My kitchen helper (slightly disappointed that I would want to use the electric mixer for the muffins instead of giving him a whisk).
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Almost Wordless Wednesday
My kitchen helper (slightly disappointed that I would want to use the electric mixer for the muffins instead of giving him a whisk).
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Math Drill Standards
I can tell by watching my children do their math work if they are mastering the concepts being presented or not. I do tend to wonder, however, if they are effectively applying those concepts at a sufficient computation speed (especially on those days when math drags on for more than an hour). I know there are plenty of math drill resources that can be purchased, but I've always thought I shouldn't have to spend money for something I can create. I've seen several free worksheets online, but I didn't know for what age they had been designed or what the time limits for completing them should be.
I basically needed a standard to fill in the details of how to do math drill. How many problems should there be for each age? How long should the time limit be and how much should the limit change over time? I finally found an answer while looking through some of the school standards for the Logos school.
We don't always drill daily, and most of the time we drill with either flash cards or wrap ups; however, it's nice to take time to stop and check every once in a while to make sure we are on track with our computation speed. I had our third grader run through our addition wrap up at the beginning of the week, and we timed each key individually. After adding up the times and adjusting for the 20 extra problems, I was happy to see that even without drilling with worksheets that she was able to meet the 3rd grade standard for addition. Now that I have a gauge to check our computation speed, I'll have a better idea of when we need to drill and when we can better spend our time on something else.
I basically needed a standard to fill in the details of how to do math drill. How many problems should there be for each age? How long should the time limit be and how much should the limit change over time? I finally found an answer while looking through some of the school standards for the Logos school.
We don't always drill daily, and most of the time we drill with either flash cards or wrap ups; however, it's nice to take time to stop and check every once in a while to make sure we are on track with our computation speed. I had our third grader run through our addition wrap up at the beginning of the week, and we timed each key individually. After adding up the times and adjusting for the 20 extra problems, I was happy to see that even without drilling with worksheets that she was able to meet the 3rd grade standard for addition. Now that I have a gauge to check our computation speed, I'll have a better idea of when we need to drill and when we can better spend our time on something else.
Monday, January 28, 2008
Catching up on planning, first status check
It's been 3 weeks since I made my list of things I still need to do for planning for this school year. I must confess to having a bit of a motivation problem. It just seems to be much more fun to brainstorm for next year than to finish assembling the nuts and bolts for this year. I really would like to try to be finished by the end of February. By then I'll be needing to get some clothes and toys ready to consign and to plan birthday parties for the kids.
Geography
State booklets for Minnesota to Wyoming still need to be printed and assembled.
All booklets are now printed. Minnesota through Nebraska are assembled.
Still need to assemble Nevada through Wyoming.
Determine how big the lapbook bases need to be and assemble.
Still needs to be completed.
History
Currently prereading books up through topic 31 on Daniel Boone.
Completed
Preread and choose books for topics 32 to 51.
Prereading complete through topic 32.
Still need to preread topics 33 to 51.
Schedule books from topics 17-51.
Books scheduled through topic 28.
Still need to schedule topics 29 to 51.
Choose and print timeline figures and booklet figures for this week through the end of the year.
HTTA timeline figures ready to print for remainder of the year.
Need to go back and decide if there are any other topics I want to add to the timeline that will need figures.
Still need to choose booklet figures for the remainder of the year.
Plan out and print map work for remainder of the year.
Still need to complete.
Science
Read from chapter 4 to the end taking notes.
Notes complete for chapter 4.
Notes for chapters 5 to end not yet completed.
Create booklets for chapters 4 to end.
Still to be completed.
Print booklets for lessons 2 to the end.
Lesson 2 printed.
Still need to print lesson 3 to the end.
It's nice to actually see progress. I haven't really felt like I've had a lot of time to work. Actually the only reason I have notes for chapter 4 in science is that I took the book with me to work on while I waited at the dentist office.
"I can do everything through him who gives me strength." Phillipians 4:13
Geography
State booklets for Minnesota to Wyoming still need to be printed and assembled.
All booklets are now printed. Minnesota through Nebraska are assembled.
Still need to assemble Nevada through Wyoming.
Determine how big the lapbook bases need to be and assemble.
Still needs to be completed.
History
Currently prereading books up through topic 31 on Daniel Boone.
Completed
Preread and choose books for topics 32 to 51.
Prereading complete through topic 32.
Still need to preread topics 33 to 51.
Schedule books from topics 17-51.
Books scheduled through topic 28.
Still need to schedule topics 29 to 51.
Choose and print timeline figures and booklet figures for this week through the end of the year.
HTTA timeline figures ready to print for remainder of the year.
Need to go back and decide if there are any other topics I want to add to the timeline that will need figures.
Still need to choose booklet figures for the remainder of the year.
Plan out and print map work for remainder of the year.
Still need to complete.
Science
Read from chapter 4 to the end taking notes.
Notes complete for chapter 4.
Notes for chapters 5 to end not yet completed.
Create booklets for chapters 4 to end.
Still to be completed.
Print booklets for lessons 2 to the end.
Lesson 2 printed.
Still need to print lesson 3 to the end.
It's nice to actually see progress. I haven't really felt like I've had a lot of time to work. Actually the only reason I have notes for chapter 4 in science is that I took the book with me to work on while I waited at the dentist office.
"I can do everything through him who gives me strength." Phillipians 4:13
Friday, January 25, 2008
Week 21: Steady as she goes...
Overall it's been another great week. The kids have been very patient with me this week as I have been trying to multitask a bit more during the normal school lessons. Mostly I have been to catching up on some housework before my mom's arrival on Thursday. I did reach my multitasking limit on Wednesday, however, as I tried to mix muffin batter while listening to Violet read and dictating a paragraph to Jessie. Then of course, Benny was in the mix too wanting to help me with the batter. I actually caught up on all the laundry Wednesday night and did a little dance to celebrate, but I should have known better. Benny threw up over all his bedding that night so the washer didn't get the day off after all. On the homeschooling front, here is our week:
MATH
Jessie has really struggled this week with the conversions between cups, pints, quarts, and gallons. We spent most of the week reviewing the capacity section in the 3B Intensive Practice book. She frowned at me in the beginning of the week when I suggested that we add some math cards in the memory box with the conversions, but by Thursday she was suggesting we make the cards blue. I think it would have been easier if we had started this section making a chart of the different conversions for reference to see how many cups were in a quart or a gallon instead of having to figure that out over and over again. (My poor guinea pig. Next time I'll know better.)
Violet is doing excellent with her first full week in the Singapore 2A book. She thinks it's really "great" that she is working with numbers over 100 now. We actually ended up doubling up on the lessons a couple of days because she was having so much fun (GASP! MATH?!? FUN?!?) doing the work. I now have no idea how much of the book we will finish this year, and hereby give up making any kind of projections for her. We're just going to take things at her pace and see where we end up when the baby arrives. We've also been doing our math drill consistently this week with the addition keys. My current standard is that the key should take her less than 40 seconds to complete. She completed the 1, 2, 3, and 10 keys within that time frame, but the 4 and 5 keys are taking her over a minute. We'll keep working on those facts through next week on the keys and with flash cards and see if there is any improvement.
LANGUAGE ARTS
Jessie has finished memorizing Mr. Nobody from FLL last year. Violet is still working on Try Again. I guess we'll just give Violet a few days to catch up next week before we move on to a new poem. For literature we have been reading a version of Treasure Island that is illustrated by Wyeth. The girls even requested another chapter at bedtime Wednesday. (Benny abandoned the book DH was reading him and came running over to join in as well). Violet passed her first spelling test in SWO C (picture on left) with flying colors. Jessie's been doing dictation from
The Magician's Nephew. We're going to try adding dictation into the memory slot of the schedule next week because she is finding it hard to concentrate while Benny is watching a video. Jessie was also aghast when I asked her to write a whole paragraph in a grammar assignment this week. I calmly assured that she would survive (and of course she did.)
GEOGRAPHY / HISTORY / SCIENCE
We completed Minnesota and began Mississippi for geography. Not much to add there. The geography lapbook is working so well for us that I am thinking of making one next year as well. Since we'll still be doing American history, I guess we would focus on North and South America. We could add in some more independent reading and a bit of culture perhaps. (OK. Focus... must finish planning this year first.) For history this week we studied pirates. We took the week off from narrations and booklets to just enjoy some reading time.
Jessie is loving science this time. She is actually more excited to do science than she is to do history. Both girls are checking the back yard daily to see if the snow has melted enough to do our first lab from lesson 1. Unfortunately, part of the yard is shaded so it's taking awhile for the snow to melt. We started working on lesson 2 this week. So far we've read about birds in general and about identifying birds based on their field marks. We picked up a field guide Monday afternoon which has the birds of Virginia sorted based on color. Below on the left are the girl's first 2 pages for the tabbed booklet that we are making for this lesson covering some general information and mapping the bird's field marks for identification. Benny insisted that he needed a bird to color as well.
ART / MUSIC
We're still slacking here. Maybe next week.
BENNY'S PRESCHOOL
Benny's preschool is still going well. He is singing the alphabet song with me most mornings now. I've started doing some ASL signing along with the song. So far Benny has just picked up to point to himself when we get to the word we. Thursday, Benny decided that he preferred to sit on my lap while I was working with Violet on math. He pulled out his Kumon books and finished up the first
cutting book. We also finished all of the stickers in the sticker and paste book. He basically has all of his letters 
from Aa through Ii as well as Oo memorized. He can match them with ease. Sometimes he forgets the name of a letter, and I'll give him 3 or 4 names from which to choose. He always picks the correct one, so I guess we'll move on to adding more letters next week. For numbers this week we just counted different things: letters on the drawing board, fingers, number of animals in a picture book, etc.
That's about it. Hope you all had a great week also.
MATH
Jessie has really struggled this week with the conversions between cups, pints, quarts, and gallons. We spent most of the week reviewing the capacity section in the 3B Intensive Practice book. She frowned at me in the beginning of the week when I suggested that we add some math cards in the memory box with the conversions, but by Thursday she was suggesting we make the cards blue. I think it would have been easier if we had started this section making a chart of the different conversions for reference to see how many cups were in a quart or a gallon instead of having to figure that out over and over again. (My poor guinea pig. Next time I'll know better.)
Violet is doing excellent with her first full week in the Singapore 2A book. She thinks it's really "great" that she is working with numbers over 100 now. We actually ended up doubling up on the lessons a couple of days because she was having so much fun (GASP! MATH?!? FUN?!?) doing the work. I now have no idea how much of the book we will finish this year, and hereby give up making any kind of projections for her. We're just going to take things at her pace and see where we end up when the baby arrives. We've also been doing our math drill consistently this week with the addition keys. My current standard is that the key should take her less than 40 seconds to complete. She completed the 1, 2, 3, and 10 keys within that time frame, but the 4 and 5 keys are taking her over a minute. We'll keep working on those facts through next week on the keys and with flash cards and see if there is any improvement.LANGUAGE ARTS
Jessie has finished memorizing Mr. Nobody from FLL last year. Violet is still working on Try Again. I guess we'll just give Violet a few days to catch up next week before we move on to a new poem. For literature we have been reading a version of Treasure Island that is illustrated by Wyeth. The girls even requested another chapter at bedtime Wednesday. (Benny abandoned the book DH was reading him and came running over to join in as well). Violet passed her first spelling test in SWO C (picture on left) with flying colors. Jessie's been doing dictation from
The Magician's Nephew. We're going to try adding dictation into the memory slot of the schedule next week because she is finding it hard to concentrate while Benny is watching a video. Jessie was also aghast when I asked her to write a whole paragraph in a grammar assignment this week. I calmly assured that she would survive (and of course she did.)GEOGRAPHY / HISTORY / SCIENCE
We completed Minnesota and began Mississippi for geography. Not much to add there. The geography lapbook is working so well for us that I am thinking of making one next year as well. Since we'll still be doing American history, I guess we would focus on North and South America. We could add in some more independent reading and a bit of culture perhaps. (OK. Focus... must finish planning this year first.) For history this week we studied pirates. We took the week off from narrations and booklets to just enjoy some reading time.Jessie is loving science this time. She is actually more excited to do science than she is to do history. Both girls are checking the back yard daily to see if the snow has melted enough to do our first lab from lesson 1. Unfortunately, part of the yard is shaded so it's taking awhile for the snow to melt. We started working on lesson 2 this week. So far we've read about birds in general and about identifying birds based on their field marks. We picked up a field guide Monday afternoon which has the birds of Virginia sorted based on color. Below on the left are the girl's first 2 pages for the tabbed booklet that we are making for this lesson covering some general information and mapping the bird's field marks for identification. Benny insisted that he needed a bird to color as well.
ART / MUSIC
We're still slacking here. Maybe next week.
BENNY'S PRESCHOOL
Benny's preschool is still going well. He is singing the alphabet song with me most mornings now. I've started doing some ASL signing along with the song. So far Benny has just picked up to point to himself when we get to the word we. Thursday, Benny decided that he preferred to sit on my lap while I was working with Violet on math. He pulled out his Kumon books and finished up the first
cutting book. We also finished all of the stickers in the sticker and paste book. He basically has all of his letters 
from Aa through Ii as well as Oo memorized. He can match them with ease. Sometimes he forgets the name of a letter, and I'll give him 3 or 4 names from which to choose. He always picks the correct one, so I guess we'll move on to adding more letters next week. For numbers this week we just counted different things: letters on the drawing board, fingers, number of animals in a picture book, etc.That's about it. Hope you all had a great week also.
Thursday, January 24, 2008
Mission Organization: Getting started in my office
I decided the easiest place to start in my office was with the closet (mostly because I need somewhere to shove everything else before my mom gets here this afternoon). My first project: school related curriculum and supplies. We now have a storage cabinet down in the basement, which my DH rebuilt from the built in dining room cabinets in the old house. I confiscated the top left shelving section for curriculum and school supplies. It only took a few minutes to sort the waiting-to-be-used-again on the shelves. I even found a few things to sell and started a for sale box of things to list online.
Sticking to my schooling theme, I tackled a couple of the drawers in my desk. I sorted my overloaded paper drawer and moved the unopened boxes of filler paper and unused spiral notebooks down to the school cabinet. That leaves enough room for printer paper (white and colored), a couple of packages of lined paper, the card stock I use for printing booklets, some envelopes, file folders for lapbook bases, and a few empty two pocket folders. I also sorted out my drawer of catalogs and teacher materials.
The room may still be a mess, but that's two boxes and two drawers down and one step closer to more organization.
Sticking to my schooling theme, I tackled a couple of the drawers in my desk. I sorted my overloaded paper drawer and moved the unopened boxes of filler paper and unused spiral notebooks down to the school cabinet. That leaves enough room for printer paper (white and colored), a couple of packages of lined paper, the card stock I use for printing booklets, some envelopes, file folders for lapbook bases, and a few empty two pocket folders. I also sorted out my drawer of catalogs and teacher materials.
The room may still be a mess, but that's two boxes and two drawers down and one step closer to more organization.
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Monday, January 21, 2008
Mission Organization: Saving my office and my mind
If you had visited my house last night, you would most likely have come away with the impression that I am an excellent housekeeper. The carpets were vacuumed. The kitchen floor swept. The dinner mess was over from the dishes and pots to the table and counters. All the school supplies were tucked neatly back in their cabinet. You wouldn't even have known I did 4 loads of laundry yesterday. It was actually all folded and put away. I will confess it wasn't completely immaculate, but it was about as perfect as it gets with 3 kids running around all day.
The truth, however, is that no matter how much progress I am making with the rest of the house. There remains one area that I can never quite seem to get cleaned: my poor, neglected office. Don't get me wrong, I'm in there every day working on the computer. I carry projects in and out all of the time (bills to pay, papers to file, things to sell, school booklets and planning pages). Despite my best intentions, however, I have never gotten the mess quite under control. The farthest I usually get is to clear off the floor (mainly by piling things in the closet) whenever my mom comes to visit. I'm constantly losing papers in there and wasting time sorting through pile after pile for the one piece of mail that is missing. I have been known to discover missing library books under the piles. So what makes this time different? Why do I think I can actually organize things now? This is supposed to be the baby's room by May. That means I have a lot of relocating to do. I hereby resolve not to solve this problem by packing and stacking boxes of things down in the basement. It's time to face my mess, save my sanity, and put an end to the dysfunctional, disorganized, sore spot in my house which is currently called my office.
Here's my starting point:
Somewhere under is a beautiful working surface, I never get use.
Once upon a time, there were piles here on the floor before the last child-sized tornado came through the room.
The closet: curriculum waiting for the next student, a box of things to sell(one of many), craft supplies and paper remains from classes I taught last year, and that doesn't even count the shelf you can't see.
A keyboard I usually can't reach, a sewing table that I would like to get to and use one day, and a bunch of stuff I currently cannot identify.
The truth, however, is that no matter how much progress I am making with the rest of the house. There remains one area that I can never quite seem to get cleaned: my poor, neglected office. Don't get me wrong, I'm in there every day working on the computer. I carry projects in and out all of the time (bills to pay, papers to file, things to sell, school booklets and planning pages). Despite my best intentions, however, I have never gotten the mess quite under control. The farthest I usually get is to clear off the floor (mainly by piling things in the closet) whenever my mom comes to visit. I'm constantly losing papers in there and wasting time sorting through pile after pile for the one piece of mail that is missing. I have been known to discover missing library books under the piles. So what makes this time different? Why do I think I can actually organize things now? This is supposed to be the baby's room by May. That means I have a lot of relocating to do. I hereby resolve not to solve this problem by packing and stacking boxes of things down in the basement. It's time to face my mess, save my sanity, and put an end to the dysfunctional, disorganized, sore spot in my house which is currently called my office.
Here's my starting point:
Somewhere under is a beautiful working surface, I never get use.
Once upon a time, there were piles here on the floor before the last child-sized tornado came through the room.
The closet: curriculum waiting for the next student, a box of things to sell(one of many), craft supplies and paper remains from classes I taught last year, and that doesn't even count the shelf you can't see.
A keyboard I usually can't reach, a sewing table that I would like to get to and use one day, and a bunch of stuff I currently cannot identify.
Friday, January 18, 2008
Week 20: Moving Steadily Along
We've had a great week!! The girl's have settled nicely into the schedule. The girls are doing better at staying focused on their work so that sometimes they are even finishing early and getting a few minutes of free time until I'm available. Thursday, all three had a hard time focusing on anything. Who can blame them? It was snowing outside so we spent part of the afternoon sledding, throwing snowballs, building a snowman, and drinking hot chocolate. Here's our week:
MATH
Jessie is still working in the unit on capacity. She finished up with the metric section and worked today with gallons, quarts, pints, and cups. She actually remembered all of the conversions from last year and breezed through the exercise today. (I personally still have to stop and think about the conversions, although it is a lot easier since I've been canning and actually know what a quart and pint jar look like.)
Violet finished up the last bit of review from 1B that I wanted to cover. She started working on Singapore 2A on Thursday. The first section on numbers to 1000 is very straight forward so it's a good confidence booster for her. On the right is her first lesson in the new books.
LANGUAGE ARTS
Violet is still working on memorizing our poem Try Again. Since Jessie finished memorizing the poem by Wednesday, we pulled back out the poem Mr. Nobody from FLL last year and will spend some time reviewing. We took the week off from literature so I could get my office cleaned back up before my Mom comes to visit next week. I'm also doing a bit of reorganizing os some of the things stored in my office to make room for the baby in May. Spelling is going great. Violet has
finished up her last lesson 
in SWO B and will move on to book C Monday. On the right is Violet's dictation. (Can you tell we were putting our history booklets together when I realized I hadn't written her copywork assignment?) Jessie has switched over to dictation completely for her handwriting and is doing great. She's had to ask a couple of times how to make one of the capital letters in cursive so I think I'll try to make her a reference this weekend that she can refer to as needed.
On the left is Jessie's summary of Cincinnatus for CW Aesop. This week we changed up our outlining a bit. For each paragraph we wrote a Roman numeral with the paragraph's topic. Then we numbered the sentences and wrote our key words as usual. This flowed nicely with R&S grammar which is talking about paragraphs. Basically, I just wanted to reinforce the idea that each paragraph has a specific topic so that when she starts typing the summaries herself in the fall, she'll have a better idea of where she needs to start a new paragraph (instead of writing everything in one huge paragraph like I did growing up).
GEOGRAPHY / HISTORY / SCIENCE
The girls are progressing nicely through our US geography lapbooks completing Massachusetts and Michigan this week (on the left). New for this week, after reading our history, I sent Jessie to complete her geography while Violet gave me her history narration. Then we switched.
For history we covered Robert La Salle claiming the Louisiana
territory for France, Peter Stuyvesant of New Amsterdam, and three new colonies (New Jersey, North Caorlina, and South Carolina). We completed two lapbooks (on the right): one for the French exploration of the Mississippi and one for Peter Stuyvesant. We added Stuyvesant to
our timeline notebooks, and labeled the three new colonies on our map of the 13 colonies.
For science we didn't quite finish up lesson 1 of Zoology 1. I had planned to do the flight experiment on Thursday while DH was home to watch Benny. Since it snowed, we postponed the experiment in favor of playing in the snow. We'll either do it Saturday if the weather is nice or pick the warmest afternoon next week instead. Below are the two booklets that I designed for lesson 1. The larger booklet covers basic zoology, classification, and a few other random vocabulary words at the bottom with fill in the blank and matching. The idea for the winged booklet about flight came from one I saw on the internet. It covers the vocabulary related to flight with little riddles that the girls had to solve.
MUSIC / ART
No art this week. For music the kids started listening to Mr. Bach Comes to Call after I fixed the tape player. I don't think they finished so we'll take it along and finish this afternoon when we run our errands. Daily piano lessons with Mom supervising our working out very well. Jessie's hand position is much improved. It's also given us a chance to work on the frustration caused by her perfectionism. She's beginning to accept the fact that mistakes are part of learning (after the ??th time I repeated this). Violet is also slowly progressing. I believe the Bastien book is a little hard for a 6 year old, but we're just taking it very slowly.
BENNY'S PRESCHOOL
Benny's preschool is going great. For the alphabet game, this week we did a new variation on matching. Benny has the Fisher Price alphabet zoo. I pulled out the animals with the letters that we have learned so far. I wrote the lower case letters on Benny's drawing boards, and then he covered them with the animal with the matching capital letter. We added the letters I and i one day. Then added the letters O and o another day because Violet had taught him those letters already. He also set a new record by singing the alphabet song with me TWICE this week. For numbers, we did another dot to dot up to 7. His number recognition is great. His counting, however, needs a bit of a refresher. Thursday and Friday, we pulled out the girl's abacus for counting practice. We moved one bead for the top row, two for the second, and so on up to ten at the bottom. He can recognize groups up to 3 and then needs to take time to count (which he finds a bit annoying I believe) for groups of four or more.
MATH
Jessie is still working in the unit on capacity. She finished up with the metric section and worked today with gallons, quarts, pints, and cups. She actually remembered all of the conversions from last year and breezed through the exercise today. (I personally still have to stop and think about the conversions, although it is a lot easier since I've been canning and actually know what a quart and pint jar look like.)
Violet finished up the last bit of review from 1B that I wanted to cover. She started working on Singapore 2A on Thursday. The first section on numbers to 1000 is very straight forward so it's a good confidence booster for her. On the right is her first lesson in the new books.
LANGUAGE ARTS
Violet is still working on memorizing our poem Try Again. Since Jessie finished memorizing the poem by Wednesday, we pulled back out the poem Mr. Nobody from FLL last year and will spend some time reviewing. We took the week off from literature so I could get my office cleaned back up before my Mom comes to visit next week. I'm also doing a bit of reorganizing os some of the things stored in my office to make room for the baby in May. Spelling is going great. Violet has
finished up her last lesson 
in SWO B and will move on to book C Monday. On the right is Violet's dictation. (Can you tell we were putting our history booklets together when I realized I hadn't written her copywork assignment?) Jessie has switched over to dictation completely for her handwriting and is doing great. She's had to ask a couple of times how to make one of the capital letters in cursive so I think I'll try to make her a reference this weekend that she can refer to as needed.On the left is Jessie's summary of Cincinnatus for CW Aesop. This week we changed up our outlining a bit. For each paragraph we wrote a Roman numeral with the paragraph's topic. Then we numbered the sentences and wrote our key words as usual. This flowed nicely with R&S grammar which is talking about paragraphs. Basically, I just wanted to reinforce the idea that each paragraph has a specific topic so that when she starts typing the summaries herself in the fall, she'll have a better idea of where she needs to start a new paragraph (instead of writing everything in one huge paragraph like I did growing up).
GEOGRAPHY / HISTORY / SCIENCE
The girls are progressing nicely through our US geography lapbooks completing Massachusetts and Michigan this week (on the left). New for this week, after reading our history, I sent Jessie to complete her geography while Violet gave me her history narration. Then we switched.
For history we covered Robert La Salle claiming the Louisiana
territory for France, Peter Stuyvesant of New Amsterdam, and three new colonies (New Jersey, North Caorlina, and South Carolina). We completed two lapbooks (on the right): one for the French exploration of the Mississippi and one for Peter Stuyvesant. We added Stuyvesant to
our timeline notebooks, and labeled the three new colonies on our map of the 13 colonies.For science we didn't quite finish up lesson 1 of Zoology 1. I had planned to do the flight experiment on Thursday while DH was home to watch Benny. Since it snowed, we postponed the experiment in favor of playing in the snow. We'll either do it Saturday if the weather is nice or pick the warmest afternoon next week instead. Below are the two booklets that I designed for lesson 1. The larger booklet covers basic zoology, classification, and a few other random vocabulary words at the bottom with fill in the blank and matching. The idea for the winged booklet about flight came from one I saw on the internet. It covers the vocabulary related to flight with little riddles that the girls had to solve.
MUSIC / ART
No art this week. For music the kids started listening to Mr. Bach Comes to Call after I fixed the tape player. I don't think they finished so we'll take it along and finish this afternoon when we run our errands. Daily piano lessons with Mom supervising our working out very well. Jessie's hand position is much improved. It's also given us a chance to work on the frustration caused by her perfectionism. She's beginning to accept the fact that mistakes are part of learning (after the ??th time I repeated this). Violet is also slowly progressing. I believe the Bastien book is a little hard for a 6 year old, but we're just taking it very slowly.
BENNY'S PRESCHOOL
Benny's preschool is going great. For the alphabet game, this week we did a new variation on matching. Benny has the Fisher Price alphabet zoo. I pulled out the animals with the letters that we have learned so far. I wrote the lower case letters on Benny's drawing boards, and then he covered them with the animal with the matching capital letter. We added the letters I and i one day. Then added the letters O and o another day because Violet had taught him those letters already. He also set a new record by singing the alphabet song with me TWICE this week. For numbers, we did another dot to dot up to 7. His number recognition is great. His counting, however, needs a bit of a refresher. Thursday and Friday, we pulled out the girl's abacus for counting practice. We moved one bead for the top row, two for the second, and so on up to ten at the bottom. He can recognize groups up to 3 and then needs to take time to count (which he finds a bit annoying I believe) for groups of four or more.
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
Evaluating where we are, part 2
I know I have to make some adjustments for Violet's work since we took time to go back and review an entire section of math. Here is her year at a glance schedule.
My goal for Violet's Primary math is to finish the first four sections of 2A. Section 5 and 6 deal with multiplication so these could make a good starting point next year. That would take us through assignment #158 which could be completed by mid April leaving a couple of weeks of leeway if we need to spend extra time on the second unit which includes vertical addition and subtraction with carrying and borrowing. The only downside would be having her finish three weeks earlier than Jessie, but we'll can fill the time in with math drill or skip counting instead. Spelling and critical thinking should also be finished by mid April. That would just leave the combined subjects of history, geography, and science again.
Well I guess it looks good so far. Now I can concentrate on my own planning to do list and figuring out how to turn my office into a baby's room. (I have no idea where to put some of the stuff in here, especially my large desk)
My goal for Violet's Primary math is to finish the first four sections of 2A. Section 5 and 6 deal with multiplication so these could make a good starting point next year. That would take us through assignment #158 which could be completed by mid April leaving a couple of weeks of leeway if we need to spend extra time on the second unit which includes vertical addition and subtraction with carrying and borrowing. The only downside would be having her finish three weeks earlier than Jessie, but we'll can fill the time in with math drill or skip counting instead. Spelling and critical thinking should also be finished by mid April. That would just leave the combined subjects of history, geography, and science again.
Well I guess it looks good so far. Now I can concentrate on my own planning to do list and figuring out how to turn my office into a baby's room. (I have no idea where to put some of the stuff in here, especially my large desk)
Monday, January 14, 2008
Evaluating where we are, part 1
Now that we've finished over half of our year (and I'm already looking forward to spring), it seemed like a good time to evaluate how much we have accomplished so far and how much we have left. My goal for school is to have the bulk of the work done sometime in April. (Once the weather warms up it is impossible to focus my kids on an entire morning of school.) I would also like to have math done before the baby comes in mid-May. Here is an updated look at Jessie's Year at a Glance.
We have 16 weeks left before the baby (assuming it comes within a day or so of my due date like the other three). I usually set aside one week in March around the girls birthdays for testing which leaves 15 weeks to work. Math is over by 7 lessons. We can probably combine that many especially in the word problems book. Spelling should be done around the beginning of April. Grammar is running 3 lessons over. We can switch it to 5 days a week once spelling is done and be finished in April. CW Aesop is on track to finish in April as is Prima Latina. Critical thinking can be condensed a bit to finish mid April. That leaves history, geography, and science which will probably go into the summer. If we continue to alternate them, that would give the kids at most an hour of "school time" a day. (This is actually good for my family since 2 of my 3 kids enjoy having some structure to their day.) Since all 3 of these subjects incorporate lapbooks that makes them a bit more Mom-intensive; however, if I can finish planning and printing the geography and science booklets before May, then it should be doable. (Well maybe I should try printing all the timeline figures and maps for history also to make sure I have enough time to plan in June.)
We have 16 weeks left before the baby (assuming it comes within a day or so of my due date like the other three). I usually set aside one week in March around the girls birthdays for testing which leaves 15 weeks to work. Math is over by 7 lessons. We can probably combine that many especially in the word problems book. Spelling should be done around the beginning of April. Grammar is running 3 lessons over. We can switch it to 5 days a week once spelling is done and be finished in April. CW Aesop is on track to finish in April as is Prima Latina. Critical thinking can be condensed a bit to finish mid April. That leaves history, geography, and science which will probably go into the summer. If we continue to alternate them, that would give the kids at most an hour of "school time" a day. (This is actually good for my family since 2 of my 3 kids enjoy having some structure to their day.) Since all 3 of these subjects incorporate lapbooks that makes them a bit more Mom-intensive; however, if I can finish planning and printing the geography and science booklets before May, then it should be doable. (Well maybe I should try printing all the timeline figures and maps for history also to make sure I have enough time to plan in June.)
Thursday, January 10, 2008
Week 19: Getting Going Again
Overall, it's been a good week. The kids are settling back into the school routine. The new schedule seems to be working for the most part with only a minor bit of tweaking here and there. Here our week:
Jessie has finished up the section on weights and been doing some general review exercises in the textbook. She's actually been finishing up most days in under an hour. It seems that having me in the room to keep Violet on task and help her as needed has the added benefit of helping Jessie stay on task as well. The fractions in the Miquon book finally seem to be clicking for her as well.
After the first day of groans, she has breezed through the other pages fairly quickly without any problem.
The girls started memorizing a new poem this week, Try Again by William Hickson. We used the poem for copywork and dictation for most of the week. The girl's have really been enjoying Elin's Amerika by D'Angeli for literature. Violet even asked to borrow the book once or twice to look at it. Spelling is going well. I finally took time with both girls this week to go back through the list of trouble words and figure out which ones actually still need some work. We're also worked on catching up with Jessie's Latin vocabulary this week. Apparently I never made vocabulary cards for the last lesson so we have a few more words to work on than usual. (Hmm.. Add to to do list to write out remaining latin cards for the year.)
The girls are still plodding steadily through the geography booklets. This week we finished Maine and Maryland. I'm glad to see that they still seem to be enjoying our lapbook. I was afraid that would start to get tired of it by now. They are also progressing nicely through the 50 Nifty United States Song without any motivation on my part.
ART / MUSIC
No official art lessons this week. Violet and Jessie want to try out the origami kits they received from my MIL. Hopefully we can sit down and work on some of those this evening. As far as music, we got our piano lessons started again with both girls.
BENNY'S PRESCHOOL
Preschool has gone really well this week. We added in some new games for learning out numbers and letters. On Monday, I gave Benny a dot to dot puzzle with the numbers 1 through 6. I talked him through where to draw each line after he located the numbers we needed. For the alphabet we created two versions of what I'll call hide and seek alphabet. I wrote all of the letters that Benny had learned so far on his drawing board. On the first day, I called out a letters and Benny covered it with one of our Sequence Junior chips. The next day we started with all of the letters covered. Benny could remove the chips in any order identifying what was hiding under each chip as we went along. He also took it upon himself to try writing some letters this week. He wrote the big A and the big B. One day he even decided to surprise me by joining in to sing for the whole alphabet song with me.
MATH
Jessie has finished up the section on weights and been doing some general review exercises in the textbook. She's actually been finishing up most days in under an hour. It seems that having me in the room to keep Violet on task and help her as needed has the added benefit of helping Jessie stay on task as well. The fractions in the Miquon book finally seem to be clicking for her as well.
After the first day of groans, she has breezed through the other pages fairly quickly without any problem. Violet has had an excellent week in math. I think that she's finally getting comfortable with working the larger problems in her head. Most days she done two or three times as many assignments as I had planned. Yesterday she worked through all of the addition problems in the Intensive Practice section of numbers within 100 in half an hour with only 3 mistakes. On the plus side, the review has given her a boost of confidence that she can do well at math. I think the attitude change alone has probably helped her tremendously.
LANGUAGE ARTS
Geography / History / Science
The girls are still plodding steadily through the geography booklets. This week we finished Maine and Maryland. I'm glad to see that they still seem to be enjoying our lapbook. I was afraid that would start to get tired of it by now. They are also progressing nicely through the 50 Nifty United States Song without any motivation on my part.For history we finished reading about the woodland indians. I turned over part of the reading to the girls to save some time. This allowed us to also cover Marquette and Joliet exploring the Mississippi River.
Our first week of science went well. The booklets I made definitely seem to be working for the girls as a means of reinforcing the material. Violet did have a notebook both days and took "notes" while I was reading. I think she just wrote down whatever struck her as interesting. It certainly wasn't the same information that I had marked down as important. I think next week I'll try letting them look at the booklet first so that they have an idea of what to listen for and see how that goes. I think Benny learned as much as the girls did while listening. He was looking on as I helped Violet fill in her booklet Thursday and managed to come up with the correct answer twice before she did. I'll post pictures of the booklets next week when we finish lesson 1.
No official art lessons this week. Violet and Jessie want to try out the origami kits they received from my MIL. Hopefully we can sit down and work on some of those this evening. As far as music, we got our piano lessons started again with both girls.
BENNY'S PRESCHOOL
Preschool has gone really well this week. We added in some new games for learning out numbers and letters. On Monday, I gave Benny a dot to dot puzzle with the numbers 1 through 6. I talked him through where to draw each line after he located the numbers we needed. For the alphabet we created two versions of what I'll call hide and seek alphabet. I wrote all of the letters that Benny had learned so far on his drawing board. On the first day, I called out a letters and Benny covered it with one of our Sequence Junior chips. The next day we started with all of the letters covered. Benny could remove the chips in any order identifying what was hiding under each chip as we went along. He also took it upon himself to try writing some letters this week. He wrote the big A and the big B. One day he even decided to surprise me by joining in to sing for the whole alphabet song with me.
Baby update
We had our 20 week ultrasound on Wednesday of last week. Everything looks great!! YEAH!!!
Our little one waves hello.
Little noses are the cutest.
Those little feet kick harder everyday.
Our little one waves hello.
Little noses are the cutest.
Those little feet kick harder everyday.
Wednesday, January 9, 2008
Tuesday, January 8, 2008
We started science!!
Today was our first day of science using Exploring Creation Zoology 1: The Flying Creatures of the Fifth Day. Overall, I think it went very well. Maintaining their attention for the reading took a bit of effort, but then again how interesting is it to talk about what zoology means and classifying animals. The girls declared the booklet I created fun. Jessie only need a few hints to fill in the information (mostly of the names of the different classification groups). Violet needed a bit more help both remembering the information and writing it down, but she didn't complain while we worked (which is always a good sign). Benny.... Well Benny watched the men cutting tree branches around the power line in our front yard most of the time and interrupted several times to inform the girls what they were doing. On the other hand, what else can you expect from a 3yo boy. It's not every day there's so much to watch out the window. I'm sure Thursday will go a bit more smoothly without all of the commotion in the front yard.
Monday, January 7, 2008
Catching up on planning
Before I plan anymore for next year (aka while I'm looking for used curriculum), I know that I still need to finish planning for this year. My current to do list:
Geography
State booklets for Minnesota to Wyoming still need to be printed and assembled.
Determine how big the lapbook bases need to be and assemble.
History
Currently prereading books up through topic 31 on Daniel Boone.
Preread and choose books for topics 32 to 51.
Schedule books from topics 17-51.
Choose and print timeline figures and booklet figures for this week through the end of the year.
Plan out and print map work for remainder of the year.
Science
Read from chapter 4 to the end taking notes.
Create booklets for chapters 4 to end.
Print booklets for lessons 2 to the end.
Geography
State booklets for Minnesota to Wyoming still need to be printed and assembled.
Determine how big the lapbook bases need to be and assemble.
History
Currently prereading books up through topic 31 on Daniel Boone.
Preread and choose books for topics 32 to 51.
Schedule books from topics 17-51.
Choose and print timeline figures and booklet figures for this week through the end of the year.
Plan out and print map work for remainder of the year.
Science
Read from chapter 4 to the end taking notes.
Create booklets for chapters 4 to end.
Print booklets for lessons 2 to the end.
Friday, January 4, 2008
Week 18: A short week, but a good start
I had intended to start up on Monday and run a full school week, but I decided instead to catch up on a few things around the house Monday and Tuesday. Overall, our shortened week went very well (with only a few groans about having to do school work). Although we haven't tried the whole schedule yet, the portions that we have used seem to be working very well. We'll see how next we goes when everything gets added back in the loop.
MATH
Both of the girls did 3 days of math work this week. Jessie spent two days working with and converting between pounds and ounces. This morning she started the weight section of the Intensive Practice book. I did get a good silent chuckle out of the first page she did this morning. Problem one wanted her to match up a person or object on the left with an estimated weight on the right. She matched up a man with just over 300 ounces and a
watermelon with 160 pounds. (Can you imagine one that big?) We worked through the problem together ranking the column in the left in order from lightest to heaviest. Then I just had to tell her that pound was a lot closer to a kilogram than a gram, and she did fine. In Miquon, she is working on another section of fractions. (The only Miquon section known to cause tears and frustration at this point.) I had to help her convert a couple of fraction but on the whole it went much better than it ever has.
Violet started back in the Singapore 1B section on addition and subtraction within 100 which we are working through a second time before moving through to the next book. So far she hasn't needed my help and has finished quickly with only a couple of careless mistakes. It may not take us as long to review this section as I had thought, but we'll just continue to play it by ear for a couple of weeks. She did finish up her Miquon Red book today and is excited to have a new book to start next week.
LANGUAGE ARTS
We did do some combining in language arts this week to put in a full week of work. Jessie did a weeks worth of spelling, grammar, and CW in 3 days. She did get a week off from Latin, no new memory work, and no literature this week. For handwriting, we did one day of copywork with some spelling words and two days of dictation which I thought went very well. Violet also did a full week of
spelling, but only 3 days worth of copywork. (One day of which came straight from the VeggieTales video that Benny was watching.) She still hasn't made connections in her memory work between the reference for her Bible verses and the verses themselves. I'm really not sure what to do with her Bible memory work at this point.
HISTORY / GEOGRAPHY
History and geography were both very laid back this week. For history we read a couple of short books on woodland indians just for fun. Geography we just did part of the Maine booklet. We'll wait until next week to add in science.
ART / MUSIC
I spared DH, who had the entire week off, from listening to the Classical Kids Bach tape since he is not a classical music fan. We'll start that up again next week when he goes back to work. The only art that the girls did was to draw on the new easel from Grandma which is down in the basement. I'm going to try to move most of the art supplies down there this weekend and set up a little art area over in the corner (at least for the messier things like playdough and paint).
BENNY'S PRESCHOOL
Benny and I did 2 days of preschool this week. He still loves playing with the numbered cups. One day I decided to try putting the snap cubes in the cups instead of the game chips that we've been using. It turns out that he had a harder time counting with them all snapped together. He's recognizing all of the number from 1-7 now but doesn't want to take the time to count out the chips for 5-7. We'll work on this more next week. He's making progress with the alphabet. We're still learning G and H, but at least now I can ask if the letter is a G or an H and he can pick the correct answer. No pictures this week for Benny. I think we'll pull out some new letter games for next week to make things more interesting.
MATH
Both of the girls did 3 days of math work this week. Jessie spent two days working with and converting between pounds and ounces. This morning she started the weight section of the Intensive Practice book. I did get a good silent chuckle out of the first page she did this morning. Problem one wanted her to match up a person or object on the left with an estimated weight on the right. She matched up a man with just over 300 ounces and a
watermelon with 160 pounds. (Can you imagine one that big?) We worked through the problem together ranking the column in the left in order from lightest to heaviest. Then I just had to tell her that pound was a lot closer to a kilogram than a gram, and she did fine. In Miquon, she is working on another section of fractions. (The only Miquon section known to cause tears and frustration at this point.) I had to help her convert a couple of fraction but on the whole it went much better than it ever has.Violet started back in the Singapore 1B section on addition and subtraction within 100 which we are working through a second time before moving through to the next book. So far she hasn't needed my help and has finished quickly with only a couple of careless mistakes. It may not take us as long to review this section as I had thought, but we'll just continue to play it by ear for a couple of weeks. She did finish up her Miquon Red book today and is excited to have a new book to start next week.
LANGUAGE ARTS
We did do some combining in language arts this week to put in a full week of work. Jessie did a weeks worth of spelling, grammar, and CW in 3 days. She did get a week off from Latin, no new memory work, and no literature this week. For handwriting, we did one day of copywork with some spelling words and two days of dictation which I thought went very well. Violet also did a full week of
spelling, but only 3 days worth of copywork. (One day of which came straight from the VeggieTales video that Benny was watching.) She still hasn't made connections in her memory work between the reference for her Bible verses and the verses themselves. I'm really not sure what to do with her Bible memory work at this point.HISTORY / GEOGRAPHY
History and geography were both very laid back this week. For history we read a couple of short books on woodland indians just for fun. Geography we just did part of the Maine booklet. We'll wait until next week to add in science.
ART / MUSIC
I spared DH, who had the entire week off, from listening to the Classical Kids Bach tape since he is not a classical music fan. We'll start that up again next week when he goes back to work. The only art that the girls did was to draw on the new easel from Grandma which is down in the basement. I'm going to try to move most of the art supplies down there this weekend and set up a little art area over in the corner (at least for the messier things like playdough and paint).
BENNY'S PRESCHOOL
Benny and I did 2 days of preschool this week. He still loves playing with the numbered cups. One day I decided to try putting the snap cubes in the cups instead of the game chips that we've been using. It turns out that he had a harder time counting with them all snapped together. He's recognizing all of the number from 1-7 now but doesn't want to take the time to count out the chips for 5-7. We'll work on this more next week. He's making progress with the alphabet. We're still learning G and H, but at least now I can ask if the letter is a G or an H and he can pick the correct answer. No pictures this week for Benny. I think we'll pull out some new letter games for next week to make things more interesting.
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