Weekly Report- Week 9

I wrote this post a couple of weeks ago but couldn't add the pics. Now I'm experimenting with posting from my iPad which should help. I'm going to work on Week 11 and might even have it posted by tomorrow.

We're definitely getting back into the groove.

Math: The new math plan is working out well. D-Man is really enjoying focusing on Miquon and enjoying it's non-traditional approach. On Thursday, we filled in a multiplication chart with all of the facts he knows (not necessarily memorized) and was surprised to find that there were only 12 out of 121 that we haven't studied yet. The chart only went to 10s, but we'll add 11s and 12s later. I think filling in a new chart each week will help him memorize them. We're also working with Flashmaster a few times a week. He blasted through the fraction pages this week too. He has decided he loves fractions.





Spelling: This week was really easy for D-Man. It seems we're finding a good rhythm with SWR. He's definitely ready for more challenging material. We do have 6 more weeks of review. It'll be good for him to really focus on the spelling rules. We just started reviewing them last week and he only has a handful mastered.



Reading: D-Man's still reading his way through Jesus' parables in The Beginner's Bible. It only takes him a minute or two to read the day's selection so I think we're going to start formal Silent Sustained Reading (SSR) during school. Yesterday, he read 3 extra Bible stories because he wasn't done reading yet. I haven't felt the need to do SSR because he reads so much on his own, but I think it would reinforce the importance of reading. I'll probably only start with 15 minutes and work up to 30, but it's important that he enjoy it. For his first book, I'll have him read through his Christian Liberty Nature Readers. He loves reading them and I think it would be a fun assignment.

History:. We talked about Victorian times this week. Nothing remarkable about it really. We did look on the Internet and see how different it was for children back then. We concluded that it's much better for children these days.

Read-Alouds: We started The Story of Dr. Doolittle this week. The boys think he has a funny name and D-Man wants to have as many pets as the Dr. has. I told him that when he's a grown-up and has his own house, he may have as many pets as he likes.

Science:. We are continuing to read How To Think Like a Scientist. D-Man had to come up with a question he'd like to answer using the scientific method. I had to help him quite a bit with finding a suitable question. He came up with some great questions, but most of them would require resources not available o us to prove. He's a child that tends to think big.

Weekly Report- Week 8

Now that we're getting back into the swing of things, I'm going to try getting a weekly report out each week.

Math:. I've decided to change up routine a bit. D-Man's to the point where not knowing his multiplication facts are holding him back. So, instead of forging on with Singapore 2B, we're going to concentrate on learning those facts while go through Horizons 2 and Miquon Orange/Red. Memorization is not his strong suit so we'll really have to work on those tables. Once he gets 2s and 3s down, we'll move on in Singapore. 2s aren't a problem, but he struggles with 3s past 3x5. I expect we'll have to do something similar when we get to 4s and 6s.   So this week, we did about 7 lessons in Horizons 2 and 20 pages in Miquon Orange.  He calls Miquon "fun math." One thing I really liked seeing was how fast he's gotten at addition and subtraction.  He does know his facts there and it seems has gained quite a bit of speed recently.  It is funny to hear him do his timed subtraction tests in Horizons.  He looks at each problem and says, "that's easy...it's just __."  It can get a little repetitive after the 30th problem. 

Spelling: We did List F this week. After our long vacation, D-Man needed a little remediation with cursive. Not a big deal, though. We finished off List E at the end of last week and I told him that I wouldn't help him with how to spell the words on his test, but he could ask me a anything about letter formation. He was back in the groove by the time his test came around this Friday.  He got a 100% on his test...YEAH!  It's nice to be doing these easy lists at the beginning of the year.  D-Man is thriving on his success and I think that'll take him a long way once we get to new words. 

We also reviewed the A-E-I-O-U page this week.  It is a reference page that covers all of the ways a vowel says 2nd (long) sound.  Since he'd already done it once last year and knows those rules well, we played a game where I'd give him the word with the 1st sound (ex. can) and he'd come up with the word that uses the 2nd sound (ex. cane), tell me the rule and do the markings.  We had fun and it was a good review.  Looking at the picture, I realize we forgot to finish the last reason.  We were saving it so that he could show his dad.  Guess we should finish that off tonight when Shawn gets home.

Reading: D-Man's still working his way through The Beginner's Bible.  He's now reading about Jesus' ministry.  I can't believe he's read 350 pages all by himself!  He does read a lot on his own each week, but it's great to track his progress through this one book.  Even though this set of readers is well below his reading level, I am still amazed at his reading ability.  Maybe that's the way it is with the first reader.  It's just so fun to see them go from painfully sounding out words to reading Bible stories with ease (well, until they get to "Nebuchadnezzar").  We didn't take any of his school reading on vacation, but he got so much practice reading stories to his brothers and his nature reader for fun.  This is a really great season for both of us in this subject.

Read-Aloud: We read the sequel to Dolphin Adventure, Dolphin Treasure this week.

This was a great, on-the-edge-of-their-seats book.  D-Man asked about every two minutes in chapters 3, 4, and 5 if they were all going to die.  I did tell him that if the author wrote the book, he must have lived.  That put him at ease a bit.  Of course, they were both pretty excited about the prospect of finding treasure.  We also had a good discussion on hypothermia.  While it was definitely on the lighter-side of our Sonlight read-alouds, it was so enjoyable. 

Science: This week, we're reading through the book How To Think Like a Scientist.  We didn't actually get to science until Saturday.  Between me having strep, D-Man's golf lessons, and playing with friends; we didn't get to everything this week.  However, since science is one of our favorite subjects, we made time for it on Saturday.

In this book, we're learning how to use the scientific method to answer questions.  At the beginning, we read about why our interpretation of the facts can lead to wrong answers.  Now, we've moved on to the 5 steps of the scientific method.  It's a great book that's written at a young elementary level. 

Sonlight and Spell to Write and Read

I decided to put a post together about this topic since I had a reader ask.  Really, there is no mystery...I just use each program in its entirety.  I just substitute SWR for Sonlight's LA.  Here are a couple of items worth noting:

SWR is a complete LA program for K-2/3.  It includes all of the necessary phonics, handwriting, grammar, and writing for those ages.  Despite that, I'm adding Cursive First for handwriting (really, we're finished with this), First Language Lessons (grammar), and Writing with Ease (writing) this year for 1st grade. 

Cursive First was designed to use with SWR to teach cursive.  There's not much to it but it provided just enough support to give me confidence teaching cursive to D-Man. It does include worksheets that correspond with learning the phonograms. We used some of them, but ditched them when we started the spelling lists for the year. D-man is pretty intolerant of busy work and writing the words throughout the week gives him ample handwriting practice. We sometimes have little refreshers on how two letters connect (mostly after a straight connecter, but he's getting better each week).

Writing with Ease (WWE) and First Language Lessons (FLL) are not necessary for most people using SWR. I'm adding them because those are the areas in which I am the least confident teaching. I learned very little grammar in school so the scripted nature of FLL will be a big help. I plan to teach the boys writing classically and WWE is giving us a good head start on that road. However, instead of using the WWE workbooks, I'm correlating our narration and dictation with our SL and Noeo reading. Another reason is simply that I love to supplement with great resources. If you've read my blog at all, you know that by now and take my supplementing with a grain of salt :).

I do still use the Sonlight readers alongside SWR. SWR does call for assigned reading several weeks into the program (after list I-1). I found the recommendation to wait on assigned reading a good one. The author, Wanda Sanseri, calls reading too early "torture reading" and waits until the child has the skills he needs to read well. Before they start reading books, they read the spelling lists several times a week to practice decoding and fluency. By the time D-Man got to list I-1, he started in week 24 of Sonlight's Readers 1 (after the I Can Read It Series). His fluency took off and he was soon capable of reading at a 4th grade level. I've chosen to keep him tracking in Sonlight's reader programs so he's working his way through Readers 2. They are an easy read for him, but he's enjoying the books and often chooses tougher material from the library as his free reading selections. I have him read all of the Sonlight books aloud to me while he reads his free reading selections silently. His reading and spelling levels are still steadily improving through the SWR spelling lists and enrichments. C-Monster is a bit of a different animal as he started reading before 3 and likes to pick up Fun Tales (Readers K) or Bob Books so I expect him to continue this trend over the next year and possibly getting through the first 24 weeks of Readers 1 (which he's capable of reading now) or farther. Between our collection and the library, we'll have plenty of books to keep him busy.

Where have we been?

I'll include a more thorough update with pics later, but we've been on vacation. It was great, but now it's time to get back to work.