Week 27

This past Thursday was Valentine's Day.  We took some nice time in the morning to make paper valentines.  Some went to neighbors, others went to Daddy.  :)

Preschool

PreK Activity Book

We got Book 2 of the activity book, but I want to have space between book 1 and 2.  We're continuing with lots of picture books,, but Ellie still asks for "her schoolwork."  I may have to find some other activity books that would be good middle ground.

Letter Craft

We did the letter G this week.  Of course, this was a favorite because it included GLUE and GLITTER.    It was a girl's dream.

Her pajama shirt is so fitting. :)

Junior K

Language

Reading

Emmett read most of One Fish, Two Fish this week.  He's still doing pretty well.  This is a good non-frustrating level for him.  :)

Spelling

Emmett's spelling words this week were all short e sounds.  He has cruised through these lists of short vowel words.  Spelling is also reinforcing proper letter formation and handwriting in a very natural way.  This little guy has great handwriting for newly five!

Math

We paused a bit this week in any book work to play number bond games.  Abby loved being the "helper" here.  :)

And, of course, games for math makes for fun math!

First Grade

Language

Grammar

We reviewed pronouns and action verbs and moved into talking about state of being verbs.  We now own the FLL Audio Companion and Abby listened to and sang the chant for these verbs.

Writing

We worked with material from A Christmas Carol this week.  It helped that we had watched the muppet version a few weeks back, I think.

Reading

Abby is nearly done with Trumpet of the Swan.  She's really loving it!

Spelling

We made a Silent E book this week and reviewed the first three jobs of Silent E:

1. Silent E helps the vowel before say its long sound.
2. Silent E makes c or g say its soft sound.
3. Silent E prevents a word from ending in u or v.

We'll learn a bit more about Silent E next week.

Handwriting

We worked with letter T some this week.

Math

We began working a section on money.  We reviewed coins and how much each were worth.  She wrote amounts in dollars and cents and practiced making change for $1, $5, and $10.

All Together

Science

We worked through a few pages of Evan Moor's Giant Science Resource books.  It's been kind of nice to take a break through science, though I can tell the kids are itching to get back to doing experiments and projects.

History

We learned about the Punic Wars this week.  The kids, especially Emmett, were fascinated with how Hannibal used ELEPHANTS to fight.  

Chess

We parked it a bit on attacking with the bishop since Emmett can only readily see one way to attack in any given situation..  After a bit of prompting, he can see the second.  I want this to be fun, slow, and easy.  It is a game, after all!

Week 26

This week was a scheduled off week...BUT when I made up the school schedule, I wasn't pregnant.  I'm due in April and we are scheduled to be schooling the whole of April.  So, since we have a good flow and routine going, we schooled through this week in order to prep for when the new baby comes.

Preschool

PreK Activity Book

Ellie is basically to the end of her PreK book.  The book introduced opposites at the very end.  It was a bit confusing to her at first, but if I pose the question as a fill-in-the-blank, she does really well with it.  She was also asked to draw zig-zag lines, which is difficult for her.  She needs some fine motor work, I think.  I should look into getting her some Kumon tracing/cutting books... I also ordered the next level activity book.


Letter Craft

We didn't do a craft this week because we were active with other things... (Mostly she enjoyed playing and coloring in large boxes we have around the house.)

We did put up some missing letters on our coconut tree.  Then Ellie points to every letter and tells me their names and sounds.  This is too easy for her...and apparently Hyrum too!

Junior K

Language

Reading

After finishing up Little Bear early, we moved on to Put Me in the Zoo.  I believe Little Bear is at a higher level.   (According to Scholastic's Book Wizard, Little Bear: grade level equivalency is 1.8, whereas Put Me in the Zoo: grade level 1.4.)  Apparently Put Me in the Zoo was fascinating, though.  Instead of reading it over a few days, we got to the appointed stopping place and Emmett said, "I want to read more!"  I couldn't deny that!  That is HUGE for this guy (who really doesn't care much for stories and would much rather read about ants, spiders, volcanoes, etc).  So he read the whole book in one sitting!

He moved on to The Cat in the Hat, which must not be as engaging (probably because he's heard it and knows the story line).  He's not in any rush to read beyond what I've planned, and that's fine.

I will have to say that just last week I was calling my mom wondering about this boy and his progression in reading.  It seems like it's come in fits and starts and some points have had me frustrated and scratching my head with what to do with him.  Now, I've decided that's doing great!  Moving to real books for readers has made a huge difference.  He feels less like he's having a lesson and more like he's just reading to me, which is a big confidence booster for him.

At this point, Abby was reading many simple readers on her own volition.  Emmett is not.  I have a feeling that he will need explicit instruction and reading help longer, but I don't think that's necessarily bad.  She was willing to practice more because it allowed her to stay up late at night.  On the other hand, Emmett doesn't care about staying up later to read.  He gets in bed, may thumb through a book, but is typically sawing logs within ten minutes of laying down.  It's also difficult to for him to read books he's interested in when he's really interested in non-fiction science books.  It's hard to design phonics-controlled readers for a beginning reader who wants to read about bugs and spiders and volcanoes and what's inside the earth, you know?

Spelling

Emmett spelled words with the short u sound this week.  He breezed through those words.  If I were in any rush, I'd have pushed him through most of these short-vowel words within a week or two.  Instead, I don't feel the need to rush.  It's easy for him and I don't have to be super intensive with it.  He's still young. :)

Math

I did start Emmett in Singapore Math year 1, though.  We had the books and I really do wonder if doing some math would really strike his fancy.  Like I've said previously, he can count well beyond 100, knows addition facts of his doubles and +1s.  If I phrase a question in certain ways, he can figure other sums in his head easily.  ("What's two bigger than six?" rather than "Two plus six is what?")  He breezed through the beginning section on counting (of course) and began work with number bonds.  Again, I'm not planning on breezing through the number bond section because I really would like him to remember a fair amount of bonds when we finish this section.  He does already know his bonds to ten... I just want him to be a bit stronger or more sure about his bonds for sex, seven, eight and nine.  That just means some game play next week...which he'll love.

First Grade

Things are moving rather easily along for Abby.  Again, I'm sure we could accelerate a bit, but we are having a nice period of coasting.  We might consider it towards the fall...or maybe not. :)

Language

Grammar

We began First Language Lessons 2!  We only did two lessons this week, one that focused a bit on nouns and then the next one re-introduced the poem "The Goops."  She's working on memorizing that one now.

Writing

Abby's selections this week came from The Tale of Benjamin Bunny.  Abby loved Peter Rabbit last year and I don't think she's realized there are other stories by the same author.  Time to pull down the compilation, I think!

Reading

Abby took the Book Adventure quiz for Poppy.  Every once in a while I wonder what she really pulls from a book so far advanced (Poppy is at a late 5th grade reading level), but when she takes the quiz and completely aces it and can tell me the gist of the story and her favorite parts, I stop wondering.  It still boggles my mind at times, though.  The points from her Poppy quiz pushed her over 1,000 points. Come Saturday, she will be the proud owner of a library card.  She is ecstatic about that.

For lack of anything better to read at the first of the week, Abby took all of an hour to read a Magic Tree House book (Hour of the Olympics).  Later in the week, we took the kids to the book store to pick some new reading books.  When presented with a few choices, she immediately chose The Trumpet of the Swan, knowing it was by the same author who did Stuart Little and Charlotte's Web.  She's already into chapter four and enjoying it.

Spelling

No new words were introduced in this last step of spelling.  She did a lot of dictation and sorting words with the long a sound.

Handwriting

We focused on the letter s this week.  She's nearing the end of her alphabet...I imagine when she finishes the book, we'll do some small sentences copied in cursive for a while to cement formation before I start having her write other school-y things in cursive as well...

Math

Abby worked through some pages in Challenging Word Problems 2 as well as finishing up the section on multiplication and division.  The next section is division with a remainder.  At the end of 2A she seemed to be sort of frustrated with word problems and whether the problem was asking her to add, multiply, subtract, or divide.  We worked on that a bit, but apparently letting it percolate in her brain was right because lately she's not struggled with that at all.  In fact, her biggest complain about doing word problems this afternoon was that I would just not let her blurt the answer.  She had to write the math sentence or number bond or show me with rods or a bar diagram how she arrived there.

All Together

Science

We have put RSO: Life on definite hold for the next few weeks.  We worked through some more Evan-Moor's Giant Science Resource Book, but it is definitely pretty light compared to what we were doing.  On top of that, there aren't many kids' books at our library on how flowers reproduce.  There's a smattering of books on how plants get their energy, but nothing that goes into terms such as chloroplast and photosynthesis, etc.  We've been watching a lot of YouTube and some Magic School Bus too...

History

We finished up a long chapter on Rome.  We have more learning about Rome to do, but this week we learned about Roman gladiators.  That really caught Emmett's attention.  And, of course, the kids loved the book You Wouldn't Want to Be a Roman Gladiator.  (They love all of the books in that series!)

Chess

We actually worked some on this this week!  I was surprised when Ellie remembered all of the names of the pieces except pawn.  And, of course queen and king, which I didn't teach her.  Abby has definitely mastered the concept of "attacking" the rook with a bishop from two different directions.  Emmett struggled with it a bit more.  I bet he'll get it by next week, though...

Week 25

Preschool

PreK Activity Book

Lately Ellie asks me, "Is it a school day?"  If I answer in the affirmative, she says, "Yippee!" and grabs her activity book.  She only has a few pages left so I'm trying to slow her down a bit.

She's also been drawing people!  This is the first person she drew.  It's actually a picture of Emmett.

Letter Craft

We did H is for house this week.  The kids had a good time constructing their own houses.  Ellie even put her door up high and then asked me to make her a ladder for it.  LOL

Junior K

Language

Reading

I started Emmett on the first grade Sonlight Readers this week.  We jumped in reading Little Bear.  The first reading seemed rather frustrating, though I'm not quite sure why.  By the end of the week, he was sailing through most of the reading.  He loved that he could watch the same stories after he finished them.

Spelling

We took a break this week to review words Emmett has spelled in the past.  His ability to segment CVC has improved drastically in the last few weeks.

Math

We played War and read a few math stories.  I am beginning to think that we should start Emmett in Singapore Year 1.  The EM K is too easy for him and I think he'd really thrive with math.  He already has his addition facts to 5 and doubles facts memorized.

First Grade

Language

Grammar

We zoomed through the last five lessons of FLL 1 this week.  Abby was too excited to wait any further.  She finished up her sentence work and reviewed everything she learned within the first book.

Writing

Abby narrated and did copywork from Pollyanna this week.  Abby had a hard time keeping characters straight, but otherwise didn't mind the story.

Reading

Abby finished Poppy this week! She even read some at the doctor's and in the evenings to finish it up!

Spelling

Abby's list this week worked with vowel teams "ai" and "ay."  She probably will need to read through the list a few more times to gain some visual retention of these words verses a-e words.

Handwriting

We moved on to writing capital letter R!  She also did some review of letters in the past.

Math

These multiplication sections are fairly straightforward.  I'm not requiring memorization of the facts because, well, she's only six.  AND, we're planning on moving on to Beast Academy next year which will have a whole new section on skip counting and multiplication.  To solve most problems now, she's skip counting or using rods, which I'm fine with.

All Together

History

We began a long chapter on Rome.  This week we learned about Gods and Roman builders.  The kids were fascinated about constructions of roads so we drew a lot of roads and looked at a lot of pictures of famous roads such as the Appian Way.  I told the kids their Uncle Joey served a mission in Rome.  They thought that was really neat.

Science

We did a bit of RSO on chloroplast and why leaves appear green.  After that, though, we have basically stopped RSO: Life.  It's going to take a month or so for spring to spring here so we can finish studying plants more extensively.  Until that point, we are working some plant pages from the Giant Science Resource Book.

Chess

Skipped again this week!

Week 24

Preschool

PreK Activity Book

Ellie was all about her workbook this week.  She worked with some prewriting skills, and some story sequencing as well as a ton of extra read-alouds.

Letter Craft

We did Y is for yellow yarn this week.

 

Even Hyrum got into decorating his y!

Junior K

Language

Reading

Emmett read some more in the Free and Treadwell Primer.  I think next week we will move on to the last few Sonlight grade 1 readers.  He will like reading from real books, I think.

Spelling

Daddy was home most of this week, so we skipped spelling.  :)

Math

Emmett worked through some Miquon pages and we played some dice game for sums.

First Grade

Language

Grammar

Abby worked through lessons 92-94 this week.  We began learning about sentences.  She should finish up volume 1 next week!

Writing

Writing focused on the Happy Hollisters this week.  I love that we are doing WWE1 a bit behind work in FLL, so she gets a review of the concepts we went over in grammar.

Reading

Abby is still working through Poppy.  At night she's also read a few others at bedtime.  She is very motivated by Book Adventure and points.

Spelling

Abby was excited to begin her level 3 book this week!  The first week was all review so she wrote a bunch of review sentences.

Handwriting

We worked on lowercase r this week.  We didn't do capital R because apparently lowercase r is difficult in cursive.

Math

Abby moved on to the multiplication unit in 2b.  This week was working with multiplication facts for the fours times tables.  Once again, I was surprised that she could skip count by fours without explicit instruction.  Yay for Teacher and the Rockbots: Multiplication!

All Together

History

We began learning about Ancient Rome this week.  Abby has a Nat Geo Kids almanac that she's looked at for the last nine months or so (and loved the thing to tatters).  A few weeks ago, she found a page that discussed Greek, Egyptian, and Roman gods.  She was fascinated that the names of the Roman Gods were PLANETS!  So, naturally, it was really neat to read about the Roman gods this week.  :)

Science

We learned a bit about seeds.  We colored a picture showing the parts of a seed, to include the cotyledon, coat, and embryo.  Then, we dissected both a monocot and dicot seed.  The kids thought this was fascinating!  The next lab, however, is on traveling seeds.  I'm beginning to think we might have to pause learning about the Plant Kingdom in RSO for a month or so until it becomes true spring here so we have good specimens to observe.

Chess

Skipped this week!  The kids were bummed, but Daddy was off so we took time to go play!

Week 23

Preschool

Ellie wasn't pushing to do school much this week.  I was fine with that because she spent it with constructive play and me time to clean the house.  LOL

Junior K

Language

Reading

He worked through the first two stories in the Free and Treadwell Primer.  I love that these are common stories!

We've also kept up with decoding words in a list form so he can't guess based on context or picture.

Spelling

He spelled CVC words with short i this week.  He loves that his brother wants to do spelling time with him.

Math

Emmett's focusing mainly on reading, so his math is somewhat self-directed.  When he feels like it, he grabs his folder and does a few sheets.  This week he worked on addition sheets from Miquon Orange.

First Grade

Language

Grammar

We worked through lessons 90-92 this week.  There was a poem narration and we moved into discussing sentences.  I also grabbed video of Abby reciting Mr. Nobody.

Writing

This week's narration and copywork came from How to Eat Fried Worms.  The kids have heard this book on audiobook, so Abby was pleased to revisit it.

Reading

Poppy definitely is taking it's time to work through.  She only reads it half an hour a day.  The rest of this past week, she's been working on reading a bunch of books to earn points for Book Adventure.  This past weekend she asked when she could get her own library card.  She suggested when she got 1,000 points on Book Adventure and has been working toward that goal in the evenings at bedtime.

Spelling

This was her last week with All About Spelling Level 2!  The step this week worked with differentiating when to use "ou" and when to use "ow" for the sound of /ow/.  Toward the end of the week, she even copied her words in cursive.

Handwriting

We skipped any formal work this week, but worked with the white board connecting letters and reviewing some strokes.

Math

This week we moved into two- and three-digit mental subtraction.  As I predicted, she struggled a bit with it more than the addition section.  It's not because it was too hard, but because she throws up some kind of block or something when she sees it's *gasp* SUBTRACTION!  So, instead of it being a cakewalk, we actually pulled out the rods here and there to work through some problems.

All Together

Science

We moved into the plant kingdom this week!  I'm realizing we only have but a few weeks of science left.  We will be finished with RSO: Life long before the school year is done.

We studied the reproductive parts of flowering plants this week.  We made our own diagram, and then I bought a huge lily so we could see the petals, stamens, and pistil easily.

History

We learned about ancient Americans this week.  We attempted to close our eyes and maker our own version of the Nazca drawings.  We learned about the Olmecs and their ancient heads, which Emmett thought was fascinating.

Chess

We are continuing to work on the strategy of attacking with the bishop.  I don't want to have to move too quickly through chess since they are so young.  They still love it, though.  :)

Week 22

Preschool

Craft

Ellie didn't want to do a letter craft this week.  Instead, she wanted to color a bunch of pictures.  She did a Lalaloopsy picture, and Angelina Ballerina, and even a unicorn.

She was rather excited that I found a coloring picture that matched HER Lalaloopsy doll!

PreK Activity Book

The book focused more on matching, one-to-one correspondence and beginning writing with lines, circles and dots.  She consistently wants to form her circles clockwise, so I'm trying to redirect her as much as possible to do them counterclockwise.

Junior K

Language

Reading

We have basically moved on to just reading out loud to Mom.  It seems as though Emmett's made a conceptual leap because his reading has become a lot more fluid.  He does seem to be able to read words based on context more than just in a straight list.  In order to keep him working on his decoding skills, I've started giving him high frequency words to decode in a list.  He doesn't care for straight decoding, but I find it valuable for him.

Spelling

Emmett had difficulty with a few words from last week.  Due to his pronunciation, he would often misspell am and an.  They would typically be spelled "aum" because he does pronounce those words "a-yum" or "a-yun."  We repeated his list this week and it seemed to really solidify these words.

Friday was a nice day, so I sent them outside to play.  When I called him inside, he immediately sat up to do his spelling...and then I noticed his hands.  This is exactly what boys' hands should look like sometimes!

Math

Emmett completed the counting pages in Miquon.  He'll move on to addition next week.

First Grade

Language

Grammar

Abby's got Mr. Nobody completely memorized.  Next week I'll have to take video of her reciting it.  She also worked through lesson 89 in FLL 1.

Writing

This week's narration and copywork came from "The Velveteen Rabbit."  Having heard the story and read it herself, she found these very enjoyable.  She really does enjoy that story, probably because she's a stuffed animal lover herself.

Reading

She's still working on Poppy, but rather enjoying it.

Spelling

Abby worked on step 24, which deals with the phonograms "au" and "aw".  I thought we might have to repeat this week because some words don't always follow the generalization that "au" is in the middle and "aw" is at the end.  This meant she had to basically memorize which words used which phonogram when the sound was in the middle.  BUT, by the end of the week she had the words down.  Next week is our last week in level 2.

Handwriting

Abby's cursive is really coming along nicely!  This week we worked on q.

She was rather pleased with herself.

Math

Abby finished up the section on mental math dealing with addition of two- and three-digit numbers.  She grasped the concepts rather easily.  Next week won't be as easy, I'm sure, because it's all about subtraction.

All Together

Science

We finished up the animal kingdom this week!  We learned about mammals, including an experiment which demonstrated how some arctic and antarctic animals keep warm in extremely cold temperatures.

History

We discussed Alexander the Great this week.  All of a sudden, Emmett has had much enthusiasm for history.  I'm not sure where it's coming from, but I'll take it!  We only did a coloring page, mapwork, and narrations, but they seemed to enjoy the content.

Chess

Ellie learned the names of the rest of the chess pieces.

Emmett and Abby learned about the bishop and how it moved.  We are working on figuring out ways of "attacking" with a bishop.

(Remember those DIRTY hands?  This is post-bath.  ;))

Week 21

We took last week off for winter break.  The older two kids did a bit of reading and Abby did a bit of math each day, but nothing extensive at all.

Preschool

Letter Craft

Ellie asked to do the letter O this week.

We even put oatmeal on the Os!

Of course, this meant that everyone wanted to play in the oatmeal!

PreK Activity Book

Ellie didn't want to do much of it this week, which was fine.  She did work on one-to-one correspondence in other things, though.  She does great with that, but she has a hard time remembering the sequence from one to ten.  When I tell her to pick up five things in her room, she says, "How many is that?" If I show her how many on my hand, though, she will pick up the proper amount.

Junior K

Language

Reading

Emmett has been zooming through the stories in 100 Easy Lessons.  He's really making huge strides in fluency.

Spelling

Emmett got his first spelling list this week!  He did great with most of the words, but got caught up with "am."  He wants to spell it "a-u-m."  When he says it slowly, he does say, "Ay-u-m."  I want to make sure these words are solid, so he'll repeat the list this next week.  he's only five, so I'm taking a better-too-slow-than-too-fast approach.

Math

We put up a new number line over the break.  With it up, we did quite a few exercises where I covered up certain numbers (between one and thirty) and he had to tell me which I covered up.  He also worked through some Miquon Orange pages that dealt with counting and number lines.

First Grade

Language

Grammar

Abby did lessons 86 and 87.  She also really worked really hard on memorizing the third stanza of "Mr. Nobody."  She did some copywork from another poem and did a narration from The Boy Who Cried Wolf as well.

Writing

This week focused on Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer.  Abby didn't really care for it much...probably because it was a "boyly" story.  LOL

Reading

I picked up Poppy and Little House in the Big Wood from the library and gave her the choice.  She started Poppy this week.

Spelling

Abby's getting close to finishing up level 2!  She worked with words with the /oy/ sound this week.  She learned the generalization that we use "oy" at the end of a word and "oi" in the middle.

Handwriting

Abby worked on the letter p this week.  She did pretty well with it.  It feels like cursive it starting to become a bit less of work.  When she finishes her book, we'll work on doing some word writing for connecting letters a bit more.

Math

While we were on break Abby worked some with random Math Mammoth addition and subtraction review sheets.  We just got Singapore Math 2B and the first section reviews addition and subtraction with mental math.  We jumped right in and started the mental addition section.  She'll finish it next week, but the review was good.  It feels "easy" to her and she works quickly through it.

All Together

Science

We moved on to talking about birds this week.  The kids had fun bird watching outside.  There was an experiment that demonstrated how birds stay warm with special oils.  The kids thought it was fascinating.

History

We talked about the Persian and Peloponnesian Wars this week.  Emmett really seemed to enjoy when I pulled out the Lego blocks to show him how the Greeks from Sparta and Athens teamed up together to beat Persia.

Chess - NEW!

The kids got a chess set for Christmas.  I thought we'd add this in with easy and quick lessons from Chess is Child's Play.  Friday was their first lesson, so they didn't do much this week.  Ellie enjoyed learning the names for the rook and bishop.  Emmett and Abby learned about how the rook moves and how to capture a piece.