Weekly Report: Weeks 14 & 15

It is really hard to keep up with weekly reports when family's visiting. I really didn't have much time on my computer. However, I was thankful that D-Man was able to spend a lot of time with my family while they were visiting. That is definitely a perk of homeschooling. We completed full school days the whole time they were here (which only takes about 2 hours/day) and D-Man got to be at home instead of school for 8 hours during the weekdays. My family couldn't have picked a better week and a half for visiting San Antonio. We had a hot, dry summer. At the beginning of September, everything here was brown and, seemingly, dead. However, it started to rain in September and we've had a good bit since. The rain made everthing around here green again. It also brought some beautifully cool weather. Well, cool for us anyway. Granted, we had some wicked humidity, but at least it wasn't hot.


Back to school...

Math: As you may have read in my previous post, D-Man finished up Horizons K math. Yeah! We started Horizons 1 on Friday. He told me that it will be his favorite math book. He likes the color of Horizons and is really looking forward to problems with numbers over 100. We won't get to that until the second half of Horizons 1, so he'll probably want to rush through the first half. He is still enjoying Singapore math and I like how it's teaching him to think about the numbers and regrouping addition and subtraction problems. We have settled into doing 1 lesson of Singapore/day. I really like this pace. The concepts are still easy for him, but he's really thinking about the problems and different ways of attacking them. That's the beauty of Singapore Math. I have a feeling well go a little faster through the shapes and measurement sections, but slow right back down when we start 1B.

LA: Wow, we're on list H-1 already. Even though we go half-pace, SWR is going fast for me. For me, not for D-Man. He got a 100% and 90% on his list G tests, so he's understanding the material. We played the "bears" game (the board game from the phonogram fun packet) with my family and it was hilarious. D-Man loved it since he got to tell Grandma and Aunt Katrina the answers. They did pretty well and we all had a lot of fun. We started reviewing the spelling rule cards a couple of weeks ago. I thought it would be a little much for him, but it seems to be clicking in his brain. One of the rules is "A-Y usually says /A/ at the end of a base word. When a word ends with A says /ah/." I don't expect mastery on the rules yet, but D-Man's getting it. He asked me what 'ta' said yesterday morning after seeing it on TV. I asked him what he thought and he brought up the rule. I explained that 'ta' isn't a word, but that it would say /ah/ at the end. He says, "so tray (looking at Little-J's highchair) would end in A-Y, right? Because it says /A/." I told him he was correct and he was pretty happy with himself for getting it right. Can you see why I love SWR?

Sonlight: While my family was here, I was thankful that our core has a light schedule. We were able to complete our reading with no trouble. However, now that everyone is gone, we're zooming through the weeks. It's not really a big deal. We're just going to finish the core at our own pace and then re-read our favorites until it's time to start the next core. I also got some additional books from the library to help us slow down.

Science: Experiment Saturday's are back! Having a break was nice with all that was going on, but things have slowed down again. I got The Usborne Big Book of Experiments from the library to use as inspiration.

Art: We finally started this on Friday! The book we're using really stresses letting the kids do are their way. This week, I introduced them to their "art" crayons and talked about the different colors. Then, I sent them off to create. I told them to find something colorful and draw it with the crayons. D-Man colored life-like drawings of his new mini monkey erasers and a few of his stuffed animals. He used yellow, gray, and black. C-Monster decided to draw a silver box and then several other drawings using the silver crayon. I had to laugh at their use of color. I'll post some pics later.

Library: We had just a quick run to the library this week as the boys hadn't read a few of their books from last week. I did pick up How Do You Know What Time It Is? by Robert Wells and the Usborne experiment book. If you haven't checked out any of the Robert Wells' books, I'd recommend it. Sonlight has a few in the P4/5 core and we often check out others from the library. They are appealing to 5yos, but are appropriate for teaching older kids too.