US History – Arrival of the First People

We finally were able to start our US History Study.

I started by helping the kids understand the concept of history and how things can change over time.  Georgie is pretty good with this concept since he often mentions how there weren’t computers when mom and dad were young.  

We’ve had a timeline up over our fireplace for a few months and we added some family dates to it.  Starting with the most recent, we worked our way backwards from Vicki’s birth in 2007, all the way to Pop-pop Nelson’s birth in 1933.

Next we read the book Then and Now, and discussed the different ways things have changed.  When we started reading the book, George noticed the chimney sweep and observed “It’s like Charles Dickens time!”.  He learned about Charles Dickens from reading one of his Magic Tree House books (A Ghost Tale for Christmas Time).  I’m glad to see he is retaining something from his reading and is able to apply that knowledge.

My version of the book is from 1990, so we also had fun pointing out all the things that are currently different from the Now pages.  George mainly noticed the television was much bigger (thicker) than ours are (we have all flat screens), and there were no computers.  I pointed out the big boom box radios instead of modern mp3 players.

We discussed all the different ways that we know about what is was like in recent history including stories passed down in families, writings, and photographs.  We then discussed how we knew about history farther back in time.  Since it hasn’t been that long since we did prehistory, George had a few suggestions but we still read through the “What is Archeology?” section from Story of the World.

We read from The Complete Book of United States History, “People Arrive in the Americas”, which discussed the land bridge that possibly allowed people to come across the Bering Strait during the last Ice Age.

At the end of the lesson, it suggested doing a research project on Ice Age animals.  Since I’m pretty comfortable with Georgie’s ability to do Internet research (and I didn’t want to let him near the computer until we had done everything else I wanted to accomplish), I had him use the Magic Tree House Fact Tracker – Sabertooths and the Ice Age to get information on Sabertooth tigers and Wooly Mammoths.

He looked up a few facts on each that we then wrote on index cards. 

Wooly mammoths:
-over 4,500 frozen mammoths have been discovered in Siberia
-belong to the elephant family
-were found in Siberia, Europe, and North America
-had long, shaggy hair that could get as much as 3 feet long

Sabertooth tigers:
-were big, fierce cats
-named for their large canine teeth shaped like sabers (swords)
-these teeth could get about 9 inches long
-the most common type is called Smilodon.

I pulled out our globe to show the kids where the Bering Strait is located.  Since all our maps are oriented so that Alaska and Russia are on opposite sides, the globe  made it much easier to see how close they really are.   The kids grabbed some of the toys from our Prehistoric Life toob and had the mammoth and sabertooth tiger  marching across the land bridge and fighting the cavemen for food.

I also pulled out “The First People Arrive in America” map from our Scholastic Interactive 3-D Maps: American History.  I didn’t actually put the map together to be 3D since the kids had the toob figures.  While they played with the map, I asked them some questions about our lesson from the “Teaching with the Map” section. 

We finished up by watching a short video about the arrival of the first peoples from The McGraw-Hill video library and playing the Ice Age Challenge game at the Simon Fraser University Museum of Archeology and Ethnology site.

Over the next few weeks (months?) we will continue our US History studies by learning about Native Americans.

Weekly Wrap-up

We are definitely getting into a good groove with school.   This week we found a new social outlet for Georgie, did a science unit on one of our project days, and completed all three days of core subjects. Well, except we still haven’t (re)started spanish, literature, music or art.

On Sunday, we found the perfect social opportunity for George -  Pokemon League!   Georgie has been into Pokemon for slightly over a year but only recently has become interested in learning to play the card game by the rules.   Last Sunday he went to his first league meeting.  He played about 7 rounds against slightly older kids who helped him out with the rules.   He played nice, didn’t whine when he lost, and had a great time.

For Science this week, we explored Magnets.  More on that can be seen here.

 

I’ve been trying to find some more books for Georgie to read.  He only has 4 more Magic Tree House Merlin Missions until he’s finished all the currently published ones.  They are currently on order at my local library so by the end of next week, he should be done.   Although, there is a chance that Georgie may not have read all the earlier Magic Tree House books we have (he’s being very vague on that point).    So far I have gotten him to try Bailey School Kids and Wayside School.   He’s not sure if he likes either but he was willing to give them a try.  Since he reads for an hour every night, I really need to find something for him.

For our second project day, we played a few of our board games.   One of my favorites is Very Silly Sentences.   This game is easy for both kids to play without either of them being bored or needing too much assistance, and both of them learning.  Georgie can get reinforcement on parts of speech, while Vicki practices some reading.   Unfortunately the flimsy cardboard die that comes with the game has been very abused, resulting in it landing on preposition every second or third roll.  I decided to take one of the 12 sided die from our Math Dice set and color 6 sides to match our Silly Sentences die.

LANGUAGE ARTS

Vicki

Vicki did three pages from Handwriting without Tears (pg 15, 16, 17) and practiced writing her name this week.  When she takes it seriously and really tries, she’s getting pretty good at her name.  Unfortunately, that isn’t too common.

She is still working through Explode the Code 1.   We were up to pg 44, but I realized this week that we had accidentally skipped a few pages.  So this week she did pages 21 through 24 and 44 to 47.   I let her do however many pages she wants in ETC, whether that is none or 10.

We are up to Lesson 36 in Ordinary Parents Guide to Reading.  She’s doing very well and can usually read all the words with little prompting.   I set up her sentence pad this week for her to review at random times.  Each week it will be changed to reflect the words that were learned the previous week.

We added more words to her word book and read through all the words that were already there.

We played the Character Uno that I downloaded from Kelly’s Kindergarten.    The original cards are “Sight Words Uno” but the thing I love is that these are in a Word file and the words can be changed.  I updated the file with the words Vicki has learned up until now.

GEORGE

All About Spelling – Georgie worked though Step 13, 14 and 15.   When doing Step 14 he said his mouth was too tired and he decided he wanted to write the words down.   He’s getting much better with the quantity of writing he’s willing to do.

He did pages 34, 35 and 36 in Handwriting without Tears. 

He did pages 46-51 in Spectrum Language Arts which covered quotation marks, colons in time, and abbreviations.

In Spectrum Writing we covered choosing a main topic.

He read Frogs are not Toads from Evan Moor Read and Understand with Leveled Texts, 4th grade.  He’s getting better at these reading comprehension assignments.  I love that they introduce a lot of new vocabulary and cover things such as homonyms, synonyms and alphabetizing.  He does still complain if the selection is more than 2 pages long.

MATH

Vicki

Vicki is continuing to do well with Math Mammoth 1A.   She does one page a day and this week we did pages 23-25.  I’m considering starting her with time and see how she does.

She is also doing one page from Evan Moor Skill Sharpeners Math – Kindergarten.  These are pretty easy for her but they cover different topics like graphing and subtraction, while MM is currently all addition.

She practiced addition in a variety of ways this week.  
-using a Bubble Gum Bingo board from our Scholastic 15 Fun and Easy Games for Young Learners: Reading.  It is a blank board that can be used for letters or numbers.  I filled in the 11 gum balls with numbers between 2 and 12.  Vicki rolled two numbered dice and colored in the gum ball with the resulting sum.  This was a big hit and she even said “I love this game!”.
-using playing cards, we each flipped over a card and she added the numbers together or we worked on one set of facts by flipping over cards and adding each one to the same number.

We played around with her 100’s chart.  I would point to a number and ask her what it was, then I asked what is “one more than 34?” or “ten more than 67?”  She did very well and enjoyed it quite a bit.

GEORGE

George is continuing along in Math Mammoth 3A and 3B doing a variety of topics.  This week he did 3A – pages 149 (money), pg 66-68 (order of operations), pg 131 (time) and 3B – pg 23 (borrowing), pg 155-156 (fractions).

We are continuing to slowly work through Beast Academy 3A.  We started the chapter on skip counting this week (after skipping most of polynomials).

George is continuing to enjoy his puzzles from Algebra Readiness Made Easy Grade 3 and I started giving him pages from Addition and Subtraction Riddles again to give him further practice with borrowing and carrying (since this seems to be something he forgets quickly when it’s not reviewed).

George has been doing practice drills on paper and using Xtra Math on the computer.  While these drills should be fairly quick, he played games to make them more interesting.  This weeks page had three columns.  He started at the bottom of each column and pretended it was a challenge.  The first column was climbing to the top of the mountain, the second was a worm trying to get up a hill and the third was a raccoon climbing up a tree.

Next week we will have a 4-H field trip, work on some US History, and hopefully get started with spanish, art, music, and literature.

Magnets

We did a quick science unit this week on magnets.  We used pieces from the Evan Moor Giant Science Resource Book, Evan Moor Science Experiments for Young Learners, and this magnet kit from Lakeshore Learning.

We started by discussing how magnets have poles, and that like poles repel while opposite poles attract.  We took two bar magnets (actually from our rock and mineral test kit), tried to push them together, and felt the resistance when we tried to touch the same poles.

Next we tested a variety of objects to see if they were magnetic.  We had paper clips, binder rings, a key, crayon, pencil, pompom, button, chalk, bobby pin, and nail.

We then added a few more metal objects – coins, tacks, and a piece of aluminum foil – and discovered that not all metal objects are magnetic.

Next we tested the strength of our various magnets.   Using an experiment sheet from the Lakeshore kit, we placed a magnet at one end of a ruler, then slowly pushed a binder ring closer and closer until it was drawn to the magnet.  We found our large bar magnet was the strongest and our ring magnet was the weakest, at least when it was laid down on one side.  When stood upright so one of the poles faced the ring, it was much stronger.  This led into a discussion about how the poles of a magnet were the strongest part.

We discussed how the earth is a giant magnet and that a compass worked by being attracted to the North Pole.

We put a magnet close to the compass and watched how the needle swung around.

We tested our magnets to see if they could make things move through various materials, such as paper, cloth, a wood popsicle stick and a glass.

We finished up with reading two books about magnets, the guidebook that came with our Lakeshore Learning kit and the Let’s Read and Find Out What Makes a Magnet?

Both books had good information in them.  What Makes a Magnet? is more of an experiment book than informational.  If you are not prepared to pull out a bunch of stuff and do the experiments, it’s probably not a good first choice to read.  We skimmed through a lot of it since we had just completed the experiments.

The Magnets book from our kit was more descriptive but was a little dated.  My kids didn’t know what the picture of a video tape was. 

Weekly Wrap-up

Our FIRST Weekly Wrap-up of 2013!  We had a fun, busy, productive first week back.   

I believe part of our productivity was due to some changes I made to our set-up.   Rearranging seems like a constant, ongoing process here, but I think I may have finally found an arrangement that will work long-term.  One of my goals with this new set-up was to have dedicated spaces for the kids to do school.  Spaces that were not used for anything else, so they wouldn’t need to be cleaned off or moved in order to do school.

First, we moved back into the living room.  The living room offers us more options for hanging posters, maps and timelines, and more shelves to store supplies, manipulatives and games.   I used two height-adjustable folding tables we already had (and had used in the past by setting them up each day), and set them up on either side of the fireplace.   I then replaced their folding office boards with bulletin boards that hang over the tables.  This will make swapping out information easier.

Vicki has her name, typed on HWT-style lines, the HWT alphabet and number guide, a hundred chart with the even numbers highlighted, and a guide to show the difference between b and d.   I also plan to post any words she is working on each week.  (the 4 small objects hanging at the top of her board are Shrinky-Dinks).

Georgie has his full name on HWT-style lines, the HWT letter and number guide, a place value chart, a multiplication chart, a hundreds chart, the days of the week and months of the year, and some grammar hints.   Our flip-over date cards also sit at the top of his board.

I also changed the format of our week.  I felt like we had too many weeks where we didn’t get to our fun subjects – science, history/geography, art, music, literature.  So, I decided to do a bit of a block schedule.  On Monday, Wednesday and Friday we will do all our Math and Language Arts subjects, as well as Spanish (all three days), Literature (Monday), Art (Wednesday) and Music (Friday).  On Tuesdays and Thursdays we will do Science or History/Geography or have a game day or have a project day or have a field trip day.  Since our 4-H meetings are on Tuesdays, this will make planning easier and hopefully things will be postponed less often.

I already found an extra benefit to this plan – when Georgie took too long finishing up his work on Monday this wee, he was able to finish it first thing in the morning on Tuesday.  This kept my plan from getting to off track and may actually allow me to plan farther ahead.

Of course, this was our first week back, and we had 4-H and a playdate this week, so we didn’t actually get to any of the fun subjects.  But, we did get to every bit of the math and language arts I had planned, so it was all good.

So, what did we actually do this week?  First the fun stuff….

We had a 4-H Cloverbud meeting where we had some Photography fun, including a dress-up photo shoot.  More can be seen about that here.

Also for fun this week, I introduced the kids to Shrinky Dinks!  Both of them received different kits for Christmas – Vicki’s was a forest jewelry set and Georgie’s was a monster set.    Vicki loved watching them curl up and shrink in the toaster oven.

As for our regular school work….

LANGUAGE ARTS

Vicki

Vicki no longer has her word wall so I made her a word book.  Each page has a grid with a box for each letter.  When we add new words Vicki will add a post-it note to the correct box.  Each day she will read through the words already there as review.

HWT – pg 12, 13 and 14; wet/dry/try name on blackboard

ETC – pg 37 through 43, which brings us to short /u/ words.

OPGTR – Lesson 36

We are still using the Hubbard’s Cupboard emergent readers, and I downloaded the I See Sam readers onto my tablet to get a little more variety in our practice reading.

George

Georgie is doing very well with reading.  Mostly Magic Tree House books read at bedtime.  He has currently read through book 42 or 43, at a pace on one every night.    Since he is reading them fairly quickly, and I haven’t had a chance to make a trip up to my favorite used book store in Connecticut, I’ve started checking them out of the library for him.  We picked up the latest batch Tuesday when we were there for our 4-H meeting.   And while I was setting up the room and we were waiting for everyone else to arrive, Georgie sat down and immediately started reading.

Georgie….sitting still….and reading….voluntarily….in the middle of the day.  A real milestone for him.

AAS – we are up to Step 12.  He has been able to spell all the words so far on the first try.  Since he is evidently a pretty natural speller, after we finish AAS2, we may switch to Evan Moor Building Spelling Skills since I already have the Teacher’s File Box and I can try out lists with him until we hit words he doesn’t already know.  (after a post on TWTM forums, I discovered he was able to spell squalid).

HWT – pg 31-33.  He’s getting slightly better at writing neatly, and on the lines properly. 

Spectrum – We are continuing along in our Language Arts (Grammar) and Writing workbooks.  Once we finish these I think we are going to switch to the Scott Foresman Grammar and Writing Handbook.   I like how it has both Grammar and Writing in one book and they work together.

Reading Comprehension – we are continuing to use Evan Moor Read and Understand with Leveled Texts.  He is doing much better with the Grade 4 texts than he was before the holiday break.

MATH

Vicki

Vicki is doing one page from Evan Moor Skill Sharpeners Math Kindergarten and one page from Math Mammoth 1A each day.   We’ve also been doing addition drills using numbered dice and playing cards.

George is doing 2 or 3 pages from various chapters in Math Mammoth 3A or 3B each day, along with 1 page from Beast Academy 3A.   We also do some drill to help him build speed with his addition facts, using flash cards, dice or playing cards.

He still LOVES his Algebra Readiness Made Easy puzzles and I plan to bring back his Addition and Subtraction Riddles (both from Scholastic) so he can continue practicing carrying and borrowing as we move further into multiplication.

Next week I’m hoping to add in our extra subjects, along with more games.

4-H Cloverbuds – Photography

We had some photography fun at Cloverbuds this week.  

We started out talking about cameras, how they work, and learning some hints for taking good pictures – not moving the camera until the picture is captured, not putting a finger or anything else in front of the lens, etc.  

I have an old 35mm camera that I showed the kids and told them all about how way back when we couldn’t see our pictures as soon as we took them, we’d have to use up a whole roll of film, and send it to be developed.  Sometimes we had to wait days or even a week to get our photos.   The kids decided they definitely preferred digital cameras.

The kids then had a great time with a costume photo shoot.  I bought a bunch of our dress-up stuff and my old camera – a Canon Power Shoot with titanium case.  Sturdy, drop-proof and easy to use, so perfect for a bunch of 5 to 7 year olds to use.  We have a pretty decent selection of dress-up stuff - Steph’s old dance costumes, some animal costumes made by Grammy Kaye, hats, gloves, mardi gras beads.  The kids had a great time dressing up, getting their pictures taken, then taking pictures of the next model in line.

After the photo shoot, they made picture frames using foam, popsicle sticks, foam stickers and markers….

and had the chance to look at their photos on the computer.

In two weeks we’ll have our photography field trip – a mall scavenger hunt.

Our Christmas Fun….so far

I finally had success with shaving cream/glue puffy paints!  Last year we had a pitiful mess of flaking, smooshable, FLAT goo but this year….SUCCESS!

Look at that lovely, puffy snowflake.

I guess I wouldn’t say this was any less messy than last year but Vicki had a great time.  Evidently the secret is to make sure you use enough glue.  The “recipe” calls for 1/2 glue, 1/2 shaving cream but it’s really hard to measure when the cream foams up and the glue doesn’t.  Vicki chose a lovey brass-colored glitter to add.

Meanwhile, Georgie had no interest in playing with sticky white muck so I introduced him to fuse beads.   I had a bucket full from when Steph was younger.

Georgie made a star that he decided to hang on the wall of his room instead of the tree.  I made a heart and then made him a Pikachu.  Our bucket of fuse beads is mostly pastels and neons, so I’m going to have to gets some more blacks and primary colors before I can make any other Pokemon.

Vicki and I also made some Christmas sugar cookies this week.  Georgie wasn’t interested in helping – since he doesn’t eat sugar cookies, he didn’t want to make sugar cookies.   I may try and talk him into making some cookies with his two favorite things - Hershey Kisses and  peanut butter.

 

Weekly Wrap-Up

We had a good but short week.   We will keep plugging away as much as we can even though the holidays, although I am going to try and throw in some more fun stuff.

HANDWRITING

Vicki was very excited to start her Handwriting without Tears kindergarten level book “Letters and Numbers for Me” this week.    She proudly wrote her name on the cover and started right in.   She still needs quite a bit of work writing on the lines.  

She still enjoys using the lined chalkboard with small chalk pieces and little sponges to practice.  I’ll write something, she then uses a small wet sponge to go over each letter, then dries it and writes it herself.  HWT refers to this as “wet/dry/try”.  We are mostly practicing her name this way.

Georgie is doing one page a day in his Handwriting without Tears 2nd grade book.  The smaller lines and full pages make this all he can handle with good technique and careful formation, at least for now.   He has been doing more of the writing in his Spectrum Writing workbook (for some reason he likes writing in that book) and even some math.

LANGUAGE ARTS

Vicki has moved on to short /i/ words in Explode the Code.   She still enjoys ETC and will do between 2 and 6 pages a day.  I let her do however many pages she wants to do and let her quit when she’s had enough.  She usually writes this herself so gets tired faster than she might if she let me do the writing.

We are up to Lesson 35 in Ordinary Parents Guide to Teaching Reading.  When we reach blends in a few lessons, we may take a break and just review and work on fluency.  She usually sounds out the words one letter at a time but is getting slightly faster at putting them together into a smooth recitation after.   I wasn’t ready this week with a print-out so she did Lessons 34 and 35 right out of the book.  She didn’t seem to mind this like Georgie did when he used OPGTR, so that will make things easier (for me).   We are still using the Hubbard’s Cupboard booklets for practice and next week we are going to give Hop on Pop a try.

The only phonics Georgie is still doing is All About Spelling 2.  We are up to Step 9 and he is continuing to have no trouble spelling any of the words.  I’m not sure he is actually utilizing the rules but I will continue demonstrating them in the hopes he is retaining at least some of the information.

We are having a little trouble finding a good place for the magnetic board when we are working in the kitchen.  I had it leaning on Georgie’s chair but he didn’t want his barefeet on the cold tile floor so he perched on the edge of the seat.  It actually worked fairly well but I’m not sure that is the way we will continue.

We spent time reviewing commas and adjectives outside of our Spectrum workbooks this week.   I found some extra practice pages from Evan-Moor Teachers File Box and The Learning Page.  He’s definitely getting more comfortable with writing since on The Learning Page worksheet all he had to do was write 5 words to describe a storm.  Instead he wrote 5 full sentences, “The storm is LOUD”, “The storm is big", “The storm is dark”, “The storm is wet”.  Of course, he had to yell when reading “LOUD”.  Not overly creative but he seems to understand adjectives finally.

Reading Comprehension is still a mixed bag.  Some of the selections (from Evan-Moor Read and Understand with Leveled Texts, Grade 4) he reads right through, answers the questions easily, and moves right along.  Others, he scans the text then takes random guesses at the questions.   I have found that he isn’t ready to answer questions that require a lot of deduction from the text instead of the answers being clear.  After the holidays, I’m hoping to do some literature units where we can discuss actual books.

In Spectrum Writing, he is working through the stages and tools for writing – brainstorming, word webs, etc.   Their suggestion for a web was “Foods I Like to Eat”.  Not a great topic for Georgie since there are very few foods he likes to eat.  But, we managed to get through the assignments.  Next week he will work on writing his own paragraphs and I will probably let him type them up on the computer.  Observing him lately he types using both hands, all 10 fingers and at a decent speed.

MATH

Vicki has been getting bored with her kindergarten math.  She decided to mimic her brother and declare them “too easy” this week.  I took a look through the math suggestions in What Your Kindergartener Needs to Know and some of what would be coming up, and decided that she may be ready to start Math Mammoth 1A.    Next week we will give that a try and see how she does.  Since she is starting right at the beginning and definitely doesn’t have Georgie’s affinity for math, I think we’ll probably be able to just proceed through the chapters in order.

George is doing great with his 5 million different math activities each day. 

He still loves the Algebra Readiness Made Easy puzzles but it looks like the current ones are too easy since he finishes them in about 30 seconds.  We are still at the beginning of the 3rd grade book and I think it gets harder as it goes along so I may need to jump farther into the book.  I’ve also been looking at some other logic books, such as grid puzzles, that I think he may enjoy.

He did slightly more of the writing than is usual for him this week in Math Mammoth.  In one case he actually chose to do math while I was working with Vicki instead of waiting for me like he usually does.   Another set of problems – borrowing over zeros from 3B – I wasn’t sure how to have him explain it to me so I could write it for him while still making sure he understood it.  I did copy the problems larger onto separate sheets of paper so they were easy to work with, especially having to cross off and borrow from multiple digits.

He thought this meant he would only have to do four problems since I wrote a problem on each side of a page folded in half.  When I told him I would just get another piece of paper he said “Drats, I knew mommy would know a way around that”.   But, since he was able to answer all four of the problems I gave him without hesitation I didn’t give him anymore off that page.   He is currently doing 3 pages from 3A or 3B each day.

He is working on Beast Academy 3A as well.  We are only up to the second section, on quadrilaterals, but he is doing a lot better understanding.  He had some trouble when we were doing the triangle section and I thought he might not be ready for the very different approach of BA, but for some reason the quadrilaterals are coming much easier to him.   We will continue doing this very slowly as a supplement.

I’ve also started running through flashcards with him at the end of school.  He is great with understanding concepts but is not quick with facts.  So, we are doing drills of addition and subtraction to build up his speed.  Eventually we will move onto multiplication.  He doesn’t seem as resistant to flashcards as he used to be, as long as I let him have the cards after he answers them correctly.  That makes it into a game for him.

OTHER

Once Vicki is done with her work each day, she usually does Play-doh while I work with Georgie.  This week I did get her to make some foam Christmas ornaments we had from last year.  She actually followed the picture on some of these and put them together according to her directions.  Most of them had her own unique touches though.

I’ve gone back and forth on various methods of organization, and various strategies for work flow over the past couple years.   I think I may have finally hit upon something that will work. 

Georgie really likes to see how much work he has to do each day.  He likes being able to see what he should do on his own and what he can wait until I come help him.  He likes to talk constantly as he does his work, and he likes to put his worksheets right in my face to check them over the second he is done with them, even though this is usually the time when I am working with Vicki.  The constant talking isn’t really a problem since he doesn’t expect an answer and it doesn’t seem to bother Vicki at all.  He is just discussing every single thing he is doing, what he thinks about it, and how it’s going.   The shoving things at me and expecting an immediate response IS a problem.

He really liked his binder where he had a clear division between his independent work and what he did with me.   But we now use a bunch of workbooks that I can’t pull apart for binders, and we sometimes had trouble with him not knowing what to do with “independent” work that he actually needed help with.

So, here is what I’m going to try:

     

a very loosely interpreted workbox system from plastic magazine holders.  In one is all his independent work, in the other is all the things we usually do together.  Things that are borderline I am putting in the “Go Ahead” bin and if he feels he needs help, he can move it into the other bin.   Anything he finishes and wants me to look over, he can put in the “Stop” bin and I will go over it with him (which usually means me checking the answers and saying “you’re right, good job”).  If he finishes his “Go Ahead” work before I finish with Vicki, also in there are his composition notebook for free writing, his How to Draw Pokemon book and a couple Draw, Write, Now books.  These will be clipped together and have a note saying only to do them if mom is still working with Vicki, although I will try to make sure he gets to these at least a couple times a week.

Also in the “Go Ahead” bin is a checklist written in Sharpie marker on a laminated page (so it won’t smear but can be removed with alcohol) that he can check-off things as he finishes them.  I don’t know if he’ll like the checklist, but since he’s always asking how many things are left when we are doing school, I thought it was worth a try.

Vicki is also getting her own version of a workbox.  Just hanging file folders in a file crate we already had.  This will make it easier for me to put together things I want her to work on beyond workbooks, like manipulatives and games, and sits on the bench seat next to where she sits for school.