Week 28

While my older kids were all better this past week, my baby has been afflicted with ear infections. After we tried to treat the infections, we learned he is allergic to cephalosporins.

With all of that going on, it was a bit of a rough week on Mom. I feel like I held together really well, though...just with a baby on my hip ALL OF THE TIME.

Tot School:

Ellie has been known to climb up to the table and tell us she is "doing maff." She loves to line up the dominoes when we pull them out, so I thought she'd get a kick out of the c rods and their track.

She flitted about us this week drawing random pictures and scribbles and declaring each notepad she saw hers.

PreK:

Emmett completed five lessons from 100 Easy Lessons. He is now up to reading short sentences in the book for "stories."

We've been reading We're Going on a Bear Hunt this week.

Emmett's been playing with these cards from Homeschool Creations. They've been a good review of counting past ten.

I also highly recommend this audio CD which reads the book, but also has a slew of activities to go along with it. It has been a huge hit here.

Math:

We worked through Week 30 of MEP 1B. This week focused on number bonds to 20, which Abby found extraordinarily easy. I think we're getting to the point where I should start pulling in a few problems from Singapore to give us a bit of a different approach... We'll see...

She does enjoy the problems that involve Roman Numerals and enjoyed creating some problems for me. This led to extending the lesson to learning the numerals for 50 and 100.

Language Arts:

Abby completed three or four lessons of grammar. This book is so gentle and repetitive that sometimes she gets ahead of the lesson. For example, this last week was on streets and proper nouns...so then, Abby moved on, "Well, our city is XXX. That's a specific place; it's a proper noun! And we live in Oklahoma, and THAT's a proper noun!" In the meantime, she's gone past what the first lesson was on and has now moved into the lessons previously. I guess she gets it... LOL

We took spelling a bit slower this week and reviewed the multisyllabic words, phrases and sentences from the last step.

Because Abby's so young, she doesn't write quickly, so writing out several words at once can be laborious. I've just been having her write three or four words, one or two phrases, and one sentence a day. We'll move on to the next step next week.

In cursive, Abby started work with the "roll" motion in preparation for writing humped letters.

Abby's still reading her Magic Tree House book to me. She was so excited to read it, but having her sit down and read to me is like pulling teeth of late. I have no clue why as she reads well and hardly has to break apart even foreign words. She enjoys the story when she does read it... Who knows? LOL

I am still reading Pinocchio to the kids. Abby would love to read more than one chapter a night, but Emmett can only do so much listening and I want him to enjoy the read-alouds too. This book will take nearly a month to get through if we are working at this pace consistently...

Geography:

We started off with a little review of our oceans. This was especially useful for Emmett.

This week was our last week for landforms. We discussed valleys and canyons and watched video on the Grand Canyon.

PE:

The kids are still taking their gymnastics class and enjoying it a lot. I'm looking forward to when Ellie is three and I don't have to be out on the floor with her. It's harder to drag Hyrum around while making sure she is doing what she's supposed to.

The kids have even been practicing some of their flexibility at home.

Extra:

Daddy took Monday off and we visited the Science Museum. Our museum has a lot of neat and hands-on exhibits.

They also do a "Science Live" show where they do real experiments on stage. This is a somewhat scripted show, but still fun for the kids. The last one they did was chemistry. They've since redone it to work a bit on physics. Abby was chosen twice to be up on stage and help.

The first time was to demonstrate the principals behind Bernoulli's Baseball.

The second time she was chosen specifically because she had worn light-up shoes and they wanted to demonstrate the Van de Graaf generator. She was so funny this time because the nature of the experiment required her to touch the boy she stood next to. She would only barely touch him with the point of her finger, as though he would transmit some kind of disease to her. LOL

And, of course, we've had beautiful weather and the kids have had plenty of outside-and-messy time!

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 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 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. ;)