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!

Week 15

We are definitely doing Lite School being on vacation. We spent this past week in Pensacola, Florida. While Daddy was doing his class, the kids and I hung out in the hotel. We did schoolwork, but it was mostly review.

PreK:

Because we were stuck in a hotel room, I tried to encourage Emmett to work with his What Your Preschooler Needs to Know book. This book is a bit below him and he balks at doing it. I'm debating whether I should save it for Ellie... or just keep it up with him.

Math:

For our next month we will be working with Singapore Math's Intensive Practice 1A and Challenging Word Problems 1. Abby calls the IP book "Easy Math" because it is mostly review at this point. The CWP isn't difficult for her, but it requires her to think. As a consequence, she doesn't care for that book as much.

Spelling:

We have just been constantly reviewing spelling words to make sure the phonics rules she learned in level 1. She recalls high frequency words fairly frequently, so sometimes I am hard-pressed to find words she doesn't see as frequently to make sure she knows the rules.

Religion:

This week we talked about Jacob and Sherem. The kids each drew a picture to review the story.

Extra:

Of course, because we were in Pensacola, we saw some of the local things.

We visited the National Museum of Naval Aviation.

We visited the beach constantly.

We ate McGuire's Irish Pub and Grill:

This past weekend we traveled to Tennessee and are here for three weeks-ish. Daddy is on leave and we will spend Christmas with my family. We will still work through our review work and will probably do a bit of Christmas unit study and crafts.