New Read-Alouds

We've started some read-alouds with Sonlight's Exploring God's World so I thought I'd review them. I am still very happy with Sonlight's book choices. This continues to be a great fit for D-Man.

Our Animal Friends at Maple Hill Farm

I cannot say enough about this book and its sequel below. This book actually comes from Sonlight's P3/4 core, but I decided to read it along with The Year at Maple Hill Farm. The same characters appear in both books which thrilled the boys. This book makes me want to pack up and move to Maple Hill Farm. The Provenson's have painted a sweet picture through their animals. Because we visit upstate NY each summer, the boys were able to identify even more with the surroundings. The artwork beautifully shows the character of each animal.

The Year at Maple Hill Farm

This is the companion to the book above. It illustrates each season and month of the year through the goings-on at the farm. Although upstate NY's seasons look very different than ours here in Texas, it fun to see how our familiar animal friends weather the elements. We used both this and the first part of The Berenstain Bear's Big Book of Science and Nature to create our year poster. Because of it's illustrations, my boys will keep pulling these books out again and again. Okay, can you tell that I absolutely love these books? It's sad that the Provensons only wrote two of them.

What's Under the Sea?

It's a given that D-Man will love every science book we read. So, yes, he loves this book. This one is a nice introduction to the ocean at the preschool/Kindergarten level. It doesn't go into a lot of detail, but does include some fun facts. This book is a good "bunny trail" creator. It includes just enough information on each subject to stimulate further research. I have no doubt that D-Man will request some whale books during our next library visit. C-Monster isn't as interested in this book. He really likes to be read to instead of following a bunch of facts on a page. He's an auditory learner, so maybe that's the reason. The eye candy of this book doesn't appeal to him as much.

The Classic Tales of Brer Rabbit

We just started this book, but so far it's a hit. The illustrations are breathtaking and help the boys follow the story. Although they are becoming seasoned listeners thanks to Uncle Wiggily, they enjoy being able to follow the story in the pictures. I'm sure that I was read these stories as a child, but I don't remember them. I'm enjoying reading these as much as the boys enjoy listening to them.

American Tall Tales CD

This CD has been a surprising favorite. At first, I couldn't figure out when we'd listen to it. D-Man will listen to audiobooks during rest time, but C-Monster naps during that time. They're so used to congregating around me (or Shawn) when we read-aloud that I didn't know what they'd do with a CD. The car was my next thought, but we'd never get through a story with the little amount of driving we do...until, we started to pick up a boy from a local public school three days/week. Finally, an upside to sitting in the pick-up line. D-Man sits in his carseat working in his math book and they both listen to this CD. We've been through it several times now, but they still want to listen to it everyday. It only has 4 stories on it, but Jim Weiss (the narrator) keeps us interested.

Weekly Report Week 11

We had an up-and-down week, school-wise. We did really well in the beginning, but were really busy at the end of the week. I left on Friday for a women's retreat, so I had to get everything set for the weekend. Shawn is a great dad and more-than-capable of taking care of the boys by himself, but I wanted him to focus on having fun with the boys all weekend. So, I tried to help him out as much as I could before I left. Because of that, we didn't get a lot of school done on Thursday or Friday. So here's how we did.



Sonlight: We finished Week 17. We normally do more than a week's worth of reading, but that's not required. D-Man's favorite story of the week was The Hero of Holland. It's about a little boy who prevented a breach in the dyke by using his finger to plug a hole overnight. D-Man was interested that a boy accomplish something so important. He also loves our new science book: What's Under the Sea?


Math: We didn't do as much in Horizons K this week as we usually do. We still got to lesson 131. The exciting development for the week was that we received our new math programs in the mail on Thursday. D-Man was so happy about Singapore math that he begged me to start immediately and completed 14 lessons after dinner. We did another two on Friday. Here's what he's been doing in his new book.

LA: We really focused on SWR this week. The words are getting harder, but D-Man is still enjoying learning them each week. His spelling test was great. Not only did he get 100% on all of his new words, he got 100% on the review section as well. He was so proud of his "200%," that I wouldn't let Shawn tell him that there's no such thing as 200% on a test. Here's a pic of his hard work:


Despite the success this week, I've decided that we're going to have a review this week. We'll cover lists A-E at 40 words/day. That way, I can see what words he's still having trouble with and we can work on them a little more.


Library: We are still reading our books that we checked out two weeks ago. We finished Two Times the Fun but D-Man really liked it, so we're reading it again (and again). It's an okay book, but not worth reading three times when we have plenty of good books to read. Shawn's theory is that D-Man keeps requesting it because the chapters are long.

SWR Binders

A few people have asked about SWR Binder Organization so I decided to post mine here.

I have two binders: The first is my Teacher's Binder. I use this one everyday.

It has 4 tabs so far:

1. Schedules/Procedures. Here I keep the most important stuff. I have my schedule, a dictation guide, a introduce vs. quiz vs. test guide, and different helps that I print off of the yahoo group.

2. Log. This is a log that I keep to help me remember what we've done each day. I have my schedule, but I don't follow it exactly. I figure this log will help out when I start SWR with C-Monster.

3. Enrichments/Game Ideas. This is where I keep any ideas I have or find on good enrichments. The yahoo group is full of them. This way I can keep my favorites organized.

4. Materials. Here I have all of my additional materials. I currently have the McCall-Hardy and McCall-Crabbs books, the Suggested Book List, and my getting started printouts. This will grow when I order the rest of the materials next year.

Up front, I keep two pencil pouches. I have one for pencils and highlighters and a second one to hold our phonogram cards. I tried it all in one pencil pouch, but that didn't work. Then, in the front pocket, I have my own logbook.

The second binder is D-Man's student binder. This doesn't get used too often yet. It really just holds his logbook and tests. Eventually, he'll include more. It has 5 tabs.

1. Phonogram/Spelling Practice. This is just a place where we put any practice sheets that we work on. Realistically, I'll probably chuck all of these at the end of the year.

2. Quizzes/Tests. This is where I file his tests. I don't really put quizzes in here anymore since we do most of those on the white board.

3. Enrichments. This is where I will file any products from enrichments we do. We haven't had any yet.

4. Books read. I have a log that I made to record all of the books he's read. I don't count Bob Books or Fun Tales, so the only thing we have written down so far is Go, Dog, Go. This list will be very useful soon.

5. Paper. This is just where we keep extra paper for writing. I got a huge ream of paper for him, so we just put about 50 sheets in his notebook for easier access.

He also has a pencil pouch that contain a pencil and his very own red pencil.

There you have it. One last thing that has really helped was copying the Scope and Sequence sheet for D-Man. I place a checkmark next to each step as we start it.

Thankful for Rain!

We've been in a drought for about 2 years so rain showers have been few and far between. The boys have been going through a puddle withdrawal. So, when it started raining, I promised them that we'd be able to play out in the rain. Here they are celebrating God's gift. I'm not sure that the umbrellas served their intended purpose.

Weekly Report Week 10

This was a short week with Labor Day on Monday. We did a little school on that day because we wanted to show Shawn what we do. He's always at work during school. He was impressed with D-Man's grasp of the rules and marking in our spelling program. We weren't taught this way, so it's surprising to see what a 5yo can learn.

Language Arts- We had quite a few silent E words this week so D-Man was happy. We still didn't read our words enough, so that's my goal for next week. He did get a 100% on his spelling test. He was so proud of himself. We finished up the E list. His penmanship wasn't the best during his test, so we're going to focus on that as well. Here's a picture of his test from Friday.

Math- We just finished up lesson 125 (out of 160) so I ordered his new program. I just found out that there aren't any new concepts introduced after lesson 140. This level has all been review for him anyway, so we're going to start Singapore 1A when we get to lesson 140 and use the last 20 lessons as review on Fridays. When we finish Horizons K, we'll start using Horizons 1 as review on Fridays.

Sonlight-Our favorite story this week was St. George and the Dragon. Through St. George, we learned about courage, bravery, and duty. What great virtues for little boys to learn! C-Monster had just decided that day to be a knight for our chruch's Fall Festival, so this story came at a perfect time. He even told me that he wants to be a knight when he grows up. We might have a hard time finding dragons for him to slay. D-Man was captivated by this story, so I'm going to look up more knight stories at the library.

Science- We read two books for science this week. We read the scheduled Year at Maple Hill Farm and added it's companion Animals at Maple Hill Farm. They were both sweet books. The way that the authors captured the personalities of the animals was perfect. The beautiful artwork was a bonus. The only downside is that there are only two books. I wish there were more in the series. After we finished reading about the year, we finally got around to making our year poster. D-Man (like his mom) is a visual learner so I decided that we needed to put our knowledge of the year down on posterboard. I did the writing while D-Man read which seasons and months to put on the poster. Then, he and C-Monster decorated it. Here's our final product:

Besides new math, I also ordered geography and art this week. I can't wait for them to arrive!

Weekly Report-Week 9

We're still trying to figure out our schedule now that public school has started. It doesn't help that D-Man has been sleeping in until at least 8:45. Friday, he didn't wake up until 9:15. He must be going through a growth spurt because he's been going to sleep before 9 (bedtime at 8). He normally wakes up between 7:45 and 8. This has been cutting into our morning, so we aren't finishing math and LA until 12-1. That's fine except that D-Man just doesn't focus well that late. So, we're still working on it.

Here's the rundown:

Math: D-Man learned two exciting new concepts this week. Yes, he really was excited. First, we learned about quarters. I thought this was going to hard, but he got it right away. This was one instance when manipulatives came in handy. He doesn't normally like the clutter of manipulatives, but it does help him to understand a new concept occasionally. In this instance, we paired up a quarter with two dimes and a nickel, two quarters with a half dollar, and four quarters with a dollar. He got it immediately.

The second concept that promted him to bring me his math book on Saturday was learning about 3-D shapes. The book only listed cylindars, spheres, and cones. We got those down and then dove into the rest of our 3-D shapes set. There are 10 in all. They suggested a couple of games in the package, so we played those for a few minutes. Here's a pic of D-Man figuring out which shapes are suitable for tower building and which are not.

Language Arts: We did better with SWR this week. I'm trying to figure out ways for D-Man to read his words more often without using his learning log. He just doesn't like reading out of the learning log. This week, we used his word box. I pulled out all of the action verbs and made a game out of reading the cards. Instead of just reading them out loud to me, he had to act them out. He loved this game! Next time, I'll get C-Monster involved. He can't read all of those words yet, but he'll follow whatever D-Man does. In fact, Little-J will enjoy the show too. My plan is to do something similar with the prepositions, nouns, and pronouns.

D-Man got a 90% on his spelling test for the third week in a row. He misspelled 'your' which wasn't surprising because he misspelled 'you' two weeks ago. We retested 'you' this week and he got it right, but forgot the connection between it and 'your.' He did think about it. He spelled it 'yoor' using the 1st sound of /oo/ instead of the 3rd sound of /ou/. He also got all of his other review words correct which shows me that he's learning from his mistakes. He is really pushing me to try 20 words per week. I think that we'll give it a try when we start list F in two weeks.

Sonlight: We finished up week 16 this week. Nothing real special to report here. Great read-alouds.

Science: We finished up the Berenstain Bear's Book of Science and Nature this week. The last portion was about energy. D-Man was sad we finished it, but happier when I told him we'd start it all over next week. We'll just read it along-side our other science readings. I found this science experiment on the pbskids website. So cool. It ties in matter with energy.

My three little scientists

Library Trip: We made a trip to the library this week. Although, I love Sonlight's P4/5 program for Kindergarten, we need more reading. I consider this our pleasure reading. I'd like the boys to get into a habit of always reading for learning (school) and for pleasure. I have a list of books called 1000 good books. I'd like for us to get through all of these books during our schooling years. The list splits the books up into grade categories. We'll certainly be able to meet my goal for the primary elementary books. I put a few of those books on hold and picked up the books that I'd placed on hold last week. I told each boy that they could pick 1-2 books themselves. D-Man picked up a book and read its title, "Frog's Best Friend." I love to see that.

Comments are now working!

I found out from one of my best friends and my husband that they weren't able to comment on any of my posts. Well, I don't know what was wrong, but it works now. So...comment away. Talk about how beautiful I am, what a great mother I am, or how smart my children are...other comments are welcome as well.

Phonogram Games

Anything is fun if you put it into a board game, right? That's the sentiment at our house. We are a home full of gamers. We play some kind of game every night before bed. Some of the boys' favorites are Sorry, Mancala, Uno, and Connect Four. Therefore, I didn't think twice when I saw a game package on the Spell to Write and Read website. I just put it into my cart. The whole package came with two board games (really one with 2 different board), Phonogram Bingo, and instructions for several other phonogram card games.

These games make reviewing our phonograms too easy. We play the board game a few time/week. C-Monster gets his own pile of phonograms (just the first 26) and the rest of us draw from D-Man's pile of the phonograms he's learned. After finishing a turn, the player draws a card from the pile. If he can correctly say all of the sounds for that phonogram, he gets to keep the card. The person with the most cards at the end of the game is the winner.

Let's face the fact, D-Man's extremely competitive. With parents like his, it's no wonder where he gets it. Well, we're using it for good in this game. If he wants to win, he needs to know those phonogram sounds. It's really Shawn who's at a disadvantage. It's hard to guess the four sounds of 'ou' if you haven't been taught. This game's helping him too.

Since we've been playing this game, I haven't seen the need to quiz the phonograms very often. I do review and quiz the ones that he hasn't quite mastered, but there aren't many of those at the moment. I love products like this that make learning easy and painless.

What you don't see in these pictures is that minutes after they were taken, D-Man slipped off of the chair and cut the corner of his eye. The game was abandoned while Shawn took him to an urgent care clinic. Fortunately, it looked MUCH worse than it actually was and no stiches were needed. He did have a swollen, black eye along with his nasty cut for a few days, but such is the life of a boy.