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. :)

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

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. 

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.

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.

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.

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.

Week in Review- Week 8

We had a really great week, but it was a week of change. The main focus for this week was to figure out what kind of schedule works for us. We had it down during summertime, but Tx public schools started on Monday which is throwing us off a bit. The biggest reason it affects us is that I'm watching a friend's son, Big C, after school 3 days/week. We have to go pick him at 2:20 and we don't get home until 2:55. The school is just around the corner (less than a mile away from our house), but we have to wait in line. I've been told it gets better as the newness of the school year wears off. We may walk occasionally after it cools down. After we pick him up, Big C comes to our house until about 5:30.

The boys typically nap/rest between 2 and 4. That won't work with Big C here so we moved rest time to 12. That's a big adjustment in itself. That doesn't leave us much time to do school and go to the gym. We can do it, we just don't have a lot of time to waste. I also discovered that we can use the time we're sitting in line to finish school. D-Man did 6 pages of math last Wednesday while we were waiting.

With respect to academics, it was a great week! Here's a run-down by subject:

Math: We're finally getting to lessons that are a little bit harder. D-Man hasn't been enjoying math as much as I'd hoped because it was too easy. I really should have started in Horizons 1. This week, he was introduced to word problems. There were only 3 of them in the lesson on Tuesday and he begged for more. He was so excited that there were more on Friday. I don't own the Challenging Word Problems level 1 from Singapore Math yet, but I added it to my Sonlight cart. I'll have to order our new math program from them in the next couple of weeks anyway. We finished lesson 106 out of 160 on Friday. We should be finishing up in the next month or so. He doesn't really need to practice word problems at this point, but I won't deny him if he wants to do them for fun.

We also did a lot more with time and money. We learned about the half-hour which prompted D-Man to figure out how the rest of the minutes work. He's not a pro by any means, but I was surprised by how fast he got it. The funny thing is that he gets more confused with digital clocks even though we're learning both at the same time. I think the visual of the hands going around makes more sense to him.

Language Arts: D-Man loves marking silent e words. We learned all 5 rules for silent e's last week and the novelty hasn't worn off. We finished list D this week and he scored a 90% on his test. He forgot the m in jump. He told me that he'd like to retake the test next Thursday so he could get a 100. He promised to carefully sound out jump so that he wouldn't forget the m. I was having a hard time not laughing as he was telling me his plans. We don't retake tests and I'm not sure why he'd want to wait until next Thursday if we did. Maybe he wants to study.

Sonlight: This week, I tried to stick to the instructor's guide. Normally, we do about 7-9 IG days/week. I wanted to see how it would go if we did only 5. Well, it wasn't enough for D-Man. He complained that we didn't have enough "school stories." In fact, I let Shawn read them two school stories tonight at bedtime because D-Man really wanted to read from our Sonlight books. Next week, we'll go back to reading them in order, but at our own pace. I still won't start the next core before next April. We'll just re-read some of our favorites until it comes time to start Core K. I also think that I need to add in some other classic literature that Sonlight doesn't schedule. I'll keep you posted.

Science: Technically, this is part of Sonlight, but it warrants its own paragraph. This week we discussed matter. We were supposed to finish gases next week, but the suspense was killing us, so we went ahead and read it. To top it off, we did an experiment tonight where we melted ice cubes (solid) into water (liquid), and boiled it to make steam (gas). They loved our little experiment, so I'm declaring Saturday experiment day. We're starting energy next week, so I'll have to figure out a suitable experiment. I'm surprised by how much both boys retain just by reading our Berenstain Bear's science book. I'm sad that we only have 10 pages of that book left before we move on to the next book. Here we are watching ice melt. You can also see my new short haircut. Little J was also in on the action. He wasn't allowed to get too close.

Bible: We are WAY ahead in our Bible reading. We're supposed to read 1 chapter/day, but that's not enough for D-Man. He wants to know all of the stories NOW. I figure we'll get through it at least twice this year, maybe 3 times. I actually own another Kenneth Taylor children's Bible so we might switch it up when we finish this one. We are also still memorizing our verses. Today, the boys recited all 8 verses to Shawn in the living room. This is required for D-Man, but C-Monster voluntarily participates. They love performing. We've been doing all of the memorizing, but got out of the habit of reciting them each week. I'm going to make sure we do that every week. C-Monster continually amazes me with his ability to memorize. He doesn't ever seem to be paying attention, but he'll just spout off the verse when I ask D-Man. It makes D-Man laugh because it seems like C-Monster can't help but recite the memory verse even when he knows it isn't his turn. It's just an automatic reflex. Here are some pics of our Saturday night recital: