After a two week break we had a few lessons this week. The first of our weeks off was spent painting and reorganizing our school room, the second week was spent enjoying some time with my mom who came into town. We went to the Virginia Aquarium, the Virginia Zoo and Busch Gardens Williamsburg. Everett also celebrated his 11th birthday.
This week we did some lessons on Monday-Wednesday and spent Thursday and Friday doing fun art projects.
Here's the run down.
Everett:
Grammar: Growing with Grammar 5: He completed lessons 3.19-4.3, he wrapped up the verb unit and started in on pronouns.
Reading: He's continuing to read The Fire Within and is really enjoying it. He asked me to pick up the other 3 books in the series and plans to read all of those over the summer.
Math: We've reached the point of math maintenance for the summer. He's working through Evan Moor Daily Word Problems and other various fact sheets I give him.
Annika:
Language Arts: CLE LTR and LA was moving a bit slow so we've dropped the workbooks and are just using flash cards and the primers. We're also doing some lessons from The Ordinary Parents Guide to Teaching Reading which she's enjoying since I started writing out the parts she's supposed to read on the white board. She's also working on Explode the Code workbook 3. She asked to start using ETC again, because she likes the funny pictures. She also has only two more speech therapy sessions left for the year. It's amazing how far she's come.
Math: She's been working on Horizons math and has completed Lessons 1-12 as well as test 1 since the books arrived. She's really enjoying all the colorful pages and loves that she's working with the hundreds and thousands place now. She's doing really well and I've noticed her addition facts are almost all mastered.
Lucas:
Preschool: Lucas continues to do some fun pages from Kumon books, playing with his smartcycle and listening to someone read him a story.
All three kids worked on some Model Magic presto dot kits that I bought and had a lot of fun with it. I'll have to work on bringing stuff like that out more often.
We've received all of our curriculum for the next school year and have placed it all on the shelves so it's ready to go when we start up full time again. It may be a while since we're enjoying our summer.
Next week will be another casual week because we have some appointments to take care of and the following week is standardized test week.
Hi All,
I know I've posted many school room revamps in the past, but this was by far the biggest change. We were not quite pleased with the eggplant purple color that the landlord left that room. We had lived with it for 2 years, but decided it was time to brighten the school room up. The kids and I decided on keeping the two color paint scheme with the white chair rail in between, and thought Peacock blue and Ocean Water blue were the best shades for our room. I was then able to move some furniture take a large desk out and use the public school type desks the kids were using into their computer centers. The kids asked to school at a single, large table instead of separate desks and I was able to find a farmhouse table and chairs at a local consignment shop for a great price. The table was in good shape, just needed a light sanding and refinishing and the chairs were in perfect condition, just needed new felt pads on the feet to keep from scratching the wood floor. I still have a lot of open wall to hang our maps and stuff on, but we decided to wait a little and we'll hang things as we need them. We want to savor the color before covering too much of it up. One of the best parts was by changing out the desks and putting in the table we now have a lot more room to walk in the room and we were able to clear stuff away from the windows, which will let in a lot more natural light. It will also allow the cat a better place to sit, because since he couldn't get to the windows before he used to sit on someone's desk. It's not easy to do your seat work with a cat laying across you papers.
I hope you all enjoy the pictures.
Well not as much got done this week as I'd hoped because it's time for our annual "Dear landlord, the A/C isn't working again" issues. It's been a long week of trying to get this company to understand that my landlord lives in Nevada and wouldn't you know it is a pilot for the US Navy and can't drop everything to wait around for their calls when they finally decide to let him know what's wrong. We've done as much as we can and had a few placement tests taken as well. With Everett's birthday coming up we also went shopping for new bikes because he asked for one so he can finally learn to ride a two wheeler. We got them Monday and within 2 minutes he was up and running. I'm so proud of him and he's just giddy with himself. So the kids have spent a bunch of time riding bikes this week.
Here's what school work we did get done.
Everett:
Grammar: Growing with Grammar 5: He completed lessons 3.16-3.18, he's done really will with all the participles that have come his way lately as well as those pesky irregular verbs.
Spelling: Nothing this week.
Reading: Bunnicula Strikes Again just wasn't holding his interest so he asked to pick a new book. He decided to read The Fire Within which he picked up at Barnes and Noble on our last trip, so far he says it's pretty good. He was also excited to see the newest Rick Riordan book, The Red Pyramid, arrive as an early birthday gift.
Math: Teaching Textbooks lessons 61-62 were completed. He also completed the Saxon Middle grade placement test so I can see what level we'll be starting soon.
Annika:
Language Arts: CLE's Learn to Read and Language Arts programs are going really well. She's completed her LTR lightunit 5, started LTR lightunit 6 and completed LA lightunit 1. She's enjoying the stories in the Primers and her reading fluency is progressing, things aren't as choppy when she read anymore.
Spelling: Nothing this week, other than what's in the CLE program.
Math: Saxon math2 lessons 62 and 63 were completed, and she took the Horizons Math placement test. Saxon's working ok, but the amount of review is a bit light and it's moving a bit slow for her. She saw Horizons at the homeschool book store when I was there and loved all the color and types of problems on the page, so I plan to try it and then keep Saxon as a back up just in case.
Lucas:
Preschool: Is just doing his thing and asking me to read copious amounts of books to him.
We're anxiously awaiting the rest of our Sonlight History and Science items to arrive and have plans to paint our school room soon. We are also counting down the days until my mom arrives for her visit.
Tune in next week for our Summer School Week 4 review.
So far our summer Language Arts and Math lessons have been going great. We have a few things ordered we're going to be trying out. First is Jackris publishings, the makers of growing with grammar, new spelling program. The kids are interested to see what it's like. We also have Sonlight curriculum's Core 3: Introduction to American History Part 1 items on the way. We had a lot of them so we figured we do a more thorough study of American history and that starting at the beginning was the wisest thing to do.
Here's what we did this week.
Everett:
Grammar: Growing with Grammar 5: He completed lessons 3.11-3.15. Verbs can be tough but he's doing well and seems to be retaining it.
Spelling: All About Spelling 2 steps 16 was completed.
Reading: He's taken a break from reading Bunnicula Strikes Again to read other non-fiction books around the house. He's also been reading picture books to his little brother.
Math: Teaching Textbooks lessons 56-59 and Quiz 10 were completed. Multiplying and Dividing Fractions was a rough road in the beginning but he seems to have caught on and thinks fractions are fun now.
Annika:
Language Arts: Well we started our CLE program this week and she completed Light Unit 105 in the Learn to Read series. She is doing well in her Language Arts lightunit 101 and should finish that next week. That leaves 5 Learn to Read lightunits and 9 Language Arts lightunits left to go. She's enjoying the work and is more confident when she reads out loud. I think the flashcards for words and phrases as well as the mix of phonics and sight reading approach is just what she needed. I just hope things continue to progress well.
Spelling: On hold until our new Soaring with Spelling comes. We hit a wall in AAS 1 and she's not ready to move forward there, so we'll just sit and stew a bit and try out SWS when it gets here.
Math: We hit a spot in Saxon math 2 where it was all review again so we went back to doing a test a day until we found her next hurdle. This means she passed the tests allowing her to skip lessons 41-60 and finished lesson 61 this week. Her addition and subtraction facts are coming along well. We've hit the part where they teach what they call the "oddball" facts. Things like 8+5 and 7+4 where they're is no real pattern to the set of facts that can be taught.
Lucas:
Preschool: Is just doing his thing. Playing with his smart cycle, doing a work page here and there, having fun being 4 for a few more months.
We're excited about our lessons lately and I hope that continues. We're also looking forward to a visit from my Mom in about 2 weeks. She'll be here for a week which should be lots of fun.
Tune in next week for our Summer School Week 3 review.
