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"

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Weekly Update - July 20th

This is the first week that I'm joining in on the Weekly Wrap up on Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers

I know this week is the Curriculum Edition and if you would like to see what we are using for 2nd grade or Pre-K look here for a post from a few weeks ago when we started our new school year - I Puffy Heart New School Books

Otherwise it was another odd week in our house.

E continues to work odd shifts (mainly being gone 12:30pm - 11:00pm) so our schooling is happening at all hours of the day to work around his schedule.

The kids have been spending many hours playing with their playmobil in the afternoon when it is just too hot to be outside.

I have been working with D and S first thing in the morning while E is here to play with the little boys and then later in the afternoon when little E is napping we finish up our work and play some games.

Highlights of the week -

D finished 4 books this week - 2 Magic Tree house books, one Magic Tree House Research Guide, and a Geronimo Stilton book.

Many nights you will find the two big kids trying to get in a little more reading time before I turn the lights out for the night.

S continues to impress me with how well she taught herself to read. We blasted our way through 8 lessons in OPGTR getting up to the first lesson on blends. I'm still making sure to hit every lesson so I don't worry about her missing something. She is also working through Explode the Code 1.

R has randomly started singing his ABC's - Most of the time I hear him singing them to himself in the bathroom!

In the past month S has gone from not being able to recognize any number over 15 to recognizing and reading any number up to 100.

Low points of the week -

D continues to whine and complain about the amount of writing I am making him do. I don't feel that it is too much for a boy of his age (and he used to do at least this much writing last year without complaint) I've been trying to find ways to reduce his writing or split it up as much as I can but there is only so much I can do to reduce the writing. If anyone has any suggestions on how to deal with a pencil phobic 7 year old boy I'd love to hear them!!!

D working on a Dinosaur puzzle/model

2 weeks done!

It's been 2 weeks since we've started our new school year.

Days completed - 9

Good things

D is finally doing well with WWE1 - We have stopped and started this program several times due to his difficulty and frustration with answering the comprehension questions. He has finally matured to the point where he can listen and remember the story even if it isn't something he liked. We are on week 20 so hopefully half way through the year we can make the switch over to WWE 2

We are making progress in Science and History despite the horrible library we have here. Using programs the rely on a large number of living books is very hard when you have a poorly stocked library. I am looking forward to being back home in a few months and back to our wonderful library system.

We started Latin with a few tears, but now he is looking forward to it and we have a goal of surprising his Sunday school teacher with him saying the Our Father in Latin one day.

Everything else is moving right along.

The Bad Things

It's nearly impossible to keep a 7 y.o attention on his work while his siblings are running around the house!

The little boys have decided that anytime I sit down at the kitchen table with D is a perfect time to find trouble. This generally means that Little E is putting things in the toilet and R is flooding the bathroom playing in the sink. It doesn't seem to matter what activities I pull out they won't play with it unless I'm right there with them. On good days they will play with a new bin of toys for about 30 minutes alone before they start trying to destroy the house.

Oh the whining and meltdowns about writing! D thinks that having to write more than a few words at any given time is the end of the world. I scribe for him a lot but he was writing more at the beginning of the year last year than he is now. Working on using those hand muscles and writing more on his own. I think we are going to have to go back to having daily handwriting practice on top of the 3 days of copying in WWE.

Highlights of the weeks

- D started riding his bike without training wheels!

- S took a reading test with Daddy (she won't read for me) and tested at an upper 1st grade level. She has some beginning chapter books that she "reads" to herself in bed at night. I'm starting to think that she reads a lot more of them than we realized. She has the patience to go word by word, line by line reading what she can. She comes out of her room every morning happy that she read one more chapter. We are going to push hard on OPGTR with her until we get to a lesson that she starts to have trouble.

- S likes to come up to me and tell me random math facts that she has figured out. We are working our way through Singapore Essentials B and I think I will have to add in Miquon Orange here soon.

- I managed to bribe the kids with fireworks and ice cream on the 4th of July to get a picture of all 4 of them together

I Puffy Heart New School Books!

It's the start of a new school year around our house and I'm loving the smell/feel of new books. I was always the kid at school who loved the years that we got new textbooks and I didn't have to carry around a grubby book that many other kids had touched.

This year D is in 2nd Grade and S is doing Pre-K/K She misses the cutoff for K but is ready for K materials so we are calling it Pre-K and working at her level.

I need to remember to take our start of the school year pictures over the 4th while E is home to help me keep the little ones busy while I do pictures of the big kids.

D - 2nd

Language Arts
Phonics - Finish Explode the Code Series (Books 7 and 8)
Writing - Finish Writing with Ease 1 and move into 2
Spelling - Finish All About Spelling 2 and start 3
Reading - Continue to Read - Aloud with me books above his level and read independently books At/Below his level (4th- 5th grade level)

Math
Singapore Math - Standards ed 3A/3B along with Intensive Practice and Creative Word Problems 2
He also plays a lot on Dreambox.com

History
Continue to work our way through History Odyssey Ancients and eventually move into Middle Ages
(History was the thing we put off the most last year)

Science
Real Science Odyssey - Finish Life and start Earth and Space.

Geography
Working on memorizing - States and their locations, then will learn the state capitals.

Latin
Prima Latina - May put this off until later in the year. Tried it today and it was met with tears and frustration. Going to give it another try next week when he is not so tired.

Critical Thinking
Primarily Logic Boo
Lots of Logic puzzles and games
Logic Links

Lapbooks
Going to try to complete one lapbook a month on the topic of his choice. Currently finishing one on Meerkats and getting ready to start on Desert Animals

S - PreK

Singapore Essential Math B and then moving into 1A
Handwriting without tears - Kindergarten
Explode the Code 1
Reading Bob Books
Going to try several units from B4FIAR and FIAR vol 1

Changes, Changes and more Changes

Things around our house have changed a lot over the past couple of months.

In November we found out that the temporary move that we were hoping to take to Utah was unavailable but that we could go to New Mexico instead. So plans changed, we started looking for info on the new city and worked toward getting ready to move. My husband went to New Mexico the few days before Thanksgiving to make sure that he wanted to take the temporary job and find us a place to live. In the few days that he was there he found and rented a house for us.

Once he got home we started the long process of packing up the house. I called for a vacation from homeschool and the kids got a very long winter break. We spent the first part of December working on packing and getting our house ready to be empty for almost a year. Many home remodeling projects, a trip to urgent care for a sliced finger (mine) and trips to the recycling center for boxes we had the house packed and ready to be left.

The week before Christmas we packed up the small amount of stuff going with us, and got the house ready for us to leave. Then we started the long drive. In order to keep things half way normal for the kids we still went to Kansas to visit family for Christmas so we took the LONG way to New Mexico.

We drove (with a very packed car) from Alabama to Kansas. Spent 4 days visiting with relatives before we packed up again and made the long drive to New Mexico.

We arrived in New Mexico during the week between Christmas and New Years. We spent the next week unpacking and getting settled into our rental house. After New Years my husband went back to work and the kids and I settled back into our homeschool routine. Amazingly D did not forget much during his extended break. A few quick review days and he was back up to speed in all his programs.

D Progress for the year

Phonics - D has finished ETC 5 and has started on book 6

- AAS - We are on step 13 of Level 2 - I was hoping to be moving through this quicker but it has been set aside a few times

- OPGTR - We have 15 lessons left to complete to book - D is easily reading Magic Tree House books and also has been enjoying a jr. novel about Alvin and the Chipmunks.

Grammar - We are 2/3 of the way through year 1 of First Language Lessons.

Writing - We set Writing with Ease 1 aside earlier this year because D was struggling with the narration. We picked it back up once we got to New Mexico and it has been going much better.

Math - D has finished Singpore Math 2A and is cruising through 2B. He has enjoyed learning his multiplication facts. He understands the concept we are now just working on memorizing the facts. We plays a lot on Timez Attack and on multiplication.com

Science - Another one that has taken a back burner this year. We are starting to work our way through Real Science Odyssey again. Hopefully once we finish more of our phonics work for the year we can spend more time on Science and History. If not we will do a few intense weeks over the summer on science to get through. We also may start Real Science Odyssey Earth and Space early since we are in a great place to stargaze.

History - Again another one that has taken a back burner to Math and Reading this year. We have started working on Ancient Egypt this past week. Hopefully the fun of studying ancient Egypt will keep us going this time.

Finally getting around to updating

Here's a quick run down of what we have completed so far this school year

Math

- Finished Singapore 2A

- Finished Singapore 1B - Intensive Practice (reviewing what we did last year)

- Has Addition and Subtraction facts to 10 memorized (still working on getting faster at them)

- Knows that multiplication tables for 2 and 3 (working on quicker recall of them with online games)

Reading

- Started late this summer at lesson 135 in Ordinary Parents guide to Teaching Reading

- Now at lesson 186

- Can read Magic Tree House books to me, but still prefers to read easier material to himself or the little ones. He can read Curious George, Clifford, or Henry and Mudge without difficulty.

Phonics

- Recently finished Book 4 ETC

- Returning to Book 5

- On Step 9 of All about Spelling 2 (We haven't put much time into spelling yet this year)

Writing

- We did the first 10 weeks of Writing with Ease 1

- WWE 1 has been shelved for the time being because he was just not putting in the effort to listen to the story and answer the questions and narrate back to me.

- We are now working on narrating other readings like our science or history readings.

- Since quitting WWE - D has become interested in writing his own little one page stories. He draws a picture and then add a sentence or two about it. He does not like to make up his own way to spell words so I am constantly having to help him spell out words for his stories.

Grammer - First Language Lessons

- Worked through lesson 64

- Memorized the following poems

- The Caterpillar

- Work

- Hearts Are Like Doors

- The Months

Geography

- Learned about landforms and bodies of water with Beginning Geography

- Knows the Continents and major Oceans

Science

- Main thing to get pushed off when we don't have time

- We have talked about what makes something living, looked at cells, looked at the exhibit at Sci-quest about cells, started learning about the human body. We haven't had time to do many of the labs for the human body yet, but we have read through a lot of library books about the human body and the things that it can do.

- Hope to spend a lot of time between now and Christmas doing more fun labs for human body stuff so in the spring we can move into the animal portion of RSO. Leaving the plant part of late spring early summer when we will be starting our garden again.

- Bird watching - D has become interested in knowing more about the birds that we see in our yard. I need to take more time to have him learn about how to attract them and what to feed them. I'm ordering him a new bird book to hopefully have info on the bird that we see in our yard all in one book. Right now the junior guide that he has does not have a lot of the birds that we see in our yard and he does not like having to look through the larger guide and wants me to do it for him.

History

- Another one of the things that gets put off to the end since I am more focused on the 3Rs.

- The few weeks that we have gotten through in History Odyssey we have really enjoyed. Unfortunately with the little ones around it takes us about 2 weeks to get through one week worth of stuff. Hopefully as we get more into the Egyptians and the Romans we will be able to get through material quicker when it keeps D's interest longer. Also now that we have a strong start with the 3Rs and are at least done with 1/2 a years work in them we can spend less time on those areas and more time enjoying the history and science for this year.

Handwriting

- D originally did HWOT in Pre-K, then skipped up to the first grade book in his K year. We did not order a book for this year but I can now see that he needs extra practice. I think I will be ordering either another copy of the 1st grade book for him or the 2nd grade printing power book soon. He still has some trouble with a few letter reversals that need to be fixed. Even though I sit with him while he does copywork he still will occasionally reverse b and d, randomly asks which way a c goes and also occasionally makes his p's backwards.

Yes... just like all the other blogs I started!

Ignored for months at a time!

I don't know why I thought this blog would be any different. I hardly have time to think let alone put up a blog post.

The end of August is forgotten, September was a blur and the beginning of October was spent at Disney World.

Little E turned 1, S turned 4 and I'm fighting the urge to have another little one.

I'm going to try to get a better update of where we are at in our schooling up soon.. but for now life goes on.