Week 23: A Taste of Spring

We've had some rain this week, but the temperatures have been wonderful. No running downstairs to check on the woodstove. Instead of "I'm bored", it's "can we go outside since we finished early". (Nice weather is an amazing motivator for school work.) There's nothing like a glimpse of spring to brighten up the mood in the house. If you haven't already guessed, it's been a great week.

MATH

Jessie has been doing an excellent job on fractions this week. No confusion or tears this time around. It's seems that the concepts are finally beginning to click. We did a bit more multiplication drill, and I realized that Jessie really hasn't cemented done her facts on the x6 to x9 keys. So we'll be taking a bit of time to during memory work to make sure she masters these.

Violet has really seemed to make a huge leap forward in understanding math concepts this week. She took to the vertical format of working out addition and subtraction problems on paper like a duck to water. Thursday we started addition with renaming. I tried explaining the concept with the pictures in the book and received a blank stare, so we broke out the cuisenaire rods and reworked the problem with the rods. Then I modeled a couple of problems for her on paper, and finally gave her 4 problems on paper for her to explain to me how to work them. After a couple of questions to get her started with the first one, she took off. It was great to watch, and she was so proud of herself.

LANGUAGE ARTS

Our new poem for the week is Loving Jesus by Charles Wesley. Violet's using the new poem for copywork while Jessie has been doing a paragraph from The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe this week for dictation. (The Magician's Nephew went missing under their dresser for a couple of days.) For literature we have all (Benny included) been enjoying The Courage of Sarah Noble.

I wrote last week that Jessie was having trouble with diagramming, and then over the weekend it dawned on me what I was doing wrong. I had explained diagramming adjectives as if they were a part of a puzzle just telling her where to put them on the diagram. Instead I needed to explain how adjectives fit into the process of sentence diagramming by modeling the whole process from start to finish. (You would think I learned my lesson when we hit a similar wall working on the process of long division.) So each day when we reached the section about diagramming the sentence this week, I ran through the whole process with her using the example and grammar has gone much more smoothly.

Violet's favorite accomplishment of the week has been finishing up all 3 of her critical thinking resources: Building Thinking Skills Primary, Visual Perceptual Skill Building 1, and Dr. DooRiddles A1. Jessie was excited to finish up her Mind Benders A1 book as well.

GEOGRAPHY / HISTORY / SCIENCE

In US Geography, we have made it through Montana this week. I'd like to pick up the pace in the geography booklets. I think Jessie should be finishing up some more of her critical thinking books next week. We can use that time on Tuesday and Thursday to accomplish an additional geography booklet each week. I forgot to go over the states song again. (Pause here while I go print the words out right now so I remember next week.) OK. Let's see. In history we had a light week and looked at a couple of books covering Colonial Life. I had thought we would do a couple of projects this week, but the weather was so nice it just didn't happen. Maybe I can work them in over the next few weeks. No booklets, maps, or timelines either.

For science, we have started lesson 3 learning about molting and feathers. There are 2 completed booklets and 1 partially completed booklets below. The orange and red accordion booklets cover molting with questions and fill in the blanks. In the white booklets, we did flight feathers. The top part matched the names of the feathers with their location and function. Then we mapped the flight feathers out on the bird below. The incomplete booklet shows our diagram of a feather. We'll be adding to that next week when we learned about the other types of feathers.

Looking forward, I realized that there are a few other bird related topics not covered in the book so I'll look to see what the library has available this afternoon and try to cement exactly what else we're going to cover this weekend.

BENNY'S PRESCHOOL

Letters: We added Kk and Ll this week. I'm going to order some new alphabet magnets for the refrigerator so that we can actually match on the refrigerator and use the magnets to write on the dry erase board. More on that when they come in.

Numbers: Number recognition up to 7 is good. We're still doing lots of finger counting. We also worked on counting when putting the chips in the cups again. Benny hasn't quite mastered the concept of saying one number with each chip.

Other: For reading, we were having a hard time finding new, interesting books at the library. I believe I have already read to Benny every picture book that I ever read to the girls. Last Friday, I took our new copy of Honey for a Child's Heart with us to the library and used that to find some new books for Benny. Benny's favorite for the week was Can We Sleep Here Tonight?by Koide. I placed 5 or 6 more books from the list on hold for next week. My plan is to continue through the list of picture books for the remainder of the year. Here's a few of Benny's Kumon cutting pages. We also did a few pages in the Let's Sticker and Paste book this week.