Friday, July 27, 2012

Weekly Update - July 23-27

Wow - We had a productive week this week!

Both kids were in great moods this week and we got all our work done everyday without a ton of complaining!

Some highlights of our week

S has finally decided she wants to learn how to write  - She found this HWOT sheet and did it herself while I was working with D.  Not bad for very little instruction on how to form her letters.  She is my child that I have to wait for her to be ready.  If you try to get her to do something before it is her idea`she will resist, but once she decides it's time to learn something she picks it up quickly. (Bolded this to remind myself of this daily!)


She also worked in her Explode the Code book a lot this week


We also did a lot of work with making tens and counting numbers to 20.

D had fun learning his Latin vocab words with a race to find his words taped around the house.  I called out either the latin or english word and he had to find to other taped to the wall in the house


He also had a great time getting to make lunch for all the kids one day


R and Little E had fun running around the house like wild men - R enjoyed watching all the birds at our feeder and waiting for hummingbirds to come to our feeder that is attached to one of our living room windows. I also started pulling out our toy bins each day.  In the spring I packed up most of our toys into 5 rubbermaid bins. The little boys get a new bin each day of the week. It helps to keep them busy while I do school with the older two.


Little E has been keeping busy by emptying out the dishwasher for me! Too bad occasionally I come back into the kitchen to a counter full of dirty dishes




Other things about our week

I further reduced the writing D has to do in a day and he was much happier.  By giving him the EXACT amount of writing that he is going to have to do for page before we start helps stop the complaining.  So for math I circle about 6 problems that he has to do on his own and then I will write for him after that.  I also made him only write the first 6 words of his narration for day 4 of WWE1.  He had been giving me bad narrations on day 4 because he didn't want to write it all down.  Now his day 4 narrations are better and he is giving me longer sentences with more detail.

D managed to read 4 books this week - 3 Magic Tree House books and one MTH research guide.

S continues to take the time to "read" chapter books.  She goes line by line reading the words that she knows and guessing at a few that she has no idea.  She is happy to do lessons in OPGTR since she knows that she will eventually be able to read MTH books when she works her way through the lessons.  I'm just thrilled that she has the patience and tracking ability to go line by line, page by page picking out the words that she can read.  I have a feeling that once she can read fluently I will be constantly saying that she has her nose in a book.

We also started a morning circle time.  I never did it with D since he had been in a Pre-K program so they had already taught him things like the calendar, days of the week, months of the year etc.  I figured that Sarah needed to start  I still haven't gotten a calendar up yet, but we have been working on nursery rhymes (I realized that my kids never learned many of them) singing the days of the week song, reading some poems from Shel Silverstein, and a bible story.  D practices his prayers that he is supposed to know for Religious Ed classes and  we also read some story selections from the "What your ____ grader needs to know"

4 comments:

  1. Oh my goodness, I think you kidnapped my children and mistakenly raised them as your own! So many similarities, ha ha!

    I love the Latin Racing idea...thanks for sharing.

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  2. Looks like you had some great days. It's nice to have a productive, no-complaining week once in a while.
    Janet

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  3. The rotating toy bins are a good idea. It looks like you have some helpful boys!

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  4. Love the rotating toy bin idea. I could use ideas to help keep Miss L occupied. C is usually either tagging along with O & d's lessons or entertaining himself.

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