Week 23

This is our fiftieth blog post here! Woohoo!

We had a good week. We have been reviewing the continents and this week we did Antarctica. We also are slated to complete Mr. Popper's Penguins today. We'll watch the movie on Sunday. With all of that happening, of course it was perfect timing to do a little mini-unit on Penguins. I love synchronicity like that!

PreK:

Emmett played around with Starfall and ReadingEggs this week. He also loves to do BrainPop. I got smart and had him use earphones so Abby couldn't be distracted by his noises.

Math:

We worked through MEP 1B week 25. MEP is still overwhelming to her at times, but it just is the way it is.

I've been weaving in Miquon and some Math Mammoth pages as her warm-up exercises, which she loves. This Friday, we got Singapore Math 1B. As I thumbed through it, I realized she really would have been ready to begin it right after completing 1A. I had been under the erroneous assumption that she should be able to construct her sums to 20 with automaticity. Apparently not. Abby's not the only one learning new things!

So, on Friday, we worked through some SM as well. She completed an entire week's worth in one sitting and asked for more. It's safe to say she prefers the look and sequence of Singapore vs MEP. Too bad I'm a mean mommy and will require her to complete the MEP pages as well. The question will be, which should we work through first? I'm not sure I know yet...

And, sometimes, this is what I do while I'm encouraging her to work through a problem independently. C rods aren't just for kids, you know...

We also got the Singapore CD-ROM game Rainbow Rock in the mail. We haven't fiddled with it much because it isn't supported by Windows 7...so we have to use it on my dinosaur laptop.

The kids still love to watch Math Monsters. That counts too, right?

Language Arts:

Spelling is still review. On Thursday we received the next level of All About Spelling. I need to go over it before we start it...so who knows when that will happen. She's still just five, right? Maybe this week I'll sit down and prep it...

Cursive is going swimmingly. She is resistant to it because it is hard. I know we've established that she's a perfectionist. It really does frustrate her, but I can see her working through it and she feels accomplished by it. This week she mastered the letters s, i, and t.

We jumped ahead a few weeks in our Sonlight Readers schedule. I reserved Hill of Fire from the library and it became available quicker than I anticipated. It was no struggle. I don't think we're going to go back and read most of the ones we skipped...

This week we began First Language Lessons. It's fairly simple and only takes us five minutes three times a week. The only thing that tripped her up was when I asked her what we call two girls who share the same parents. She replied, "We call them siblings." Uh...yes...but not what I was reaching for. LOL

She has nearly memorized the first poem from the book. It was introduced on Wednesday and this video is from Friday. She is pretty pleased with herself. I'm not surprised since memorization is not difficult for her.

We are finishing up Mr. Popper's Penguins this weekend. Daddy is still working through My Father's Dragon with Emmett. In her free time, Abby is reading a Cam Jansen book on my kindle.

Science:

Our little impromptu penguin unit morphed into some talk about eggs and birds. We discussed the strength an egg is afforded by it's shape. I illustrated this by showing the kids how four eggshells could hold up a fair amount of books. Daddy thought this was pretty impressive too.

Of course, the kids tried to squeeze the egg to crack it as well.

Daddy was adamant that he could actually crack an egg this way. When he first grabbed it, he didn't place it in his palm, but held it in such a way that his fingers could puncture the shell. I corrected him and had him wrap his fingers all the way around the egg. He was a bit chuffed that he couldn't crack it this way either.

We also discussed what is inside an egg and what an eggshell is made of. This led to dissolving an eggshell in vinegar.

Geography:

We studied Antarctica this week. We talked about sunrise and sunsets and the differences in Antarctica vs here. We observed how Antarctica doesn't look like a flat strip of land like we see on maps either.

We also discussed Penguins and made a fair share of these activities from this Easy Make and Learn Projects: Penguins book. (I bought this one during the Scholastic Dollar Days!)

We read all those books that our shells held up.

The kids watched a bit of Discovery Streaming. It has the Life documentary with a segment on the poles.

PE:

The Air Force base nearby has a large virtual academy group that gets together and does a PE class in the Youth Center's gym. A new group has spun off for independent homeschoolers that we have gone to a couple of times. There aren't enough kids to really play anything, but they do get to use a few typical PE things.

Abby keeps practicing her jump rope skills. The poor kid has a hard time commanding all her limbs (which are quite long) while keeping time with the jump rope. Again, she is overwhelmed and frustrated with it. She keeps trying, though. :) Much to her surprise, however, she can dribble!

They also have these scooters that the kids love. Last week my kids used jump ropes to tie them all together to make a large train and coerced one of the older boys to pull them along. Not exactly physically taxing, but at least they were using their imaginations!

Extra:

We had a mini box day! I ordered the next few things that will take us through most of next year. These things will last us for a while, though. It's nice to have the beginning of next year already planned out.

Here's our tentative curriculum list:

First Grade!

Math: continue on with Singapore Math, and MEP and Miquon

English: First Language Lessons 1 (and maybe move into 2), Writing With Ease 1, All About Spelling 2 (and maybe move into 3)

History: Story of the World: Ancients, its accompanying Activity Guide, and a lot of "living books"

Science: Real Science Odyssey: Life, definitely a lot of books, and maybe a few lessons from Building Foundations of Scientific Understanding

Art and Music: as outlined in the Core Knowledge sequence

K4:

Emmett will continue tagging along where he chooses. Sometime around this summer I will start him with Funnix. Learning to read will be his main "schoolwork." When that becomes a bit more fluid, he will start some gentle Miquon-esque activities. If these things work out, he might start some FIAR-type activities. I am calling it K4 because he will be ready for these activities, but if he were attending public school, he wouldn't be doing Kindy until fall of 2013.

PreK/ThreeSchool:

Ellie will be three this summer. If I can get it together, she might enjoy some themes surrounding certain picture books. I can see a lot of LeapFrog's Letter Factory in her future.

Toddler:

*gasp!* By the time next school year starts, my sweet baby will be moving into toddlerhood! His plan? Learn to walk and talk, I guess. ;)

Week 22

PreK:

Emmett is definitely in a slump where he doesn't want to do anything except ride his bike and be loud. That's a four-year-old boy for you! Academics at this age are not formal or mandatory at our house, so he's just taking a break, I guess...

Math:

We worked through week 24 of MEP 1B this week. Abby was fine until Friday. After she had been working on addition facts through thirteen for a week, she flipped out on the last day. And it wasn't because the problems were too hard. I knew it was coming too. We started the sheet and she was fine on the first set. While she was working that first set, though, she saw the third set of problems which had questions like 5=13-9+?. She knows how to work these problems on the number line, knows how to use her rods to find the answer as well. I had told her she could use them. Instead she refused to focus on the problems and tried to write whatever she wanted. When confronted, she complained that she didn't know the answer and then just zoned out. After she cried and I got annoyed with her for not focusing (!), she got to work and completed those problems with 100% accuracy.

Since I've been planning next year, I have been thinking about the differences between MEP and Singapore Math. I want her to complete MEP because I like the reasoning and the math puzzles, if you will. I did go ahead and order Singapore 1B (which I was avoiding doing because MEP is free) to see how she'd do with that.

This is one of those math puzzles that MEP has that I love! She was supposed to move one stick to make the fact true. The original fact was XI+I=X. After a few minutes of thinking, she immediately said, "There are two ways to do it." And then she showed me both.

We did play a math game, Race to 100. All of the kids really liked this one. It was good for Emmett to actually pay attention and practice his one-to-one correspondence and it was good for Abby to practice her adding. After the first few rolls, she had no problems adding in her rolls. Adding past a ten is becoming fairly simple for her...as long as she believes she can do it...

Language Arts:

I was thinking I should probably group all of the like things together....

Spelling:

We are still reviewing words from AAS level one. I did order level two, so we'll fold that in when we get to it.

Reading:

Abby read Mouse Tales this week. She apparently has read it a few times before and loves the book.

Mr. Popper's Penguins is going well. This next week we should have a penguin-filled week as we are scheduled to finish the book as well as study Antarctica in our little continent study! I think we'll be watching the movie next Sunday.

Perhaps the most exciting that happened reading-wise, is that Mommy got a Kindle! It was considered a school purchase since a lot of our curricula is PDF or e-book form. Ellie likes to take it and pretend she's reading on it. I learned my lesson the first time she bought a book (*doh*) and turn off the wi-fi when she gets it.

Abby also loves the Kindle and I let her take it to her bed each night to read a chapter in Cam Jansen and the Mystery of the Stolen Diamonds. I've written that she is resistant to reading most chapter books. I believe part of it is that she does like the pictures in picture books. Just like with her math, though, she is easily overwhelmed. And since things have usually come easily to her, she tends to be a perfectionist and doesn't want to do things that might be hard. Anyway...with the Kindle she can't see if the book is thick or whatnot. She can't be concerned that she won't finish the entire book. I can turn the words to be bigger, so it's she is quickly gratified that she completed a "page." In this way, she's been reading a chapter a night of Cam Jansen with ease. And now, it is very obvious that, since Cam Jansen is a late third grade reader, that she might have started Sonlight's grade 3 readers just fine. At least she enjoys the grade 2 ones... :)

Penmanship:

This is the new one this week! Abby has been experimenting with different ways to write letters, adding loops to her letters, etc. She has very typical kindergartener handwriting and we have worked much through any formal penmanship this year. She has been begging to learn "curtlain" so this week we added in a cursive program: Peterson Directed Handwriting. This week we worked on our "sharp tops" and, even though it was hard and she struggled with it, she loved it. Learning cursive definitely has the appeal to her to keep pushing through even though it might be difficult. She kept telling herself as she worked, "Just because you make a mistake doesn't mean you're dumb; it just means you're learning."

Science:

Whoops! I guess we probably won't get to the final week of our magnet stuff where we were supposed to magnetize a needle and make a compass. Oh well! We have been definitely been more aware of magnetic properties and notice them around the house more. Success!

Geography:

This week we learned about South America. Ellie loves Diego currently and having heard or watched her sister's television shows, she could tell me a whole lot about different South American animals. It found me wishing they could make a Diego equivalent for other continents.

She was amazed to learn about the Amazon and squealed with delight, "Diana is from there!" My little Wonder Woman fanatic. :)