What's D-Man reading?

D-Man loves to read.  Now that he's had such a big jump in reading level over the last few months, it's widened his book selection.

For school we're going through Sonlight's Readers 2.  These books are pretty easy for him, but I can't think of any reason for him to read harder books at his age as long as he's enjoying them.  His current book is The Beginner's Bible.  He loves having his own Bible to read.



D-Man reads a lot of books for fun.  He gets to pick these books himself, but I do steer him towards appropriate selections at the library.  We also have a pretty nice collection of books here at home for him to choose from as well.  He'll often take 5 or so Dr. Suess books from our shelf to bed with him.  Last night, he decided to start reading The Christian Liberty Nature Reader Book 1.  These are great readers for kids who like science.  I asked him how much he'd read and he informed me that he's reading one chapter each night.  Last night's chapter was about a wasp that digs.  He told me all about this wasp and how it isn't a wasp when it is first born.  I was surprised he remembered so much information. 

Weekly Report: Weeks 38/39

I know this is really late, but I finally have somethig to report!! After a couple of months off, we finally have all of our new curriculum and have started back up. D-Man is still officially a Kindergartener, but we're starting the next level in our progression.

Sonlight: We received our big boxes full of books from Sonlight Tuesday night last week. YEAH!! The boys were eager to start reading books, so we started our first week right away. I didn't get them to bed until 9:30. Our new core is called Introduction to the World: Cultures. During this year, we'll get an overview of some geography and an idea of history. We started D-Man's timeline which he loves. So far, we've got several figures on our timeline from our Bible reading. The biggest hit so far has been our read-aloud, The Boxcar Children. In fact, we finished it last Saturday. D-Man loved the book and kept asking to read more chapters so we did. We weren't supposed to finish it until week 4, so we picked up a couple of sequels at the library and started the 2nd book Tuesday night.

We started studying Ancient Egypt this week. Since we tend to go through the SL material quickly, I decided to get some Ancient Egypt books from the library so that we can dive into the topic a little more. We'll cover it again next year, but I think D-Man will find the topic interesting. I'm also printing out some heiroglyphics activities that I found online since both boys were intrigued by them during our reading.

Math: Although, we received Singapore 2A last week, I've decided not to start it until this week. Instead, we tried to make some progress in Horizons 1. We finished lesson 125 last week and are eager to finish the rest of the book. D-Man progresses so quickly in math that it has become too easy and boring for him. I think that I need to be more picky about the exercises we do in Horizons 2 when we start it in June. D-Man did beg to do some PM2A, but balked when he saw that it was review. The review was covering place value to the tens place and he was a little confused about why that topic was being covered. He's just not a kid who needs much review and that is compounded by the fact that we school year around. This week, we focused on getting through the review in 2A and added in Miquon Orange for some meat. We did the first 6 lessons in 2A which he actually enjoyed once we got to some big numbers.

LA: We got more serious about learning cursive last week. I'm surprised at how well D-Man is taking to it. Now, he did ask to learn it, but I thought it would be harder for him than it has been. His fine motor skills have really improved this year. We've covered letters a, c, d, g, o, q, e, l, b, and f. I'm hoping we can continue doing 2/day and practice for the rest of the month. He's asking to start spelling again and I think the early lists will be really good cursive practice. I'll just have to see if he'll be able to handle that when we get to the beginning of May. The salt box has been a key activity in Cursive First for us. He starts cursive everyday with the salt box and it warms him up for writing on paper.

Geography: I got Galloping the Globe spiral bound this week which will be really helpful when I copy pages for D-Man. We'll be doing a quick overview of Egypt this week to go with history.

Field Trip: We tried to go to the zoo this week for C-Monster's 4th birthday, but we were rained out. We're renewing our membership, so we'll be going a lot this year. I'm planning on going next Friday, but am unsure if the zoo will be open. It's Fiesta time around here and most everything is closed next Friday. We'll see.

Well, that all for this week. We aren't starting the rest of our subjects until D-Man officially starts 1st grade in June.

SWR-First Grade Schedule

It's ready! My Spell to Write and Read schedule for 1st grade is done. This time I went through and chose which enrichments I want to do from the WISE Guide. That'll make it even more open-and-go for me.

This year we'll be doing 20 words/week and writing everything in cursive. D-Man actually asked to learn cursive, so he's pretty excited about it. We're already on week 2 of the schedule and love Cursive First.


SWR Schedule-1st Grade

Getting Ready

We're getting everything ready for our new school year. Officially, D-Man won't start 1st grade until June 1st, but we are starting our new Core and math as soon as it gets here which should be early next week. Along with that, we'll re-energize handwriting and finish up our geography workbooks. I'm getting my schedules and binders ready so that we're all organized as soon as the boxes arrive. I'm also trying to get some spring cleaning in before we start. It's been nice to take a few months "off," but we're rearin' to go.