Back to School

What have we been doing for the last 4 weeks...this!







The boys got a new brother on the 7th of March. We're very excited to add him to the pack and we were too busy loving on him to do any school. Added into the mix, Grandma, Grandpa, and Aunt Megan visited so we were pretty busy. The weather was beautiful so the extended spring break was perfect.

So where were we before our break?

Math: D-Man is well into Singapore PM 3A. We finished up Exercise 18 today and are almost finished with Challenging Word Problems 2. D-Man finished Lesson 17 in Horizons Math 3 as well. Horizons has been all review so far so it's been very easy.

C-Monster is joining us for school on Mondays now and is almost finished with Singapore Essential Math B. He's been working on the concept of subtraction.

Spelling: D-Man is starting list L-1 this week. We're going to hit our phonograms and spelling rules hard this week since we've taken so much time off.

Reading: Both boys have been doing a lot of reading over break. D-Man has discovered Geronimo Stilton and has been reading 1-2 books per day. Now that we're back to school, he'll finish his reader, The Pony Express, but he'll still be doing a lot of free reading. We often have to turn his light off late at night so that he'll go to sleep instead of reading "just one more chapter."

C-Monster is also started week 28 of Sonlight's Readers 1. He taught himself to read so I just placed him into the more interesting readers. He's reading The Best Trick right now and gets upset if we forget his reading time. His free reading has mostly been Dr. Seuss.

I'm not sure how much we're going to get done in our elective subjects. Going back school often proves to be slower and less enthusiastic after a long, fun break. We're going to focus on the basics this week and enjoy our last week of being with Grandma. After she goes home next week, we'll try to reestablish our routine adjusting for our new family member. Hopefully, I'll be able to add in some fun stuff. We also have soccer starting up this week for the two older boys so we'll have to work around that.

I'll try to get back to at least a bi-weekly update but no promises with so much going on around here. :)

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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. 

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.