Kindergarten Take 3

Today was the official start of J-Monster's Kindergarten year.  I can't believe I'm doing this for the 3rd time around.  The big boys were off to Pokemon camp so we had all morning to ourselves and got in an entire day's worth of school.

J-Monster loves crafting, so we started off with art.  Evidently, drawing a cute clown face in his Baby Lamb's Art book did not qualify as craft-time.  He did have a good time, but I'll be on Pinterest tonight to come up with something he will deem as a craft.  He has requested a "dog craft."  He is my first boy that likes hands-on craftsy stuff so this Kindy year will look a little different than the other two.

Then, we had our first spelling and writing lesson.  J-Monster has been interested in learning to read and can sound out CVC words, but we went full-on with Spell to Write and Read today.  We started learning the official recitation for the first 26 phonograms and learned how to write a, c, and d in cursive.  It was easy as pie for him and he loved using the salt box to write his letters.  He is my best 4 year old writer to date so I'm getting off kind of easy this time around.  I don't mind that at all.  We also have the advantage of a good cursive app on my iPad which adds to the fun. Baby-S even got in on that action.

Of course, no boy can resist some salt box drawing.  Here are his renditions of our two dogs: Wilson and Ribsy.

Finally, we got out math.  He is cruising through Singapore Essential Math A.  I knew it would be very simple for him as he is already adding, subtracting, counting to 100, and writing numbers well.  He doesn't care that it's easy.  He is a workbook kid and loves to finish pages.  He did about 10 pages today and continued his work during brothers' swim lessons.  We aren't in any hurry to rush him along in math.  There will be plenty of time this year to get through everything I have planned (which is a lot, as usual).

We were able to read a couple of school stories from Sonlight's P4/5 at the pool and more at bedtime.  All-in-all it was a great day.  I loved being alone with him and giving him all of my attention.  Maybe not all, Baby-S was hanging out and I did fold a load of laundry while he was doing math, but a lot more than usual.  J-Monster asked if we get to do Kindergarten everyday.  That's one of the reasons I love K-ers so much.  They just love school.

Homeschool Conversations Pt. 4

How does a 6yo figure out negative numbers? I have no idea. Here's what happened during a lesson on how to use Singapore's bar models.

I was trying to show D-Man how the bar models correlate with addition and subtraction problems. In the course of the lesson, I used 6-10 as an example of a problem that doesn't work. Of course, that sent up a red flag with D-Man. He told me that it does have an answer and that he knew "all about negative numbers." Then he asked me to write a number line on the board and to add negative numbers to it. I did.

He then told me the answer was -4.  After that I came up with a couple of similar problems and he solved them just fine.  Then, he told me that he wanted to come up with his own problem.  Did he come up with one like mine...no, of course not.  He wrote down -20 + -10 =.  Just as I was about to stop him and explain that negative numbers can be a bit tricky, he writes down -30.  I stared at it dumbfounded.  How did he figure that out?  I have no idea, but he got it right.  

So ends another math lesson at our house. 

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.

Weekly Report: Week 32

It's been awhile since I've reported. Honestly, we haven't been doing much. Since we finished our Sonlight Core, school seems scattered. I'm realizing that I needed the core to ground our schooltime. However, it is a great time to take a break. Despite his academic level, D-Man is still a Kindergartner and I don't want to overwhelm him or me. Here's what we have been doing:


Sonlight/Reading Aloud: We've been reading through Fiction, Fairy Tales and Fun. While the stories are great, they are a step down in complexity and length from Explore God's World and that's been more of an issue than I anticipated. D-Man does love the stories, but they're more of what he's used to for bedtime, not school. He really wants more substance. The good thing we've done is adding A Treasury of Children's Literature, Usborne First Book of Knowledge, and Usborne Starting Point Science Vol. 1. These have added more meat to our reading. However, I am longing to buy our next SL Core, Introduction to the World: Cultures. I am going to wait until April when the next catalog comes out so that I can have the latest version available, but I'm not going to like it.


Math: We've still been chugging along. We finished Singapore 1B and Horizons 1 book 1. Now we're working on Challenging Word Problems 1 (CWP 1) and Horizons 1 book 2. D-Man really enjoys Horizons book 2. Book 1 seemed like a lot of pages of addition and subtraction practice. The problems were easy, but I'm finding he just doesn't enjoy rote problems without context. Now, he loves word problems. Book 2 has more variety in the lessons so I think he'll complain less when we do get to those addition/subtraction pages. He's even declared that we have to do that book first thing every morning. He also loves practicing more complicated problems in CWP 1. It's a good review before we start 2A in April.

Reading: We finished SL Readers 1 a couple of weeks ago and I'm still surprised at D-Man's reading growth spurt. I haven't been having him do any formal reading practice with me, but he's been staying up late at night to read books. He's (re)read some Dr. Suess, Little Bear's Visit, Syd Hoff books, and Scholastic readers. My husband hasn't been able to turn his light off when he's reading at night, so he's been sleeping in a bit more in the mornings. It's just so exciting for us to have a child who wants to read books to himself instead of sleep. Tonight, my husband let C-Monster stay up in D-Man's bed extra late so that D-Man could read him stories. How do you say no to that? Today, I surprised D-Man by buying him Yertle the Turtle at Costco and he read to all of us during the ride home. Fun times.

Spelling: We're finished with this for now. I was planning on doing a few more lists this year, but we're taking a break to learn cursive instead. I do think that we'll do some phonogram, spelling rule, and reference page review until we start up again. I'll have to look for (or think of) some fun projects. I might ask him to narrate and illustrate some more pages in his reading journal (for lack of a better word) on books he's reading for fun. He might be really excited about that once his cursive gets to the point that he could write in it instead of manuscript.

Art: We haven't been doing much, but I need to. That'll be my project for next week...resurrect our art program. Hopefully, I'll have something to report on that next time.

Well, that's it for school. Other than that, we've been outside a lot. The weather's either been fabulous or snow flurries. Either way, we're outside in it.

Weekly Report: Week 26

Finally, an update on my neglected blog.

We are back in the groove after being back for a couple of weeks. We had a great school week. Here's what we did:

LA: Is it me or was list I-2 really easy? D-Man didn't have any trouble at all and got a 100% on his test. Now, I will say that we buckled down and did all of our enrichments including sentence dictation and two whiteboard quizzes. He also got to move the phonogram "ough" to the mastered (blue) pile which was a big deal for him as it has 6 sounds. He was very motivated to remember all of them. Now, he only has 2 phonograms ("ei" and "ey") in the yellow pile and one in the red pile ("ie"). Those are mostly because he mixes them up. If I give him "ey" first, he can get the other two, but they aren't mastered yet.

His reading is taking off even more. I gave him the Quick Reading Assessment on Sonlight's website on Thursday and he tested into Readers 2 Intermediate. Pretty cool. He's improved even more on his fluency. It seems like something has clicked in his brain and he's able to smoothly read words he hasn't read before. Just tonight, he was reading a sign in our kitchen that said, "no excuses" and just blurted it out. The weird thing is that he'll often pause to sound out a CVC word. I think it's out of habit and it isn't too noticeable, but interesting. We are still trucking through Sonlight's Readers 1 package, but it is building his confidence to read books below his level. In the last two weeks, he's read 5 weeks worth of the schedule. Being able to finally read fluently has shown both of us that he LOVES to read Dr. Suess books. He likes the rhythm and it helps that he and Dr. Suess share a similar sense of humor. Readers 1 includes several Dr. Suess books (and others Theodore Geisel wrote) plus we have several other on the shelves, but he's read most of those and is excited to check some out at the library this week. It's the first time that we're going to get him specific books to read to himself. A big day in our house.

Oh, and D-Man started a journal on the books he's reading. It's pretty simple: he tells me what he wants to say about the book, I write his sentences on the board, and he copies them into his book. Then, he draws a picture. I had a little journal in my stuff and mentioned it to him as an idea. He loved it and spent the next hour on a page about Little Bear. I'm not going to make it a mandatory assignment, but it's a good opportunity for him to get in some narration practice. I don't have any pics right now, but it warrants it's own post anyway.

Math: We're still moving right along in Horizons 1 and Singapore 1B. We finished through lesson 58 in Horizons 1 and 57 in Singapore 1B. The only thing he's encountered that was remotely challenging was the concept of division. Singapore briefly introduces it in 1B and we covered a few weeks ago. He got it, but I actually had to explain it to him. Now we are back to doing addition and subtraction with numbers up to 100 which is easy to him. He has expressed some concern about the lack of difficulty in this section. Evidently, it isn't meeting his expectations. I've explained to him that math is like soccer and basketball. We just need to keep practicing. He's fine with it and likes the exercises, but is eager to get to numbers over 100.

Sonlight: We finished P4/5!!! Yipee!! Well, I'm a little excited. On one hand, we did it. On the other hand, it was a great core and I'm sad that we're done. The good news is that I'll be doing it again with C-Monster in a little over a year. Since then, we started our quick run through P3/4 (Fiction, Fairy Tales, and Fun). I thought it would be intense, but it is turning out to be light on reading so far. I think the reason is that we got used to the longer stories in P4/5, so this is a step back. It's not a big deal. The boys are still loving the stories and I've used the opportunity to schedule in some other great books that we got for Christmas and a few Usborne science books we had lying around. We have already read many of the P3/4 stories in the 9 months since I started slowing buying it, but these stories are meant to be read over and over (and over, etc.) again.

We also started up DEL again. We had stalled out on book 3 due to D-Man's aversion to outlining. I decided to add it back in and do it a few times per week. So, we did 1 page on Monday and 1 page on Wednesday. Then, on Friday, D-Man decided to finish up book 3 (5 pages) and run through 12 pages of book 4. He wanted to keep going, but I was done. I made him go play. He likes book 4 better because it has more to do with actual letters, numbers and writing rather than pictures and coloring.

Other cool stuff: We're still using our snap circuit set a few times a week. D-Man calls it school, but that's just so he can do it first thing in the morning. I need to read up on circuits a bit because I can't explain what's going on in all of the circuits anymore. They were simple at the beginning, but keep getting more complex. I did take EE in school, but that was awhile ago. Hopefully, it will come back. D-Man also made it through all of the Mighty Mind cards this week (I'm going to post about what exactly this is later). Now he's on his second run. The first time, I helped him a bit as the cards got more complicated, but this time he's on his own. C-Monster has worked his way through card 13 with no help so far.

Well, that's a good week for us. It was really nice out so we spent a ton of time outside riding scooters and playing bugman in the backyard.

Christmas School

We took the month of December off from school to focus on Christmas. We still did some math (only because it's D-Man's favorite subject) and reading practice, but we abandoned all of our other school activities in favor of learning about Jesus' birth and the traditions surrounding it.

Our favorite resource was this book that I bought from Costco last year. It contains several short stories about how Christmas is celebrated in other countries as well as classic Christmas stories.

Reading about other countries inspired us to celebrate St. Nicholas Day and talk about other holidays related to Christmas like St. Lucia's Day. It was interesting and I can't wait to dive deeper into next year.

We also read some classics such as The Night Before Christmas which was such a big hit that we ended up reading it several times before Christmas Eve. Grandma and Grandpa D also bought the boys the children's version of The Christmas Sweater by Glenn Beck. It is a sweet story about Christmas presents and Shawn got a little choked up while reading it.

A feature of Christmas school this year was learning about the real St. Nicholas. D-Man asked us point-blank this year if Santa was real. We've never really focused on Santa at Christmas, so he didn't even have a real clear concept of who he is. We told him the truth about Santa and told him that Santa is based off of a man who was real called St. Nicholas. We checked out a few books about St. Nicholas plus a really good one was included in our own Christmas storybook. It was fun to talk with D-Man about how St. Nicholas' kindness showed Jesus to people. He is really someone we should try to emulate all of the time. Being the black-and-white thinker he is, D-Man just doesn't understand why people choose to believe that St. Nicholas is still alive. It was hard, but we convinced him that he could not enlighten his friends with this knowledge.

Of course, our Christmas school included plenty of Christmas movie classics. Our favorites are: A Muppets' Christmas Carol, Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Santa Claus is Coming to Town, Frosty the Snowman, and the Christmas portion of Jesus of Nazareth. I tried to have the boys watch A Miracle on 34th Street, but they were too young to enjoy it. Oh well, we'll get to all of those more mature Christmas classics later.

Homeschool Conversations Pt. 2

D-Man: Mom, I don't want to do school anymore. I want to play all of the time!

Mom: Alright, I guess we can throw your math books away, then.

D-Man: No! I still want to do math and spelling.

Mom: Okay, that's fine. We'll just stop doing geography .

D-Man: No, no. I love geography...I want to do that.

Mom: What about our school reading?

D-Man: Well, I want to do that too.

Mom: D, that's all of school. What is it exactly that you don't want to do?

D-Man: Tree book. (That Developing the Early Learner 3 and he doesn't like it because it requires outlining occasionally. The first two were his "favorite workbooks, ever!")

Mom: So, you still want to do school, just not tree book?

D-Man: Yup.

Whew, I'm glad we got that straight! I decided that we could take a break from tree book...

Weekly Update--catch up...Week 20

Oh...the neglected blog! I've been delinquent with my blog recently because we've been so BUSY. Between Airrosti treatment (my shoulder feels so much better), minor illness, and dr. appts (it was only a mosquito bite!), we've been on the go. However, school goes on. We've had some great school days in the last few weeks. It really is fun for this mom to watch her son's brain figure things out. So here's what's been going on...

LA: SWR has been a big focus for us lately. The words have gotten a bit harder so D-Man needs to practice them more during the week. I've had to add in some extra review. He really knows his phonograms and is good at applying them to the words, but when there are phonogram options for a word, he needs to practice that word to remember which phonogram to use. An example of this is the word "read." He knows that both 'ea' and 'ee' make the long e sound so he could use either in this word, but only one is correct. So, we've started dictation once/week trying to use as many of his spelling words as possible. He usually writes three sentences as I dictate to him and we'll get about 6-7 of the 10 words for that week in the sentences. I've also been giving him quizzes on Wednesday and Thursday to reinforce his words, but there is a big difference between the quizzes and a test. He's allowed to ask me questions on the quiz and I stop him if I see he's writing a word wrong. We do the quizzes on his little white board which is quick and easy. They take about 5 minutes. I also solved my problem of D-Man not reading the words out of his log book by assigning 2-3 lists/day. I wrote down our list assignments on my schedule so it gets done. Now, he's getting into me timing him reading the lists and is proud of how fast he can read many of the earlier lists. All of this practicing has been paying off as he's gotten a 100% on his last two tests.

The other exciting LA development is that he now knows all 70 phonograms. We finished the last four this week. He has about 60 of them mastered. A few will take some time for mastery (ie, ei, and ough), but we have plenty of time for that. He really likes my blue/yellow/red method of sorting his phonogram cards as it shows him his progress and motivates him to get more cards in the blue pile (he's a strong visual learner!). Now that he's learned all of the phonograms, I'm assigning him reading. It's pretty exciting to see him tackle a book and read it with minimal help from me. Right now, we're working our way through our rather large (thanks Grandma) library of level 1 readers. He could probably handle harder books, but I don't want it to be "torture reading" (Wanda Sanseri's phrase). These books are easy, but do allow him to practice his decoding skills. I'm seeing the beauty of the WISE guide words lists in action. They are designed around frequently used words. Because of this, he can read several words in his readers fluently (his spelling words) and only have to work at reading the few that he hasn't encountered yet. This way, he gets plenty of practice and the satisfaction of reading a book all by himself, but doesn't get frustrated sounding out each word. He's been reading about 2 readers/day. We'll keep cycling through these and SL Readers 1 until March when I order our next SL core. This will come with Readers 2 which will be a step up in difficulty. After that, I think we'll be able to follow the SL readers schedule and include library books when he needs some extra reading. He is really getting into reading books on his own. Thursday night, he read a knock-knock joke book and Curious George's ABCs to C-Monster as bedtime stories. He did it on his own accord and really enjoyed it.

Math: D-Man has finished Singapore 1A and is now working on 1B. He's done 21 lessons in a week. I thought we'd slow down when we got to 1B, but the material is still easy for him. He understands regrouping and now automatically uses it when needed. We will start multiplication in a couple of weeks and I plan on slowing down to make sure he really understands it. We also need to work on his addition/subtraction math facts a bit. They come naturally for him and he automatically recalls most of them just from completing Horizons K, but I want him to have them down cold because he's advancing in math so quickly. We're still doing 1 lesson of Horizons 1 every day as well. Horizons includes a lot of problems and gives him good practice of what he's learning in Singapore. Horizons 1 includes tests every 10 lessons and I've been administering them as tests. D-Man doesn't have any problem with this...he thinks tests are fun. In fact, he likes to see how well he knows the material. It helps that he's received a 100% on both tests. Horizons is primarily review for him so I don't expect that to change anytime soon.

Sonlight: Wow, we're on week 28 already. Milly Molly Mandy is still a big favorite. I think we'd all like to go visit her in her little village and meet her friends. I really love the innocence of the book and am enjoying watching the boys become friends with Milly Molly Mandy. It is fun seeing the boys getting lost in and enjoying literature as much as I do. D-Man also loves the book Then and Now. It's scheduled to read 2 pages/week, but I think we'll be reading the whole book about once/week instead. It's a cute book showing how ordinary things (like a market or a kitchen) have changed over the years. I think it's a great intro to history. Next week will be our last week of formal SL reading for awhile. We'll be taking time off between Thanksgiving and Christmas to do "Christmas School."

Art: I know I've raved over The Way They See It before, but I just can't say enough good things about this book. It is a perfect introduction to Art History and learning about creative expression. It's giving me an opportunity to teach the boys about the benefits of being individuals and how it's okay to express ourselves uniquely. That's a lesson that will be replayed over the years since D-Man and C-Monster are so different in every way and I don't want them to get in the habit of comparing. Last week, we studied a painting about a stormy sky. I'd been waiting for our sky to have something interesting to color (we have a lot of clear, blue sky days). One night, I noticed how beautiful the sunset was. We actually had a few clouds and the sky was filled with red, orange, and purple. I told the boys to look at it and D-Man exclaimed, "Mom, can we go draw it? I'll get the crayons...don't forget the book!" It was a fabulous idea so we doused ourselved in bug spray and spent the next hour coloring the sunset. Okay, C-Monster drew his version of a helicopter racing an airplane through the sky...all with a yellow crayon, but the intent was there. I'm not in a hurry to finish the book or get through all of the projects, so we might spend the next month or so just coloring the sky.

Well, that's the jist of the last 4 weeks or so. I'll definitely be posting more as we get closer to Christmas. I'm eager to share how Christmas school goes for us.

Homeschool Conversations pt. 1

This was a conversation that occurred this morning:

D-Man: (while finishing his geography) Mom, can we do my word problems book next...PLEASE?

Mom: Sure. If if that's what you want to do...

D-Man: How many pages can I do? Can I do a lot?

Mom (who has planned for D-Man to do 1 page/day): How about 2 pages? That's a lot, right?

D-Man: No, how about 5 pages because I'm 5? Can I please do 5 pages? That would be 10 problems. (He continues talking to himself) Unless I do 20 problems...then I would only have to do 5 more pages.

Mom: Okay, you can do 5 pages (as she wonders what we're going to do when he finishes this book).

D-Man: GREAT!

And Still...More Read-Alouds

Here are my reviews of the latest books we're reading for school:

The Milly-Molly-Mandy Storybook

This has been a surprise hit in our house. We are 4 chapters into the book and the boys love it. They really like that Milly-Molly-Mandy lives with her extended family on the farm. The book takes us back to a simpler time. This book is a much easier read aloud than the Uncle Wiggily Storybook so C-Monster gets into it more. When it's on the schedule, we're supposed to read one chapter, but I never read less than 3. The stories are short compared to what we've been reading lately.

What's Bigger Than a Blue Whale?

I love books by Robert E. Wells. He can weave some pretty complicated concepts into a picture book for kids. This one covers big objects from a Blue Whale to the Universe. When we read about the size of Antares compared to our sun, D-Man and I discussed the different stages of a star's lifespan. We've read 5 of his books in our house now and I'd highly recommend all of them.

Stories from Africa

This book contains 6 stories about the mission field in Africa. Although this book is perfect for the age group and a gentle introduction to missionaries, I was disappointed that most of the stories weren't more about Africa. They do take place in Africa and contain aspects of life that are different from the United States, but I'd hoped that it would have been more detailed. One reason that this is important to me is that D-Man is fascinated with Africa. It was the first continent he could recognize on a map and he asks questions about it all of the time. All-in-all, we enjoyed the book and had some good discussions about people who don't know who Jesus is.

The Gods Must Be Angry

We are about halfway through this book and it is sparking a lot of discussions. It is about a boy who knocks the head off of an idol in his house and how his family is faced with questions about the "power" of the idol. I was worried that D-Man wouldn't be mature enough for this story, but he was ready for it. It is a good introduction to different religions. It goes well with Stories from Around the World which contains stories based off of different world religions.

Well, those are our newest books. We don't have many more books to read in this core. So far, I've been very happy with Sonlight's book selections.

A Great School Day

I wrote this post a couple of weeks ago, but didn't get around to publishing it. I really wanted to share one of our great days, so here it is.

We had a great schoolday today. Not everyday is a great schoolday. Most days are good; occasionally, we'll have a not-so-good day, but today was a great day. Here's how it went:



Geography: I asked D-Man whether he wanted to start with math or spelling, but he really wanted to do geography. I caved. We got out the globe and reviewed what it was and where we live. He also identified North and South America. Then he and C-Monster spent another 15 minutes looking at the globe and asking me questions. They were particularly interested in the poles.


Once we were done with the globe, I introduced to D-Man to a map. Of course, he knows what a map is, but we compared it to a globe and talked about the advantages of a map. To finish it off, D-Man colored the map in his workbook.


Math: Once we finished geography, D-Man asked to do his new math book (Singpore PM 1A). First, I got out some addition flashcards and quizzed him on his 0, 1, and 2 math facts to 12. This was the first time we'd worked on math facts. Until now, I've just relied on all of the practice in Horizons K. D-Man did really well. He knew all of the problems and only had to think about the 2's above 6. Tomorrow, we'll review what we did today and also do the subtraction problems in that grouping. My goal is for him to have all of his addition and subtraction math facts to 10 memorized by the end of PM 1A. After D-Man was finished, C-Monster wanted a turn, so I helped him do the flashcards up to 1+5. Actually, he wouldn't let me help him, but he did let me remind him to use his fingers. Once flashcards were over, D-Man quickly did Review 2 in his workbook. It was mostly word problems which were really easy for him.


Spelling: Monday's are easy review days. We started with learning a few new spelling rules and reviewing the ones we learned last week. None of these rules were new to D-Man, but the cards and the exact wording were. He's still working on the exact wording of the rules, but the cards are perfect for him. He's a visual learner so having a picture cue for each rule is good for him. We, then, learned 4 new phonograms. When we learn new phonograms, D-Man looks at the phonogram, repeats the sounds after me and writes it on his whiteboard. We do this a couple of times. The next step is for me to quiz the phonograms by telling him the sounds for him to write on the whiteboard without seeing the card. The last step is for D-Man to read the phonograms from the cards. This gives him a good introduction to the new phonograms. Our last spelling task today was to review the words D-Man missed on his spelling test Friday. This was a good time for us to discuss his mistakes and talk about the correct spelling of the words. He misspelled 'bread' and 'hair,' but got 'floor' right the first time. Tomorrow, I'll quiz bread and hair again to see if he remembers what we talked about today.


Developing the Early Learner: The last thing we did was finish DEL 2. These books are intended to identify strenths and weaknesses in motor, visual, auditory, and comprehension skills. They are one of his favorite school activities. Today, we did the last 3 pages of the book. He finished them well. Of course, we had to look at the next workbook in the series and he "had" to work on one of the mazes in the middle of the book. The activities are designed to be worked in order, but he did the maze correctly anyway.

Sonlight Read-Alouds: After some recess and rest time, we dove into our Sonlight read-alouds. Today we got to read an Uncle Wiggily story, a poem from Animals, Animals, and a few pages from our science book, What's Under the Sea? SL RA's are the icing of our schoolday. D-Man and C-Monster look forward to cuddling on the couch to read with me. I don't mind it myself. D-Man is always full of questions about our readings. Today, he wanted to know a lot more about oil rigs. I answered the questions that I knew and told him that we'd look up his other ones later. Although our science books are pretty simple, they create lots of bunny trails for us to explore.

More than what we did, I enjoyed our attitudes. Everyone was excited about learning and having fun doing it.

Lunch at Sonic

Friday, we got to go to Sonic for lunch. Those of you who know me, know that this is a big deal for me to take the boys out to lunch. We rarely eat fast food. However, Sonic is great for a reward because they have fun drinks for kids (and Mom) plus the boys can get something besides chicken nuggets. Oh, and the boys love that they can get bananas instead of french fries.

The treat was for D-Man finishing up Horizons K this week. It took us less than 4 months to complete it, but the last 15 lessons seemed to drag on. This is mostly because we received Singapore PM 1A in the mail and D-Man was really exicted about it. We started to use Singapore as our primary math each day and Horizons K was relegated to a supplement. We did a little at a time until we got to lesson 150. That's when D-Man decided he was going to finish it. He worked on it during his rest times and finished it in 3 days. His motivation was that I wouldn't let him start Horizons 1 until Horizons K was completely finished. He's been chomping at the bit to do Horizons 1. So, we'll get to start it today, too.

Singapore PM will still be our main math program; Horizons 1 will be a supplement. Horizons presents a wider range of topics and LOTS of practice problems. We'll also be starting Challenging Word Problems (CWP) 1 soon. The CWP books have gone out of print, so I had the bindings cut off, put each page in page protecters, and put them in a binder. My idea of a non-consumable workbook. D-Man loves word problems, so CWP will be more of a fun, bonus activity on Fridays.

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.

Weekly Report-Weeks 12 and 13

Whew, what a crazy couple of weeks. Shawn and I got to go to CO last weekend for my 10 year reunion at USAFA sans children! It was amazing and exhausting. Despite everything (I felt) I needed to do to get ready for the trip and, more importantly, for the kids to be without me, we did some school.

Math: D-Man still loves his new Singapore math book. We did slow down a bit though. We covered finished subtraction and ordinal numbers. He's been solid on his ordinal numbers for a couple of years now so the info wasn't new, but he really liked the activities. We started the three reviews that are in the middle of the book last week. They are quite a bit longer than the regular lessons and packed with activities. It took us two days to finish 1 of the reviews last week. Then, we took a break from Singapore at the end of last week to work on Horizons K. Next week, I'm going to focus more on math facts. D-Man has a lot of them memorized already, but I want to make sure he has them all down cold before we start Singapore PM 1B.

LA: Week before last, we took a break from new words and did a review week. It turned out to be really helpful for both of us. I gave D-Man 2 spelling tests/day covering 20 words/list. He didn't have any trouble with it since they were all review words. I'm going to use the words he missed as review words in the coming weeks. I was pleasantly surprised by how much he's retained. Last week, we finished up List F. He didn't do as well on this test as he'd done on previous ones; however, he often just used the wrong phonogram for a common sound. For instance, he spelled bread, bred. He knows his phonograms very well, but just needs more practice with the week's words. We'll work on it. I'm also very happy with how well he's reading. This morning at church, he sat down and read one of the books in the 2 and 3 yo classroom while he was waiting to be checked into his class. He just sat down and read the whole book sounding out each word that he didn't recognize. It was pretty cool. He also really likes the new readers I bought him. They are called, I Can Read It, by John Holzmann. I got them from Sonlight. I don't require him to read, but I want to have material available in case he wants to. These stories are on the easy side for him (which encourages fluency) and have a pretty good storylines. The other day, he acted out one of the stories with M&Ms during rest time.

Sonlight: We finished Brer Rabbit way ahead of schedule. We finished week 20 this week and we weren't supposed to finish it until week 33. D-Man really liked that book, so I told him that we'd find more Brer Rabbit stories at the library. We're also going to find a book on tall tales. The boys really enjoy Jim Weiss' tall tale CD, but it only has 4 stories on it. At first, the SL IG seemed kind of choppy, but now I really like the format. Because we've been reading some of the books since the beginning, the characters have become endearing to us. Uncle Wiggily, for example, is like a part of the family. Reading more books at a time and stretching them out over weeks really cements them into our lives. That's really a new concept for me.

Science: Although, we've enjoyed What's Under the Sea?, I haven't organized any experiments for the last three Saturdays. This is just because I've been gone. However, I should be back on top of it by next Saturday.

Geography: That's right, we added geography to our plate last week. We're just going through three small workbooks that teach us 1. how to read a map, 2. land masses and bodies of water (generic terms), and 3. continents and oceans (specific places). I thought D-Man would like it and he does. In fact, he wanted to do 5 pages of the workbook on Tuesday because he's 5. I said no because the workbooks are only 16 pages apiece and I'd like them to last awhile. I will have to find some more geography activities to do, but that shouldn't be hard. We bought a globe on Friday and you'd think it was Christmas in our house. It was just a cheap $15 globe from Target, but the boys were pretty excited. When Shawn got home, Caleb showed him where California was on the globe (we'd previously only identified it on the map in the schoolroom) and told him that he (Caleb) was born there. He calls himself a "California-boy."

Library: We resumed our weekly library trip this week. The boys each picked out one book and I picked up Andrew Lang's Blue Fairy Book. We were able to have a mini-reading-marathon on Friday, so we read from both the Blue Fairy Book and Yellow Fairy Books. The stories are long, but interesting.

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.

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.