Ok we've done 4 weeks of school, I really better post an update.

Annika Clare's Owl

Yes I've been a bit of a slacker this year when it comes to weekly updates.  Part of that has been because we've been busy. Another part is because a lot of what we do is book work and lets be honest, nobody wants to see week after week of scanned pictures of worksheets my kids have done.  So this year I'm only going to put up pictures of projects and other similar things we do.

Everett's Owl

Like my title states we've been back at it for 4 weeks now.  The year is going ok, we've had to make a few minor adjustments to some subjects and put others on the back burner.  Phonics/Reading for Annika is an area that needed an adjustment.  Latin is one that got put on the back burner, but now that we're up and running we'll try to fold that back into the schedule.

Annika's Van Gogh

Lucas's Van Gogh

In These 4 weeks all of the kids have done lessons in math, phonics/grammar/reading, spelling, and penmanship.  Everett has done a couple writing assignments, one on Alexander the Great and the Gordian Knot and one on Carthage.  In another couple of weeks we'll get back into his writing program and he'll start working on reports from multiple sources.  We've done a little bit of history, but our projects in that are on going, so I'll post pictures of that when we're done with the unit study.  We've continued on with the Chemistry program we started last year and have done a few experiments on states of matter.  We're now getting into density.  We've also done a few art things this year.  The first week we did a lesson from our Meet the Masters art program on VanGogh and then the next art lesson was just painting some cute ceramic owls.  Lucas opted not to do the owl project.

Everett's Van Gogh

I hope you enjoyed the little bit I've written about and I'll try to do more consistent better reports for the future.

 

Weekly Review -- April 9-13

Yes, I know it's been almost a month since I posted anything about our school work.  Honestly we've really just been doing math and some phonics/grammar so it's not really all that exciting.  This week we still kept it to math and la stuff we're wrapping up but we also did a few fun things too. 

Annika and Lucas doing lessons

Annika

... is now almost 30 weeks into vision therapy and is doing great.  Her reading ability has grown in leaps and bounds and she actually enjoys reading now. 

... has now completed Teaching Textbooks 4 through quiz 12 and is doing well with it.  

...we pulled the Explode the Code books back out and she's been doing great with them.  I think being able to read them easier, has helped her a lot.  They aren't as frustrating as they used to be.

Everett doing his math on the new iMac

Everett

... completed unit 6 in Junior Analytical Grammar on Adverbs.  Another bang up job on this unit with a "Mastery" score on the unit test. 

...has now completed through Quiz 12 in Teaching Textbooks 7.  He loves this program and is doing excellent work. 

Lucas

...has now completed All About Reading level 1 through lesson 13 and McRuffy math 1 through lesson 15.  He's doing really well with both.  He also started t-ball the end of March.  He loves it!

Kiya likes to hang out while we do lessons

The Fun Stuff

...we couldn't go bowling on Wednesday like usual because they were getting new carpet at the alley, so we went to a local park to fly kites.  It was super windy which made flying them a bit hard.  We ended up destroying two of the three kites, but had a blast while we were able to keep them up.
... Friday, Annika and I took our new fur-baby, Kiya, to a nearby state park to see if she liked long walks.  She did great, but we need to work on walking nicely on the leash and not trying to chase every single butterfly or dragonfly we encounter.  We must have worn her out because she snored like a moose on the way home. 


Flying Kites

Hello my name is Kel and I'm a paper snob. Oh and some AAS student pages I made up.

Yes, my kids can and will write on notebook or loose leaf paper, but only if they have no other option.  Why?  In all honesty, because their mother is a Paper Snob.  There I admitted it.  I'm a Paper Snob.  What's a Paper Snob?  It's someone that refuses to use anything less than 28lb, 98 brightness paper in her color laser printer.  I hate the way plain old 20lb paper is see through.  I like to print front and back when at all possible and don't want to see the backside of the paper showing through.  

Now that I got my confession out there, on to the important part of the post, the All About Spelling Student pages I created. 

I thought if I made some pages the kids would stop sniping at me about the unbearably thin 16lb loose leaf or notebook paper they've been forced to use so far this year. 

I made a page for level 1 or 2 work (in the beginning or level 1 you won't need the phrases or sentences part, but you can just print the front), one for levels 3 and up (I've only used up to 3, so I hope the set up for 4-7 will still work), as well as one for when we do mastered review.


I'll explain what's on them...




1. 5 random words or 10 random words (this is where we would write words from our review section of the word cards) we do 5 a day at levels 1 & 2 and 10 a day for level 3. I always shuffle our cards before taking out the first 5 or 10. We do this 3 days out of the week, which is usually how long it takes us to get through all but the sentences of the steps.


2. Spell on Paper, this is pretty self explanatory. It's where they would write the 10 words from that step from the spell on paper section.


3. More Words, for those that like to use them. I put a place with lines to write 10 of those words.


4. Phrases and Sentences,again pretty self explanatory. It's where they would write the phrases and/or sentences for that step. 


5. Writing Station, this section starts half way through level 3.


Mastered Review page is for when we have a mastered review come up in the levels. It has check boxes for the phonogram and key cards and then a place to write 15 phonograms from sound cards and 25 words from the word card sections.  When I do a mastered review we don't do all the cards or they'd take us forever.


I know not everyone will do AAS the way we do, but I thought I'd put them out there for anyone that may be interested.


Here is a link to them in Google Docs
Level 1 and 2 pages


Level 3 and up pages


Mastered Review page


I hope a little bit of my time this afternoon will help out a few others.