Week 19

We are getting to point where FIAR will be a fill-in-the-gaps or school-lite type of program. We started FIAR stuff about a year ago and have gone through quite a few books. A lot of the books left are ones that are either out of print, I don't own and our library doesn't have, or about subjects I'm not quite ready to introduce to my very naive five-year-old.

So, we will be dropping FIAR soon as a main program. We are awesome about completing some reading and some math each day. Soon, we will be adding in science (twice a week), history (twice a week), music/art (once a week), grammar (daily), and writing (daily). History and science will be the big add-ins, though, and will affect our afternoons. I don't want to shortchange Abby the chance to have "summer break" or my chance to plan, though. So, I thought we'd try out doing some "school" in the afternoons by working in some geography/history/community helpers type social studies and science-ish unit studies. In a couple of months we'll take a long break so we will be able to be on break when the nice weather peaks here.

PreK:

Emmett is enjoying his workbook. It's something like this and it's perfect for him because he is still required to "do school" but he enjoys the puzzles. The stickers are perfect because his fine motor schools aren't quite where he'd have an easy time writing answers. I don't know why they make preK books that kids are supposed to fill out page after page...even Abby didn't do workbooks like that at this age!

Emmett is also still tagging along where he is interested.

Math:

On Tuesday, Abby and I were working some through Singapore Math's Intensive Practice. She picked a page and I hopped in the shower because she had told me she wanted to do it herself. She chose a page that had problems like "I am less than 5+2 and more than 6-3." She'd completed three problems and was moving on to number four when I got back to her. She was sitting at the dining room table and I moved to unload the dishwasher when she had a Math Meltdown. "I can't doooo iiiiit! It's tooooo hhhhhaaaaard!"

So I sat next to her: "Abby, what's 5 and 2?"

"I dooon't knowww!" (Which is totally untrue because she's known those facts for a bit.)

"Here are your rods. If the white is one, pull out five and two."

"I can't find them!"

"Build your staircase." *sigh*

After working through problem four, she went and happily completed five and six. I have no clue what was up with just that one problem... and six was harder than the others!

A different day, we did math with the iPad and our new styluses. I didn't correct the problems, the monsters in the drawing app did. That drew Emmett in and he wanted to do it too.

Mostly for math, though, we completed lessons in MEP 1B (Week 21). MEP 1B is a perfect segue from Singapore 1A to Singapore 1B for Abby. Her ability to add past ten is coming, though. It is becoming a lot less convoluted for her.

Spelling:

I picked up How to Teach Spelling this week. I'm waiting for the workbook and hopefully we'll jump into this. Both All About Spelling and How to Teach Spelling are based on the Orton-Gillingham approach. HTTS is more workbooky, which is fine for Abby. If we like it, HTTS will be cheaper...and I like cheaper. :)

Reading:

Abby's been reading books of her choice of late.

For our Seuss unit-ish study, we read through Did I Ever Tell You How Lucky You Are?

We also finished up Mrs. Piggle Wiggle and picked up The Boxcar Children.

Science:

We've started our science talks with magnets.

We learned about what magnets pick up.

We found some ways we use magnets in our everyday lives.

We discussed the force and strength of magnets and measured the strength of different magnets we had.

We also found that our magnets weren't as strong when we tried to pull a piece straight up.

I asked the kids if they knew what force was preventing the magnet from moving as easily and Abby immediately responded, "GRAVITY!" We haven't formally discussed gravity, so it was nice to hear that she has been exposed to the idea somewhere.

After our "experiments" we did some playing with our magnets.

Geography:

As an introduction to our new add-ins, we are working through the continents specifically. Soon, we will be ready for history.

This week we studied Asia. We learned about Mt. Everest, the Great Wall of China, and animals of Asia (giant panda, arctic fox, Asian elephant and tiger).

Abby loves to get on BrainPop Jr., so we watched any pertinent videos on there.

Extras:

We got a chance to play with some Moon Dough on Friday.

Daddy's been training the kitties to stand for their treat. He never thought he'd like having a cat this much!

It's obvious that science was the new exciting thing here this week. It's work for them at all. All I have to do is mention "science" and they get giddy to find out what we're doing that day!

Weeks 16 and 17

This is going to be a pictureless post because I am already behind and it's quicker to just write out what we did. I did take pictures, but they've already been transferred to the external hard drive.

PreK:

Emmett worked through a few pages in What Your Preschooler Need to Know. He did quite a bit of coloring with us too.

Math:

Abby continued to work through Singapore 1A's Intensive Practice and Challenging Word Problems. I also threw in a few problems from MEP Year 1. She still has some work to do in those, but they are mostly review. We are probably going to take a break with learning new skills and allow her brain to mature because math is a lot of work when she's trying to hold a bunch of numbers in her head to do mental math with regrouping past a ten. I'd prefer for her not to memorize her facts to 20 by rote repetition, rather I'd like for her to work these certain problems so much that they've stuck in her head. The only sums past ten that she can remember with consistency are the doubles.

Spelling:

It seems all of the rules Abby learned in All About Spelling Step 1 are solid. It is time to move on to AAS2...but I have to buy it. For now, we're just reviewing words.

Reading:

Abby is still reading whatever ends up in her book box at night. She reads anything posted on walls or signs. Reading is still work for her at times, but her fluency and comfort level is raising.

She's also excited to get back to the book All About Sam, which she started before we left and didn't bring with her.

Unit Study:

The week before Christmas we paused our regular scripture reading for a focus on the Christmas season. We discussed symbols of Christmas and hunted them the entire week.

Scriptures:

Besides Christmas, we also learned about Enos and King Benjamin.

Swim:

Yes, we were those parents and enrolled our kids in swim while we were on vacation. My parents' gym is actually where my kids first took swimming lessons. The instructor is awesome! We enrolled them in semi-private lessons and in just six lessons, we saw massive improvement in stroke, kicks, and side breathing. Yay!

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.