this week.  I love that we are doing WWE1 a bit behind work in FLL, so she gets a review of the concepts we went over in grammar.

Reading

Abby is still working through Poppy.  At night she's also read a few others at bedtime.  She is very motivated by Book Adventure and points.

Spelling

Abby was excited to begin her level 3 book this week!  The first week was all review so she wrote a bunch of review sentences.

Handwriting

We worked on lowercase r this week.  We didn't do capital R because apparently lowercase r is difficult in cursive.

Math

Abby moved on to the multiplication unit in 2b.  This week was working with multiplication facts for the fours times tables.  Once again, I was surprised that she could skip count by fours without explicit instruction.  Yay for Teacher and the Rockbots: Multiplication!

All Together

History

We began learning about Ancient Rome this week.  Abby has a Nat Geo Kids almanac that she's looked at for the last nine months or so (and loved the thing to tatters).  A few weeks ago, she found a page that discussed Greek, Egyptian, and Roman gods.  She was fascinated that the names of the Roman Gods were PLANETS!  So, naturally, it was really neat to read about the Roman gods this week.  :)

Science

We learned a bit about seeds.  We colored a picture showing the parts of a seed, to include the cotyledon, coat, and embryo.  Then, we dissected both a monocot and dicot seed.  The kids thought this was fascinating!  The next lab, however, is on traveling seeds.  I'm beginning to think we might have to pause learning about the Plant Kingdom in RSO for a month or so until it becomes true spring here so we have good specimens to observe.

Chess

Skipped this week!  The kids were bummed, but Daddy was off so we took time to go play!

Week 23

Preschool

Ellie wasn't pushing to do school much this week.  I was fine with that because she spent it with constructive play and me time to clean the house.  LOL

Junior K

Language

Reading

He worked through the first two stories in the Free and Treadwell Primer.  I love that these are common stories!

We've also kept up with decoding words in a list form so he can't guess based on context or picture.

Spelling

He spelled CVC words with short i this week.  He loves that his brother wants to do spelling time with him.

Math

Emmett's focusing mainly on reading, so his math is somewhat self-directed.  When he feels like it, he grabs his folder and does a few sheets.  This week he worked on addition sheets from Miquon Orange.

First Grade

Language

Grammar

We worked through lessons 90-92 this week.  There was a poem narration and we moved into discussing sentences.  I also grabbed video of Abby reciting Mr. Nobody.

Writing

This week's narration and copywork came from How to Eat Fried Worms.  The kids have heard this book on audiobook, so Abby was pleased to revisit it.

Reading

Poppy definitely is taking it's time to work through.  She only reads it half an hour a day.  The rest of this past week, she's been working on reading a bunch of books to earn points for Book Adventure.  This past weekend she asked when she could get her own library card.  She suggested when she got 1,000 points on Book Adventure and has been working toward that goal in the evenings at bedtime.

Spelling

This was her last week with All About Spelling Level 2!  The step this week worked with differentiating when to use "ou" and when to use "ow" for the sound of /ow/.  Toward the end of the week, she even copied her words in cursive.

Handwriting

We skipped any formal work this week, but worked with the white board connecting letters and reviewing some strokes.

Math

This week we moved into two- and three-digit mental subtraction.  As I predicted, she struggled a bit with it more than the addition section.  It's not because it was too hard, but because she throws up some kind of block or something when she sees it's *gasp* SUBTRACTION!  So, instead of it being a cakewalk, we actually pulled out the rods here and there to work through some problems.

All Together

Science

We moved into the plant kingdom this week!  I'm realizing we only have but a few weeks of science left.  We will be finished with RSO: Life long before the school year is done.

We studied the reproductive parts of flowering plants this week.  We made our own diagram, and then I bought a huge lily so we could see the petals, stamens, and pistil easily.

History

We learned about ancient Americans this week.  We attempted to close our eyes and maker our own version of the Nazca drawings.  We learned about the Olmecs and their ancient heads, which Emmett thought was fascinating.

Chess

We are continuing to work on the strategy of attacking with the bishop.  I don't want to have to move too quickly through chess since they are so young.  They still love it, though.  :)

Week 22

Preschool

Craft

Ellie didn't want to do a letter craft this week.  Instead, she wanted to color a bunch of pictures.  She did a Lalaloopsy picture, and Angelina Ballerina, and even a unicorn.

She was rather excited that I found a coloring picture that matched HER Lalaloopsy doll!

PreK Activity Book

The book focused more on matching, one-to-one correspondence and beginning writing with lines, circles and dots.  She consistently wants to form her circles clockwise, so I'm trying to redirect her as much as possible to do them counterclockwise.

Junior K

Language

Reading

We have basically moved on to just reading out loud to Mom.  It seems as though Emmett's made a conceptual leap because his reading has become a lot more fluid.  He does seem to be able to read words based on context more than just in a straight list.  In order to keep him working on his decoding skills, I've started giving him high frequency words to decode in a list.  He doesn't care for straight decoding, but I find it valuable for him.

Spelling

Emmett had difficulty with a few words from last week.  Due to his pronunciation, he would often misspell am and an.  They would typically be spelled "aum" because he does pronounce those words "a-yum" or "a-yun."  We repeated his list this week and it seemed to really solidify these words.

Friday was a nice day, so I sent them outside to play.  When I called him inside, he immediately sat up to do his spelling...and then I noticed his hands.  This is exactly what boys' hands should look like sometimes!

Math

Emmett completed the counting pages in Miquon.  He'll move on to addition next week.

First Grade

Language

Grammar

Abby's got Mr. Nobody completely memorized.  Next week I'll have to take video of her reciting it.  She also worked through lesson 89 in FLL 1.

Writing

This week's narration and copywork came from "The Velveteen Rabbit."  Having heard the story and read it herself, she found these very enjoyable.  She really does enjoy that story, probably because she's a stuffed animal lover herself.

Reading

She's still working on Poppy, but rather enjoying it.

Spelling

Abby worked on step 24, which deals with the phonograms "au" and "aw".  I thought we might have to repeat this week because some words don't always follow the generalization that "au" is in the middle and "aw" is at the end.  This meant she had to basically memorize which words used which phonogram when the sound was in the middle.  BUT, by the end of the week she had the words down.  Next week is our last week in level 2.

Handwriting

Abby's cursive is really coming along nicely!  This week we worked on q.

She was rather pleased with herself.

Math

Abby finished up the section on mental math dealing with addition of two- and three-digit numbers.  She grasped the concepts rather easily.  Next week won't be as easy, I'm sure, because it's all about subtraction.

All Together

Science

We finished up the animal kingdom this week!  We learned about mammals, including an experiment which demonstrated how some arctic and antarctic animals keep warm in extremely cold temperatures.

History

We discussed Alexander the Great this week.  All of a sudden, Emmett has had much enthusiasm for history.  I'm not sure where it's coming from, but I'll take it!  We only did a coloring page, mapwork, and narrations, but they seemed to enjoy the content.

Chess

Ellie learned the names of the rest of the chess pieces.

Emmett and Abby learned about the bishop and how it moved.  We are working on figuring out ways of "attacking" with a bishop.

(Remember those DIRTY hands?  This is post-bath.  ;))

Week 21

We took last week off for winter break.  The older two kids did a bit of reading and Abby did a bit of math each day, but nothing extensive at all.

Preschool

Letter Craft

Ellie asked to do the letter O this week.

We even put oatmeal on the Os!

Of course, this meant that everyone wanted to play in the oatmeal!

PreK Activity Book

Ellie didn't want to do much of it this week, which was fine.  She did work on one-to-one correspondence in other things, though.  She does great with that, but she has a hard time remembering the sequence from one to ten.  When I tell her to pick up five things in her room, she says, "How many is that?" If I show her how many on my hand, though, she will pick up the proper amount.

Junior K

Language

Reading

Emmett has been zooming through the stories in 100 Easy Lessons.  He's really making huge strides in fluency.

Spelling

Emmett got his first spelling list this week!  He did great with most of the words, but got caught up with "am."  He wants to spell it "a-u-m."  When he says it slowly, he does say, "Ay-u-m."  I want to make sure these words are solid, so he'll repeat the list this next week.  he's only five, so I'm taking a better-too-slow-than-too-fast approach.

Math

We put up a new number line over the break.  With it up, we did quite a few exercises where I covered up certain numbers (between one and thirty) and he had to tell me which I covered up.  He also worked through some Miquon Orange pages that dealt with counting and number lines.

First Grade

Language

Grammar

Abby did lessons 86 and 87.  She also really worked really hard on memorizing the third stanza of "Mr. Nobody."  She did some copywork from another poem and did a narration from The Boy Who Cried Wolf as well.

Writing

This week focused on Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer.  Abby didn't really care for it much...probably because it was a "boyly" story.  LOL

Reading

I picked up Poppy and Little House in the Big Wood from the library and gave her the choice.  She started Poppy this week.

Spelling

Abby's getting close to finishing up level 2!  She worked with words with the /oy/ sound this week.  She learned the generalization that we use "oy" at the end of a word and "oi" in the middle.

Handwriting

Abby worked on the letter p this week.  She did pretty well with it.  It feels like cursive it starting to become a bit less of work.  When she finishes her book, we'll work on doing some word writing for connecting letters a bit more.

Math

While we were on break Abby worked some with random Math Mammoth addition and subtraction review sheets.  We just got Singapore Math 2B and the first section reviews addition and subtraction with mental math.  We jumped right in and started the mental addition section.  She'll finish it next week, but the review was good.  It feels "easy" to her and she works quickly through it.

All Together

Science

We moved on to talking about birds this week.  The kids had fun bird watching outside.  There was an experiment that demonstrated how birds stay warm with special oils.  The kids thought it was fascinating.

History

We talked about the Persian and Peloponnesian Wars this week.  Emmett really seemed to enjoy when I pulled out the Lego blocks to show him how the Greeks from Sparta and Athens teamed up together to beat Persia.

Chess - NEW!

The kids got a chess set for Christmas.  I thought we'd add this in with easy and quick lessons from Chess is Child's Play.  Friday was their first lesson, so they didn't do much this week.  Ellie enjoyed learning the names for the rook and bishop.  Emmett and Abby learned about how the rook moves and how to capture a piece.

Week 20

I was very busy this week with a lot of orchestra rehearsals and a concert on Saturday, so Daddy took the week off.  We were out a lot because Daddy was home, but we made sure to get our schoolwork still done!

On Tuesday, we drove a bit of a ways to go to the Jasmine Moran Children's Museum.  Of course, the kids loved it.

While there, I found the perfect opportunity to take pictures of our little students.

The Tot

The Silly One

The Reluctant One 

(not just for schoolwork, just reluctant to do ANYTHING that isn't his idea)

The Studious One

Of course, there was a lot more to do!

Fix a car...

Go grocery shopping...

Play with some bubbles...

Learn a bit more about the human body...

...and a bunch more!

Of course, we also completed our regular work as well.  I just didn't take as many pictures of the boring stuff.  LOL

Preschool

Craft

We made reindeer antlers!  After we finished, we danced around to Rudolph!

PreK Activity Book

Ellie did all of her bookwork with Daddy this week because he was home.  She counted out music stickers (one-to-one correspondence), she listened to instructions about where to place farm animal stickers, she did some more or less work and she made a road with shapes.

Junior K

Language

Reading

Emmett is still reviewing stories from 100 Easy Lessons.  He is jumping to more fluid reading and a lot less sounding out.  It took him a longer time to make the jump, but I'm pleased with his progress.

Spelling

Emmett worked through Step 5 this week.  He changed CVC words by changing their vowels.  He learned that every word has at least one vowel.

We hung the spelling whiteboard for him.  Abby got to a point where we weren't using it to teach the lessons.  Emmett seems to thrive on the actual manipulation of the tiles.  Instead of storing it under the bed, we hung it (and another one for the littles).

Math

We skipped anything that even looked like math this week.  Besides living math, we just basically skipped it.  :)

First Grade

Language

Grammar

Abby worked through lessons 83 through 85.  She's now got the first two stanzas of Mr. Nobody memorized.  We also discussed the proper time to use is/are.

Writing

Abby's selections this week came from A Child's Geography of the World by V.M. Hillyer.  Abby really enjoyed these selections.  I also think Emmett would.  I'll have to keep my eyes open for a used version of this book.

Reading

We picked up Ramona and Her Father from the library.  I could've gotten it a lot quicker on my kindle, but she wanted the book this time.  She's working through that for her "school" reading and Charlotte's Web on her spare time.

Spelling

Abby completed step 22 this week.  It taught about the third sound of a: the /ah/ sound.  She learned that a will traditionally make that sound before and L and after a W.  She is now capable of writing sentences such as "Put the water in the tall glass."  I love that she's not memorizing a bunch of lists, but learning a rule and applying it!

Handwriting

She focused on the letter P this week.  Since the formation in manuscript is similar to the cursive formation, it was not a difficult letter for her.  We also went back and reviewed Bs because those are really difficult.

Math

Abby has completed Singapore Math 2A!  She worked through some end of semester review.  I also added some addition review from Math Mammoth 2B.  I've seen vast improvement between fluidity with multi-digit addition with this review.

All Together

Science

We learned about reptiles this week!  We went to the zoo to get a good glimpse of some reptiles and amphibians in the herpetarium.  We also saw GIANT reptiles at the Galapagos turtle exhibit.

We focused on how reptile bodies are specially designed to endure harsher conditions than amphibians and did an experiment to illustrate how have scales/thick skin can be an advantage.

History

We moved back to Greece this week.  We learned about two important ancient Greek cities: Sparta and Athens.  Emmett told me he would have loved to live in Sparta, but Athens might have been a little bit boring.  LOL

We also began listening to D'Aulaires' Book of Greek Myths on audiobook.  Abby really enjoys these.  She's stayed up late a few nights listening and following along in the book.

Week 19

It looks like I took all of one picture of schoolwork this week...

Preschool

Craft

We cut out snowflakes this week!  Scissors are a great exercise in fine motor skills and Ellie struggles with these as well. We have these scissors where she can grip the whole of the scissors with her hand.  She LOVED them for this activity.

PreK Activity Book

Ellie reviewed patterning and drawing dots and lines.  The book also had her color in a boat.  She is our first child to have any interest in coloring and staying in the lines at this age.  The older two were just interested in drawing, no coloring please.

Junior K

Language

Reading

Emmett has made the jump to self-identifying as a reader!  He climbs in bed and starts to sound out/read books.  He usually reads Little Critter books on his own.

Spelling

We introduced the letter tiles and sound cards this week.  Emmett focused on identifying vowels and consonants.

Math

We played some games as a family in the evening...but adding two dice together was about all he did this week.

First Grade

Language

Grammar

Abby did lessons 82 and 83 this week, which focused on Mr. Nobody.  This poem is longer than others that she's memorized, so we're taking it in chunks.  She's already got the first stanza down (and so does Emmett!).

Writing

Her selections came from The Light Princess by George MacDonald.  She was intrigued by this story and might be one we have to read together in the future.

Reading

I was a bit slow in getting to the library, so she read a few picture books that were history and science related.  She did begin Charlotte's Web on her own on Friday.

Spelling

Here is where my only picture comes in!  This week Abby learned that words don't end in u or v.  Now she knows that "English words don't end in i, j, u, or v."  In order to save the words from ending in u or v, she learned that we typically add a silent e at the end of the word.

Handwriting

Abby did O this week.  O has a harder connector in cursive so I thought it might be difficult for her, but with the simplicity of the letter shape, she did just fine.

Math

She did the section involving dividing by 3.  This was frustrating for her because she doesn't have her 3 multiplication facts memorized.  So, in order for her to figure it out, she had to either skip count or pull out her rods...which apparently made her feel dumb because she couldn't just KNOW the answer.

All Together

Science

This week we discussed amphibians.  We compared the metamorphosis of frogs and butterflies or incomplete and complete metamorphosis.  The kids made life cycle wheels for that.  They also learned about how newts "hear" with their legs.  We did a lab that displayed how sound travels and that really it's just movement.  Part of the lab involved playing with a slinky, so of course that was fun!

History

We learned about the Medes and the Persians this week.  The kids learned about Cyrus the Great and how he became the leader in Persia and then moved over and conquered all the way to the Indus River and then back through and even conquered Babylon!  (Apparently, Babylon is Abby's favorite.)  We left off with the cliffhanger that there was one country that the Persians didn't conquer - Greece!

Week 18

Preschool

Letter Craft

We are forgoing letter crafts this month for Christmas activities!  This week we strung Fruit Loops for the Christmas tree.  Abby and Emmett also strung, of course, but Ellie zoomed past them with her strand.  She loves stringing things.

PreK Activity Book

Ellie worked some with one-to-one correspondence (with stickers!) and drawing some more lines and dots.  We're working on proper pencil grip as well.  It looks like she might adopt a quadropod grip.

Junior K

Language

Reading

Emmett is still working well with reading me the stories from the last half of 100 Easy Lessons.  It's nice to have found a place where it's challenging, but not too challenging.

Spelling

Emmett did Step 2 this week, which was segmenting words into their different sounds.  When I did this step with Abby, she looked at me as if I was joking her because it was so easy for her.  She had been "spelling" her own words for a while.  Emmett, on the other hand, struggled for the first day with this exercise for the first day.  After that, he sailed through it.

Math

We did some work with number bonds again.  I'm not doing anything real formal with him because he's working fairly diligently with his reading.

First Grade

Language

Grammar

We worked through lessons 79-81 which reviewed titles of respect and her memorized poems.  We also introduced the poem Mr. Nobody, which will be her last bit of memory work for first grade grammar.

Writing

This week's selections came from A.A. Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner.  Being very familiar with Pooh, this was rather exciting for her.

Reading

Like I expected, Abby finished up Ramona Quimby, Age 8 this week.  She took the test and passed with 100%.  I think she's saving her points for a chocolate bar.

Spelling

Abby worked through step 20 this week, which talks about the soft sound of g.  This wasn't hard after last week discussing the soft sound of c.

Handwriting

We just got through some review this week.

Math

This was the last new section of Singapore Math 2A.  It deals with multiplication and division with 3 facts.  We just worked through the multiplication section this week.

All Together

Science

We peeked in on the world of fish this week.  Of course, this meant that we had to go get our OWN fish for observation.

We did an experiment that demonstrated how fish can stay at a certain level of water without working hard.  The kids thought this was almost magic.  This is why they love science!

History

In history this week, Greece got civilized again!  We discussed the writings of Homer, which the kids were somewhat familiar with because we read Mary Pope Osborne's Tales From the Odyssey.

We also learned about the Olympics.  We had our own mini olympics outside with footraces and discus throwing.

Week 17

My parents were in town this week so we made our best effort to get schoolwork out of the way as quickly as possible each day.  I'm pleased to say that we had skill subjects down and finished within 60-90 minutes most days.  :)

BUT, because we were trying to quickly finish lessons, I was not as focused at taking pictures.  Therefore, this post will be picture-less.  Oh well.

Preschool

Letter Craft

Skipped this in favor of hanging out with Grandma!

PreK Activity Book

I read the Little Red Hen to Ellie and she sequenced the story.  She also worked some on drawing lines and dots.

Junior K

Language

Reading

We worked through some 100 Easy Lessons again.  Emmett is flying through these lessons that we've already done.  BUT, I have seen some improvement with fluidity.  He's now capable of looking at a word, thinking about the different parts, and blending it all together before speaking.  He can now "say it fast" if he thinks about it, without sounding out.

He has complained that the stories are long and there are no pictures, but he's not sounding nearly as many words, and if he is motivated, reading is done for him in ten minutes.  Right now this feels like a sweet spot with him.  I don't want to try and push him mostly because I know it will be pointless.  When he is developmentally ready to make that jump to automaticity, he will spurt forward again.

Spelling

He is still LOVING the idea of spelling.  We continued to review the sounds all different letters can make.  I am taking this slowly, but he is doing really well.  I also am connecting spelling a bit with his handwriting practice so he is partly dictated by how well he can form the letters.

Emmett did spell his first word this week.  Grandpa has always affectionately called him "Punk" and he even spelled it!  He looked confused about which /k/ sound to use, but after I told him that we hardly end English words in "c" he correctly chose "k."  He was pleased with himself.

Math

We worked through some simple number bond games.  I tried to keep him sums to ten, but at this age, he loves grabbing the bigger rods to see what it is.  LOL

First Grade

Language

Grammar

We worked through Lessons 76-78 which focused on some review, abbreviations in an address and titles of respect.

Writing

This week's narrations and copywork were from The Reluctant Dragon.  Abby didn't love the story, but didn't struggle with any of it either.

Reading

Abby finished up Beezus and Ramona like I expected.  She was pretty insistent that she wanted to read Ramona, Age 8 so that's what we checked out next.  She's almost halfway through that.  When she finshes, I think I might encourage her to try something else for school and let her read Ramona on her spare time if she wants.  We'll see...

Spelling

We focused on the soft sound of C this week.  Abby seemed confused about when to use s or c (followed by e) for some sounds.  I'm sure part of that will resolve as she's exposed more to these words.  Regardless, she'll have a bit more review of these words next week than normal.

Handwriting

She worked on letter n and some review, I think.

Math

We are coming to the close of Singapore 2A.  Abby worked on the chapter that focuses on division by 2.  I'd like to keep the momentum we've got going with Singapore rather than switch back to MEP quite yet.  Today, though, we did work on some MEP puzzles.  I'm wondering if maybe this next semester it would be ideal to drop the IP/CWP from Singapore (which we use a year behind, so there's no real challenge) and add in half a lesson of MEP puzzles prior to her Singapore lesson.  We'll have to see what will work when we get the next Singapore set (sometime next week).  Traditionally, the B set of books have a lot of easier topics (money, geography, time) so it might be fine to have some challenging problems by way of MEP...

All Together

History

This week we read about the Mycenaeans.  I need to find some common household items made out of bronze and iron.  The kids understood that the barbarians were able to conquer the Mycenaeans because they had stronger weapons.  They have a hard time remembering that the barbarians had iron weapons and the Mycenaeans had bronze weapons.  I'm hoping we can take them to home depot or something and see/feel the difference.

Science

We did studied crustaceans this week.  The kids even enjoyed checking out our own crustaceans: roly polies!  These are their favorite bugs ever, so it was really easy to encourage them to work on some science this week.  LOL

Week 16

Even though this week was Thanksgiving week, we still did schoolwork...though a bit light/shorter than normal!

Preschool

Ellie has been having gastrointestinal issues of late.  Mostly, it's involved vomiting and random times.  I took her the doctor last week and then ran some tests.  This week, though, she had an upper GI series.  Between that and Thanksgiving prep, we took an "unschool" approach.  In our house that equals A LOT of reading to her and a ton of playing with blocks (mostly Duplo).

Junior K

Reading

Emmett skipped back and forth between I See Sam books he's already read and some Dr. Seuss (especially the Cat in the Hat's Learning Library).  He really loves science-y books and has been carrying around a book from the library with HUGE spreads of insects and spiders.  I wish they made beginning readers like that.  He'd eat it up.

We also moved back to reading some stories from 100 Easy Lessons.  He cruised through them.  Now I wonder if we should go back and work on the again for fluency.

Spelling - New!

Since Emmett has had a good amount of phonics instruction, but still isn't fluent, I debated starting him in All About Spelling 1.  I thought we'd take it slowly and learn the phonograms and see how it goes.  He really enjoyed saying the sounds and writing them with me.  We'll see how far he makes it.

Math

Skipped!

First Grade

Language

Grammar

We worked through lessons 72-75.  We worked mostly with the poem Three Little Kittens and some review of nouns, verbs and pronouns within the poem.

Writing

This week I read her Master of all Masters, which is a folktale.  I only had to re-read one section of the story, which I thought was pretty good for all of those weird words it dealt with!  The other story we worked with was an Aesop fable.  It was kind of neat because next week for history we will be learning about Ancient Greece.

We also wrote letters to Santa.  :)

Reading

Abby got on Book Adventure and took the quiz for Meet Molly.  She got all ten questions right, so apparently she did follow the story somewhat.  I'm not sure she grasped some of the significance of the story, but it was a good introduction to some ideas for her.

This week she's worked through Beezus and Ramona.  We checked it out from the library on my kindle.  There are good things and bad things about that.  I really like her using real books and turning real pages.  BUT, at the same time, she thinks it's neat to use a device to read a book.  I can also make the text larger if she needs it (though, she doesn't).  Most of all, though, she can't freak out about how big a book or chapter is.  She just gets on and reads it.  She's already two-thirds of the way through Beezus and Ramona, so I anticipate we'll be picking another book fairly soon.

Spelling

We worked through some commonly used words (to, do, you, your, of) and some words using the third sound of u.  Even though it was a short week, there wasn't much issue with these words.  It probably did help that half of the list was composed of very high frequency words.

Handwriting

We moved on to learning the letter M this week.

Math

Because it was a short week, we worked through the given review of multiplication and then used a bit of Miquon to review multi-digit addition.  I think next week, for her warm-up work (which we never really do), we'll review multi-digit subtraction.

All Together

Science

Our butterflies finally matured into adulthood!  Ellie was so excited!  We've been feeding them oranges and plan to release them this afternoon.

We also moved on and studied arachnids this week.  Abby and Emmett loved the little ditty that came in their science books about spiders. Emmett also caught a spider for us to observe.  The favorite part was also putting an ant in with the spider and then observing how the ant went missing!

History

This week we read about the Minoans.  The kids were fascinated with the stories from this week.  Who wouldn't love bull-jumping, the Minotaur and volcano exploding?!  They did have a hard time remembering the name of the civilization that lived on Crete.  We did a lot of "Who lived on Crete?" with the kids yelling, "THE MINOANS!"  LOL

Week 15

Apparently I'm getting a little boring in my picture-taking.  There are only four photos this week!

Preschool

Craft

Because Thanksgiving's coming up next week, we chose to forego our letter and make a turkey instead.  We finger painted feathers and then used tracings of each child's foot for the turkey's body.  I forgot to take a picture of how well they came out, but they did come out like cute little abstract turkeys.

This was Hyrum's first time actually painting and not eating the paint.  After a bit, he wanted a wipe for his hands, and then he tried to clean his paper.  LOL

Preschool Activity Book

We did some story comprehension questions, some patterns with shapes and colors, and some line drawing. Ellie still needs crayon nubs because otherwise she wants to fist the writing utensil!

Junior K

Reading

Emmett did some Dr. Seuss reading.  He picked Green Eggs and Ham again.  He's memorized most of it, so I'm not sure how much reading he actually did.  LOL

Math

He moved into the number bonds section in his book.  He really likes these papers, but does not like that he has to show me the answer with the rods.  I'm trying to encourage him to check with the rods because he is prone to miscounting.

First Grade

Language

Grammar

We did lessons 71 and 72 which focused on seasons and holidays as well as the proper use of sit/set and the pronoun I.

Writing

This week focused on The Railway Children.  Abby enjoyed the story, but had trouble remembering the kids' names.  I think probably because they were unfamiliar to her.

Reading

Abby finished Meet Molly!  I started her an account on Book Adventure so she is anxious to take the quiz for this book.  I guess that will tell me how much of the story she actually comprehended.  She can tell me what happened, but I'm always left wondering...

Spelling

To close up this section of r-controlled syllables, Abby worked through words with the /or/ sound.

Handwriting

We have been working for the last little bit on connecting letters to form words.  This week, she wrote her first sentence in cursive!

Math

This week we moved on to multiplication by three.  Abby surprised me by completely being able to skip count by 3s even though we've not practiced it!  Though, if she didn't know a multiplication problem, she's very prone to think of the number doubled and then added again.  I'm more than fine if she doesn't commit these problems to memory as my current plan is for her to move on to Beast Academy next year where they will work on multiplication again.  She is just six, after all!

All Together

Science

Our caterpillars have mostly all moved on to become chrysalises!  We have one straggler, but he was so long past the other guys, that we moved the other guys and have the caterpillar still hanging out in the cup.

History

This week we learned about Babylon taking over again!  Abby loved that Nebuchadnezzar was so nice to make his wife a garden that reminded her of home.