Week 10 report

Abigail playing IN her Lego bin and stacking!

This week I was back! We got so much accomplished and it felt good. Sorry this is long, feel free to just see the slide show. It helps to see it all in one spot. We also went to the Fall Festival at Church. Mommy worked two booths and daddy is not good at taking pics. There are a couple in the slide show though of them in their costumes.

Shelby-6 years

Shelby read one book each day on her own but I did not keep track of all the titles. I will see if I can locate them all and mark them sometime this weekend. We are in need for a trip to the library, so she used books that were on hand. She also took turns reading with me out of our History reading.

We also did a reading test to see what level she is on. Her reading level measured at 2ND grade. She is really picking it up fast now that we have started using Spell to Write and Read. The rules really make sense to her.

Math-
Singapore Unit 21Additon and number bonds
Dot to Dot- up to 100 did 2x this week
Right Start lesson 17 and lesson 23 (to go over the number bonds)
Addition facts drill on the computer 2 minutes 3x this week
Games

Just a note on her math- She is really struggling for some reason with recognizing numbers by looking, the concept of adding and number bonds. I am going to stick with Right start but am going to look at Horizons for a more gentle and slower approach until she catches on.

Science
Define and understand classification and classes
Understand living and non living things and learn the properties of both.
Created a living and non living chart
Human body -Study of the Mouth- Built a model and did a taste experiment to learn about taste buds

History
Daily reading of The Magic Tree House Dragon King - Learned about and discussed Ancient China

Geography/Maps
Asia, China, Great Wall, Yangtzee River (Review)
Map Keys and Routes - 2 pages 3x a week (Shelby loves this book)

Spell to Read and Write along with Cursive First
Say and write (in cursive) a, c, d, g, o, qu (knows that q and u are married), f, s, e, l, b, h, k, i, j, p, r
Knows all the phonogram sounds to each of the above letters and can tell you by order of most commonly used in the English Language.
one page of practice a day with Cursive letters and connecting them to form words.

Explode the Code Book 1 (finally graduated from kinder books)
Pretest to verify knowledge of sounds.
Lesson 1

Handwriting without Tears 4x a week with Cursive only on Friday
Completed Letters and Numbers book
Started Printing Book

Reading Comprehension
Completes 2-3 paragraph short stories and answers 4-6 questions about each story 3x a week.
We just started this since her reading level is higher and she is doing really good. She normally gets all the questions right after one reading.

Bible/Copywork (Cursive)/Memory
Memorized bible verse Matthew 5:7 "Happy are the kind and merciful"

Spanish
numbers to 12
colors
lessons 1 and 2 of Spanish in the car tape 3x (greetings, family members)

Theater/ Music/Memory work
one day of class
memorization of lines for her role as "Violet"
3 x a week rehearsal of songs plus received a new song to memorize and work on

One Day School
Art, Music (learning beats and syllables), Spanish, PE (kicking and drills for soccer), Public Speaking (Recite Twinkle Twinkle Little Star)


Matthew- 4 years

Handwriting without Tears
Completed first book (had 6 pages left)

Explode the Code
Completed 6 pages

Singapore Math
3 pages completed

History
listened to the story

Spell to Read and Write
working on memorizing sounds for a, c, d, g, o, qu (knows that q and u are married), f, s, e, l, b, h, k, i, j, p, r
writing in print the letters (refusing to do cursive right now).

Reading
played phonics games, read 2 Bob books

Mothers Day Out 2 days

Theater/Music/Memory
Memorized lines for his role as "son 1"
Working on song -rehearsed 3 times this week and had one class

Speech
1 hour- working on the blend "sp"

Abigail-1

Working on Colors and Shapes through play
Mothers Day out 2x
She also has started saying more words this week!

Keeping focused

Since I am not home to work with Shelby during the day on Tuesday and Thursday we have started a new system. I have read on other blogs about work boxes and just formed our own version.

I bought this drawer set at Target and made cards for both Shelby and Matthew here at home.

I set it up every night and then Shelby knows to look at her "assignment book" to see where to start in the morning. Sometimes I have "circle time"on the first spot so that her and Matthew already know to come to me. Then I put anything they need to do in the drawers with their number cards on the item in the drawer and the number is Velcroed on the outside. Once they finish a task they put the number card into their basket and the Velcro dot on their little assignment book I made them. She works the drawers. If it is a subject I need to help her on or Teach I put a "help" card in and she comes to me for instruction.

I put her "snack", "recess", "art", "music" etc cards on her assignment book where I want them. So she may have three blank spots and then "read for 15 minutes", then 2 blank spots and "snack". She gets to see what she has to look forward too.

Matthew has gotten much better at doing his school work now that he can see what he has to do at the beginning. At most I have four assignments for him and usually 2 of them are joint with Shelby.

There are days I have to take her to Mothers Day Out with me and I just pack up the assignments into her schoolbag along with her "assignment book" and any supplies she may need. It has worked pretty well and last week she even completed all of her work during Mothers Day Out.

Drawer System filled and ready for school day

Shelby's assignment book set with her extras

Matthews assignment book set.


Samples of what I put in the drawer.Matthews book completed (except for one joint project)

Week 9 Or is it 10???

My step grandmother died suddenly a week and half ago. I have loss track of our school weeks. We are back at it again though hopefully more than 3 days a week.

Here are some photo's of some of our classwork. We got a new Human Body book and Shelby has been working on making models of each subject as we talk about them. Last week was the five senses. We also played five senses bingo with Matthew a few times.

She also is entertaining Daddy with her Alice in Wonderland lines for Theater (she plays Violet the shy flower) and her singing to "Tomorrow".

Picasso work (I think this is Matthew's with Shelby's behind it)

Cursive Writing

We have moved to cursive writing with Shelby. I have been reading a lot about teaching Cursive first and I myself really never learned how to write cursive. So we are using "Cursive First" and "Spell to Write and Read" for spelling, phonics and writing. I spent a week getting all my binders, books, cards etc together and reading everything so that I feel comfortable teaching it.

Shelby is doing a great job writing her lowercase letters in cursive. So far we have only done a few along with learning all the sounds to each phonic. Today I quized her on a few phonics and she new exactly the sound I asked for. For instance I would ask for the third sound with the phonic "a". She said "ah". I have already noticed when she is reading that she will automatically switch to the sound that makes an actual word for her vowels.

We also are working on addition facts. She is being quized on adding "1" all the way up to 100 on Friday.

Today her art work was a Picasso piece that she made out of construction paper scissors and glue. I will take a picture for Fridays post.

Shelby has been reading a book a day and is starting to really enjoy reading.

We are BACK! Week 7

Playing Leap Frog Math

Threading shapes

Bronco Phonics (file folder game)

Lacing shapes

We had a fall break for three weeks (roughly). Since I manage the MamaCents Childrens Consignment Sale I needed the time off for work. It worked out perfect because we all have been sick as well during these three weeks. We are mostly all better (I still have fluid in one ear and have had vertigo issues) and have started week 7.

We are now throwing in Salsa Spanish and the kids LOVED their first lesson today. They watched "Ricitos de Oro y Los Tres Osos" (Goldilocks and the three bears) completely in Spanish. We will be working on vocabulary words that go along with this story for one to two weeks.

Shelby seems to be reading better this week than she was three weeks ago. I was worried the break would hurt her but she still is thriving.

We are learning the songs : Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, Tomorrow and The Bare Necessities for their theater program. Shelby has been rehearsing about 30 minutes a day just to get the words down to Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. I hope her teacher notices the hard work she is putting into it tomorrow night.