Week 4 review August 22-29

Another week down and school is still going well.  We had our rough patches this week but all in all things went well.  We are continuing to plug along and are getting excited to move on from weather in Science class.  We'll be moving on to Louis Pasteur and bacteria.  We'll then move onto animals classification.  We've done a little revamp of history and decided to add in the Time Travelers project DVDs from Homeschool in the Woods, we'll begin using those when we reach Colonial America and then take a break from world history to focus on America.  Today Lucas decided he wanted to start doing school too.  I bought some simple Kumon workbooks for him and have been waiting for him to make a move to use them.  He did pretty well and was very proud of himself.

Here's some pictures of things the kids have done.

Everett's work

Annika's Work

Lucas's Work

We're looking forward to next week and hope you all have a great Labor day weekend.

Week 3 Review -- August 18-22

It was another fun week here for us.  We've now been back to school for 3 weeks and all is going well.  The kids are enjoying their studies and there's been absolutely no complaining about what we're doing.  

Here's what we've done this past week.  Sorry no pictures this week.  Maybe I'll get some up next week.

Everett

Language Arts

Grammar-- He concluded his chapter on pronouns in Growing with Grammar.  

Spelling--Spelling Power is working really well, he's really enjoying the daily tests and study sheets.  I think we've finally found a hit for spelling.

Writing-- He continued to do well in his Writing with Ease assignments and is enjoying the format.  Hopefully in a week or two we'll have the Year 2 workbook and he'll move on to that.

Phonics-- 5 lessons completed this week in Headsprout phonics.  4 left to go and he'll officially be completely done his phonics training.

Penmanship-- Another week done in A Reason for Handwriting book D.  His cursive isn't the prettiest but it's coming along.

Math

He completed 3 lessons, 1 test and 1 math investigation in Saxon 5/4.  Math is continuing to go well since switching back to Saxon.

Geography-- This week he covered the earth's hemispheres in Daily Geography Practice for Grade 4.  So far so good.

Annika

Language Arts

Grammar-- 3 lessons done on subject and predicate as well as learning the difference between a fragment and a complete sentence.

Phonics-- 5 lessons done in Headsprout phonics.  She's well on her way and starting to read a bit better.

Writing-- Another week done in Writing With Ease and she's really enjoying it.  She's been asking to hear more from the book selections used in the lessons.

Penmanship-- Another great week for Annika.  She has really gotten her printing down and it looks beautiful to me.

Math

She's completed 4 lessons and 1 test in Saxon math 1.  She really enjoys the Saxon format and is retaining a lot.

Geography

She really likes doing this.  It's very simple for her but she is starting to hone her map reading skills.

Both Kids

Science-- They are continuing to love NOEO Biology 1.  We're still covering weather and the kids have learned a lot.  We're also starting our first lapbook with a kit on weather I found at the Hands of a Child site.

History--We've just wrapped up a few loose ends on the Fire of London and the Plague since we did a little more last week than was actually planned.

Reading-- Anna is still working through the first box of Bob Books but is doing pretty well.  Everett is starting to enjoy reading a bit more and has almost finished his first book read this year.  It's taken a bit longer than we'd like but we'll keep working on that.

We hope you all continue to have a great year and are looking forward to continuing ours.

Week 2 Review--August 11-15

Well it's been 2 weeks now and we're all still alive and sane.

We are still enjoying all of our studies and have truly enjoyed the weather lately. It's been a bit hot during the day, but by late afternoon it's cooling off and we can get a lot of outside time to play.

Here's what the kids did this week

Everett

Grammar: We covered 4 lessons in Growing with Grammar 3 which covered pronouns.  He caught on really fast and has been enjoying this.

Writing: We continued with the week 2 Copywork and Narration from Writing with Ease year 1, we'll make the switch to Year 2 once the workbook is released by the publisher.

Phonics: He's almost finished with Headsprout, just a few more lesson to go and phonics will be behind him. 

Spelling: We've continued to work on a few steps of All About Spelling Level 1, and received our Spelling Power book.  He took the survey and placement test over the last 2 days and can't wait to start the daily tests next week.  He thinks he'll enjoy this method of spelling much better.

Penmanship: He continued working on A Reason for Handwriting D, this week was Lesson 2.  Cursive isn't easy for Ev, but he's plugging away on it and has turned out some pretty good writing the last few days.

Math: He covered 3 lessons in Saxon 5/4 and is continuing to love the program.  I'm so glad we switched back.  Math is so much more fun now.

Annika

Grammar: She did 3 lessons in Growing with Grammar 1, which continued the focus on Fragments and Complete Sentences.  She's really catching on and enjoying the program.

Writing: She's also working on Copywork and Narration with Writing with Ease Year 1, and enjoys it, although the Narration is a bit hard for her, but she gives it her best shot.

Phonics: She completed 4 lessons in Headsprout Phonics and is truly loving the program, I've noticed it helping quite a bit in her ability to decode words.

Spelling: She finished Step 2 in All About Spelling level 1, which covered segmenting words into their different phonetic sounds.  She did much better than I expected so we'll be moving on next week.

Penmanship: She worked on Lesson 2 in A Reason for Handwriting B and has some pretty gorgeous printing when she really tries.  She is especially careful on her week end border sheet and it takes her about 40 minutes to write and color it.

Math: She completed 3 lesson and a test in Saxon math 1.  She really likes the program and I can see a major improvement in her retention.

Together:

History: We covered the 2nd week of History Odyssey Early Modern Times Level 1.  The kids enjoyed learning about some of the rulers of England and Scotland, including Elizabeth I and Mary Queen of Scots.  We also covered the plague and Fire of London.  

Science: We continued with our second week of weather studies with NOEO Biology 1.  The kids are doing some great pictures and narrations.  A few more weeks of weather and we move on to animals.

We haven't done any Latin yet, but I figure we'll add that in later in the year when we're well established in our routines.

Hope you all have a great weekend.

Week 1 in review August 4-8, 2008

Hi all,

Our first week of the 2008-2009 school year is now under our belts. The kids did excellent work and we have enjoyed everything we did. We were trying quite a few new curriculums including new things for Writing, Science, and Spelling. We also went back to our original Math curriculum which the kids were very excited about.

We've started doing some schooling in the late morning with an hour to two hour break for play and lunch. It's worked well. School is taking a bit longer this year because Everett is getting into some things that just require more time to work through.

The kids and I were really looking forward to starting school again and so far things are looking good for us. We are enjoying all the new things we're using and having a lot more fun.

No pictures of their work this week, since I already posted things from the first day (Scroll down to see that posting)
Here's the low down on what the kids did.

Everett:
Language Arts:
Completed 3 lessons in Growing with Grammar, covering things like plural nouns, possessive nouns, some simple sentence diagraming.
Writing covered some copywork and starting narration exercises. These came from our new writing program Writing with Ease.
Spelling, we reviewed our All About spelling phonogram cards. He did very well with this despite not having much phonics instruction before homeschooling.
In Phonics, he continued toward finishing the online program Headsprout phonics and complete 3 lessons. Only 11 more to go and he's finished.
He's continuing to work on Penmanship using A Reason for Handwriting, we'd love it if we could find a program similar that used things other than bible verses for the kids to copy, but this is the best fit for us so far. He's now starting the 2nd cursive workbook.
Math:
He complete 3 lessons in Math, which covered number sequences and recognizing them, as well as addition of lists of numbers and some word problems.

Annika:
Language Arts:
She started Grammar lessons with 2 lessons in Growing with Grammar covering sentence vs. fragment and learning about placing a capital letter at the beginning of a sentence
Writing was the same as Everett, they are working through the same level of Writing with Ease mostly due to my lack of finding a good fit for Everett in past years and because the level 2 workbook hasn't been released yet. She enjoyed the copywork and narration from "Little House in the Big Woods" and can't wait until we can read it as a read aloud.
Spelling was simply introducing the phonogram cards, since she's still working her way through the phonics program we're taking spelling very slowly.
Phonics, we've now switched over to Headsprout phonics for Annika as well and so far after 3 lessons she's enjoying it a lot. It's very fun for her and she's been doing really well with it.
Penmanship is also with A Reason for Handwriting. She's working with book B which is the second level of manuscript writing. She really enjoys the border sheet at the end of the week and is very careful about finishing it neatly.
Math:
We're continuing with Saxon math grade 1, she completed 3 lessons, which worked on learning the "doubles" addition facts as well as patterns, and sequences.

Both kids do history and science together. This week in History we started History Odyssey Early Modern Times level 1. We will be covering from the 1600's through the Gold Rush. The kids are looking forward to it. This week was simply the introduction which included learning about the continents and oceans. The kids have realized that they prefer me reading the "Story of the World" out loud instead of listening to the audio book version. Annika said the narrator on the audio book, "Sounds creepy" . I must say, I do enjoy reading to them, so I'm kind of happy about this.

For science we started our new NOEO Biology 1 course and the kids are really enjoying the reading followed by narration format. This week we started a 4 week study of weather. The kids enjoyed learning about the seasons and how the tilt of the earth helps determine this. They also liked the reading on the different types of clouds. Today we placed our thermometer for our temperature graph we'll be doing over the next few weeks and will be checking on our experiment about "the water cycle" in a few hours.

Lucas spent the time sitting in on the things he wanted and playing Bob Builder while watching the Sprout network.

We're now all anxiously awaiting the opening ceremonies of the 2008 Summer Olympics!

Hope all went well with everyone else's week.

Tune in next week for "Week 2 in review August 11-15"

The First day of School! August 4, 2008

Hello all,

Today was the first day of our 2008-2009 school year!  It went fabulously.  The kids were very excited and woke up at 9am just raring to go.  We started school at 9:45 which is definitely not normal for us.  They worked straight through to 11:15 then we took a break for some play time and lunch.  At 12:30 they asked to finish things up so we got back to work and were done by 2pm.

Just as we were cleaning up our supplies the doorbell rang and it was the UPS man. He was delivering our new DVD's we got 3 "Signing Time" sign language DVDs and "Tomato Sawyer and Huckleberry Larry's Big River Rescue", our newest Veggietales DVD!  What a great way to end the first day of school.

Here's a few pictures of the kids in their new "uniforms".  They wanted polo shirts to wear on school days.  Then some pictures of Ev and Annika's work.  Lucas's "lessons" for the first day were to put the ant on our magnetic "Tunneling to 100 day "board and to play with the math      

Some of Everett's First day work 

Some of Annika's First day work