Week of 15 May

Phonics/Reading:

Abby is still cruising through Funnix 2. I'm not seeing any break at the moment because she really actually is enjoying the lessons. It may be because she is now to the point where there aren't a whole lot of new rules to learn and she is just building the ability to read longer amounts. She completed up to lesson 35 this week.

ABCs:

Emmett chose to work on the letter O this week. This is the first vowel we've really gone over and I've chosen to just introduce the short vowel sounds. We also bought him Chicka Chicka Boom Boom in a board book so it's easier to refer to. (The volume we were using is an anthology of children's books.)

He made an octopus as his main craft.

Ellie also likes to participate in ABC time. She climbs up near our coconut tree and points at the letter and makes the sounds we prompt her to. She also likes to do some of the crafts... This week, though, she didn't care to actually complete the craft beyond attempting some cutting.

Five in a Row:

It was SO NICE to move back to Five in a Row this week! We rowed Mr. Gumpy's Motor Car by John Burningham. It was a good book to slide back in this week.

We talked about license plates and noticed the one our car and the one in the book.

When we had noted the differences we talked about WHY Mr. Gumpy's license plate is different (because he's from England!). The kids remembered where England was due to Peter Rabbit.

This time we talked about how England is part of the greater United Kingdom. We also talked about Big Ben in London and found a YouTube video of it.

We also compared and contrasted the drawings in Mr. Gumpy to other picture books we have.

We learned about onomatopoeias and the kids now LOVE to identify them! In our daily read-alouds they are on the hunt for them. I wish I would have introduced this literary concept earlier (we've done a few books with that for the language arts option), but I thought it might be a bit above them. Boy was I wrong! I will say, it's so cute hearing it from their little mouths, "Hey, 'bump' and 'thump' are onomatopoeias!"

Scriptures:

We talked about Nephi building a boat for FHE and made boats out of some simple at-home materials. The boats were a big hit that night and then in their next bath.

Life:

The kids earned some gliders as a prize and they enjoyed those this week too. I guess this week was sort of lightly transportation-themed.

We got a new U.S. puzzle. It's pieces are actually the shape of each individual state (except for the smaller northeastern states). Our kids, Abby especially, are very interested in U.S. geography. I have a game on my iPhone that has her place the states on a blank map that she's getting pretty proficient with. So this puzzle was rather exciting.

And, finally, we got our earthworm nursery in the mail this week! The kids were really excited to do this project and watch the worms grow. They started out in these weird dirt-ish-encrusted balls. And then we soaked them in water to remove it.

Then we placed them in their chamber to hatch.

They have to be kept wet otherwise their skin will dry out and they wont' be able to breathe and will die. We've already had two hatch and they are TINY. We need to move them to the dirt now so they can have a place to dig and some food to eat.

Week of 13 Feb

Phonics/ABCs:

Abby is just moving right along with Funnix and her reading. She just finished lesson 69 out of 120 lessons. This week she also read nearly the entire Green and Eggs and Ham to me. She at first told me she couldn't do it, but when I opened the book and had her try, she was amazed that she could do nearly all the words. The stories in her reading program are getting more content in it too, so it's not as boring listening to those, either.

Emmett has been learning about the letter "m" this week. Last week we did "t," so I'm hoping this next week to cover "e" and we'll have done all the letters in his name.

"M" is for Monster:


Tracing the "m":


"M" on Funnix's website:


Writing more letters in his "M" mini book:

Scriptures:

We've started focusing a bit more on the Book of Mormon using the Scripture Stories series that the Church puts out. This week we focused on the first chapter, which tells about how we got the Book of Mormon and the Joseph Smith story. So, to highlight that we've been writing the first part of James 1:5. The kids enjoy writing it and they can even sort of say it from memory.

Life:

We made decorations for Valentine's Day for a few days too.

This one I took from No Time For Flashcards:

We also decorated mailboxes to house our valentines:

We found these magnets at Target for a really good deal, so I thought we'd try to reinforce the days of the week. Abby gets that there are specific days in certain order, but she still has difficulty with the sequence of it all. She'll get it.

We also took a day and visited Science Museum Oklahoma. We're on our third membership to this museum and the kids still love it.

The weather here has been beautiful, so the kids have also had a ton of play time too!

Swim:

The kids started a new session in their swim lessons. The great thing is that they're the only kids in their class with two teachers...so they're basically receiving private lessons at the moment. The only bummer is that the lessons are a little later than we would've liked, but we're dealing by moving bedtime back an hour.

Mom and Dad:

Daddy and I were super pleased to learn we were the only two in our developmental psychology class to earn 100% on our latest exam. Unfortunately, it was a short-lived victory because now I have like four chapters of European History to catch up on in preparation for my exam this coming week. We just have to keep plugging along with it! The fun thing is that we are finally into the section of developmental psychology that is interesting to both of us. In the last two weeks we've covered the prenatal stage and the infant/toddler stage. It sure isn't as difficult to remember all of this information compared to five different psychological theories and their characteristics!