Big Changes Coming

It’s been a really long time since I posted but I have a good reason.  :-)

I recently returned to work.  Full time, out of the house, Monday through Friday work.  A too good to turn down job basically fell into my lap when I wasn’t even looking.   It all happened very quickly – a phone call on Tuesday, an interview on Wednesday and starting work on Thursday.  

We will continue to homeschool but we are taking some time to work out routines and plans and catch our breath.

The plan so far:

Grammy Kaye is watching the kids during the day.  I wouldn’t be able to work and homeschool without her help.

The kids are doing Time4Learning while they are at Grammy’s house during the day.  Vicki is doing 1st grade, while Georgie is doing 3rd grade.   Time4Learning is nice because they can work at their own pace, and even work in different grade levels for each subject (one up and one down from their core grade).  We initially started Georgie in 4th grade math since that’s where he’s working in Math Mammoth, but the difference in format along with the different scope and sequence were giving him a lot of trouble.  He is now moving fast through the 3rd grade math.

They will also do independent reading while at Grammy’s house.  George has been doing great with his reading lately.  He finished Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, 3 Diary of a Wimpy Kids books (he read them more than once, really likes these), a couple Pokemon books, and he is currently working on The Wind in the Willows.

In the evenings we will do “homework”, which will consist of handwriting, educational games, some activities from The Wand and possibly some AAR for Vicki, since she tends to give Grammy the most trouble with these subjects.  Georgie is very good at doing his work independently so his homework will consist of logic puzzles (which he needs help with), writing activities (The Arrow and I’m thinking of getting WWE), and maybe we’ll continue with Math Mammoth and let T4L be mainly a supplement/review.

We will do Science, History, and Geography on Saturdays.  

I’m hoping to sign them up for classes for Phys Ed (martial arts, swimming lessons), Art and Music.

It may be a few more weeks before I’m back to regularly posting (and probably that long before we actually start those Saturday topics).  I’m still adjusting to working, and working on getting the house reorganized for our new plans.

4-H Cultural Awareness/Asian Adventure

Our latest 4-H theme was cultural awareness, and we started by visiting The Newark Museum for their Asian Awareness guided tour.  Our tour guide was AMAZING!  She had just the right touch of firmness to keep the group under control and moving along.

We started with Japan, when our tour guide put on a beautiful kimono…..

 

 

and we saw an exhibit of beautiful carves cases, and ornaments (called Netsuke when worn from the obi, or belt for the kimono).

In the China exhibits, we saw a beautiful garden carved from semi-precious stones and metal.

We moved onto the Southeast Asia exhibits, where George was fascinated by the Dharmachakra or Wheel of Law (from Thailand)….

 

and a statue of the Hindu God, Ganesha.

The museum has a Buddhist temple that was Consecrated by the fourteenth Dalai Lama.   Our tour guide explained to the kids about being respectful, about the different types of offerings (offerings are intended to be pleasing to the five senses and would include food, flowers, incense, lamps and music).

Next we visited the Look/Touch/Learn: Tibet exhibit.   The exhibit features a mural (by Tibetan Artist Phuntsok Dorje (that depicts various aspects of life in Tibet).

The kids were able to check out a small Tibetan tent…

play a pretend tea ceremony…..

and spin a Buddhist prayer wheel.

After our official tour was over, we checked out a bunch of the other exhibits, including the Egyptian…

the Native American….

the Dynamic Earth, which was full of interactive exhibits and games….

  

Generation Fit, another interactive exhibits with exercise equipment, health information, and Just Dance!

   

We finished up with a visit to the Fire Museum, which featured an interactive exhibit where the kids searched for fire hazards, learned what to do to escape a fire, saw the actual results of a fire on some vinyl siding.  In addition, there was historic protective clothing, equipment, illustrations and memorabilia, an 1853 Fire Hose Cart built for the Neptune Hose Company No. 1 of Newark, and a piece of the World Trade Center to honor the NJ Firefighters who assisted on 9/11.

 

The Museum was a great place to visit.  I can’t believe we are less than an hour away and have never visited before.  We will be going back again (actually this month to visit the planetarium) to further explore.

If you live in the area or are visiting NJ, check out The Newark Museum.  I highly recommend it!

 

When we met at the library, we learned more about Japan, India and China. 

First we discussed some of the various holidays they celebrated in those countries, that we don’t celebrate.  We learned about Children’s Day and Doll’s Day in Japan, Chinese New Year in China (and learned which animal each of the kids are in the Chinese Zodiac), and Diwali and Holi in India.

We learned how to say Hello in the primary language of each country (konnichi wa – Japan, Nin Hao – China, Namaste – India).

We discussed how chopsticks were used to eat in China and Japan, and the kids tried picking up pompoms using chopsticks.

For the first time I utilized the overhead projector and the kids danced to Katti Kalandal – the Bollywood style dance in Just Dance 2. (I tried to find something more authentic but most were not appropriate for children).

We talked about Rangoli, the traditional Indian folk art designs that are displayed on the floor of the house near the doorway to welcome guests and celebrate special events.  Rangoli are usually symmetrical designs made with colored rice powder, but we made ours out of fuse beads (and not so symmetrical).  

Our next 4-H topic (for July, this post is really late), is Space and will include a visit to the planetarium at the Newark Museum.

Long Over-due Wrap-Up

It’s been a month since I did a weekly wrap-up.  We have continued to do some school during that time (including our 4-H Global Awareness activities and field trip, which I will blog about next), but we’ve also finished planting the garden, enjoying some of the summer weather, getting to know some of the babies that have joined our birds (we appear to have a young cardinal, downy woodpecker, and bluebird) and just relaxing. 

I’ve also been working on (once again) rearranging things.  The kids will be doing school with a sitter a couple times a week (either Granny Kaye or Big Sis Stephanie) but we never know which days until the weekend before.  So, I’ve been working on figuring out a system that will work well both at home with me and with someone else, possibly at a different location.   I ended up making just a few minor changes. 

Georgie was already working out of a weekly binder for his math and language arts and his set-up hasn’t changed.  

The big change will be for Vicki.  She now has her own weekly binder that holds her math pages, and handwriting page or a note about what page she should do in her HWT book, the fluency pages from AAR and also for AAR, a plastic page from a photo book that will hold an index card outlining what to do, any word/phonogram cards that are needed for the lesson, and any activity pieces.

Both kids also now have backpacks they can use to hold their binders, reading books, pencil boxes full of supplies, and fun stuff to do once school is finished.  Anything that uses the large whiteboard and letter tiles for AAS will be done at home with me, along with any big projects, and all history, science, art, music, etc.

And now, to show what actual progress we have made….

LANGUAGE ARTS

Vicki

AAR : She is LOVING AAR.  I’m loving that it really seems to be working, and that she has readers that are at a perfect level.  We recently did an activity involving egg shapes and a spatula and she continued to use the spatula for days after.  She insisted I put the word cards down “on the grill” so she could flip them with the spatula.  We are up to Lesson 16 and have introduced the /th/ sound, which gave her some trouble.  She wanted to pronounce it /f/.

HWT K: She’s doing much better with the extra practice on the chalkboard.  She is up to pg 60 and should be starting the 1st grade book by September.  She still is resistant to writing outside of her workbook, even when writing for fun she will just make scribbles.

Games: We played quite a few phonics, rhyming and sight word games but the only new one was Sight Word Safari that I found through Pinterest.  She really had fun even though she couldn’t read all the words (those she couldn’t read, I just read for her).

Readers: She’s been reading through both the Level 1 and Level 2 AAR1 readers, plus her TAG books, and some easy Dr. Seuss.

George

HWT 3:  We’ve barely begun cursive but so far it’s going okay.  I would say it’s no better and no worse than his printing.

Evan Moor Skill Sharpeners Spell and Write Gr 3:  Recent activities for spelling included homophones, capitalization and punctuation.

Evan Moor Daily Reading Comprehension Gr 4: He’s having no trouble with any of these any more, and they have led to him wanting to know more about some of the topics covered (like the differences between rats and mice).

The Wand: We finished up the activities for Owl Moon.  We may not move on until September.

Evan Moor Word-A-Day: He says these are too easy but there is occasionally a word he doesn’t know. 

Reading:  In the past few weeks he has read: Dragon Slayer’s Academy: The New Kid at School, Dragon Slayer’s Academy: Revenge of the Dragon Lady, Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, and Dairy of a Wimpy Kid (four times).  I’m going to try and find more Dragon Slayer’s Academy and Wimpy Kid books for him since he really enjoyed those.

MATH

Vicki

Evan Moor Skill Sharpeners Math Gr 1:  She is still doing well.  She is up to page 43 and has covered addition, subtraction, geometry, patterns, graphing, and time.

I think I’m going to pull out some of her old wipe-off books to get her some practice in writing numbers.  I think this is one of the areas that HWT is weak in.

Games:  We played lots of math games recently, including:  Hickory Dickory Clock and Shark Attack (from Scholastic 15 Fun and Easy Games for Young Learners: Math), Shape Fill-in, and Add/Sub to 12.  We also did some skip counting by 2’s using shoes.

George

Math Mammoth (3B, 4A, 4B):  He has finished Division in 3B and is currently in the last chapter (for him) Multiplication.  He is working on Chapter 1 in 4A but we have put Fractions in 4B on hold for now.  We worked on lining up lists of numbers for addition and subtraction, using graph paper.

Beast Academy 3A: He is almost finished with 3A and I’m still trying to decide if we will continue with 3B.

Scholastic Algebra Readiness Made Easy Gr 4: Now that he’s slowed down and follows the steps, he is again finding these too easy.

Scholastic Solve the Riddle Math Practice Multiplication and Division:  He’s doing well with these and they are great for drill.

Scholastic Logic Posters, Problems and Puzzles:  We have been working on grid puzzles together. He REALLY enjoys these so I’m going to have to find more.

Math Games:  He was having some trouble with place value to the millions so I pulled out the old place value cards (similar to these ones but we had them up to 10,000 place) and made additional cards to cover all the way to the millions.  We spent a couple days going over them and he once again decided it was too easy.  We also played some Yahtzee and Money Bags.

The next week is going to be very slow because Georgie is on vacation with Granny Franny.  

And here’s more bird pictures (and one bug picture).    

Weekly Wrap-up

This has been an…….interesting week.  I talk occasionally about Georgie being a “quirky” kid but it’s often hard to explain what that really means.  This week, I have a couple of examples of what that actually looks like.

We returned to Georgie doing all his work out of a weekly binder a couple of weeks ago.  This way all his work is laid out and ready to go each day, making it easier for both him and I.  And, it also evidently made it easy for him to do all his planned work for Tuesday on Monday night when he couldn’t sleep.  ALL his work, including all the things we usually sit together and do.   Including things like multiplying fractions in math, something we were covering for the first time, and Beast Academy and Logic Matrix puzzles that require a lot of extra thought.  He did surprisingly well with it too.  Just two problems wrong in math.  What he chose not to do was handwriting.   Not really a surprise since it’s probably his least favorite school subject and we just started cursive.

Also interesting this week, Georgie has evidently been conducting his own research experiment.  His test subjects?  Daddy and I. 

Late Wednesday night (okay late-ish – about 10), I noticed Georgie standing in our bedroom doorway.  He wasn’t talking, making noise, or asking to come sleep with us (something we still get from both kids on occasion).  So I asked him what he was doing and evidently he was "observing" us, and had been for three nights, in order to make notes about his observation of us "kissing and stuff". The "stuff" evidently includes stuff like "Daddy snoring". 

I took a peek at is research notebook. I’m not sure what the dialog is supposed to mean. Shorthand for Daily Log, I think and he seems to have AM and PM mixed up.
Mon
DIALOG: 10:27 AM
So far nothing at mom and dad.
DIALOG: 10:30 AM
I steped on paper. Mom and Dad did not notice.
Tues
DIALOG: 8:59 PM
Quiet....
Tues
DIALOG: 10:17 AM
No kiss from parents
Wed
DIALOG: 10:22 AM
Finally got a kiss from M+D

Now, when he mentions kissing, he means seeing Daddy and I kiss each other.  Georgie doesn’t like to be kissed and will hide his face under the covers at night and only allow kisses on his hair or his clothes.

In addition to Georgie’s Independent Studies, what we’ve done this week…..

We learned about the Maidu tribe…

and the Nervous System……

We had some really, really hot weather and our neighborhood pool isn’t open yet, so we took a walk through the woods to take a dip in the river.

The kids decided they wanted a pet bird, squirrel or chipmunk so they set up a “classic trap” to try and catch one.    They were unsuccessful, although we’ve had mourning doves get trapped in the net around the trampoline and in the garden before, so maybe they’ll get lucky one day.

Both kids are now doing independent reading.  Georgie from a selection of books that I choose, Vicki from her AAR readers.

 

Now for the daily stuff:

LANGUAGE ARTS

Vicki

AAR : We are both enjoying All About Reading.  I like that she has readers for independent reading now (we read them together too), and she LOVES filling in a star on the progress chart after each lesson.   I didn’t buy star stickers from All About Learning Press or anywhere else, she colors in a star with crayon after each lesson.  We are currently up to Lesson 13, doing about a lesson a day since so far it is all review.

HWT K: Handwriting continues to be a bit of a struggle.   I am teaching each letter on the lined blackboard before she does it in her book, but she still likes to fuss about even the simplest letters.  She is getting slightly better at writing her name.

Games: We played some sight word Lotto this week.  She was able to easily pick out the words away, not, find, you, little, back, and this.

George

HWT 3:  He has just starting cursive with the HWT Grade 3 book.  So far he doesn’t like it, says it seems too hard, but anything seems hard if you don’t know how to do it.   Since this is so new to him I was handling it the same way I do Vicki’s handwriting – teach it to him on paper before he does it in the book, but I think it may actually work better the other way around – teach it using the set-up in the workbook, then let him practice on paper.

Evan Moor Skill Sharpeners Spell and Write Gr 3: He is still doing very well with spelling.  He hasn’t had any words wrong in a few weeks.  This week included lessons on action verbs and helping verbs.

Evan Moor Daily Reading Comprehension Gr 4:  These are going much better now.  He is reading more carefully, both the passage and the questions.

The Wand:  We did week 1 of Owl Moon this week.   Since he is very good at memorizing things and I want our French dictation to work on his listening skills, I used the passage from week 2 for dictation.  He felt the passage was weird with it’s “…was whiter than the milk in a cereal bowl.”  When I tried to explain that it was a metaphor, he informed me that he “knows what a metaphor is!”.   Okay then.

Evan Moor Word-A-Day:  I’m integrating some dictionary skills in with this by making him look each word up in his children’s dictionary to get another wording for the definition.  So far they seem to be words he already is familiar with.  This week’s words were prepare, drought, fragile, and spectacular.

Evan Moor Daily 6-Trait Writing Gr 3:  We haven’t really done any of this in the past week.

Reading: The past two weeks, he has read a children’s version of Journey to the Center of the Earth, Runaway Ralph and Ralph S. Mouse.   I purchased a reading log from Target’s Dollar Spot and he’s been writing a description of each book in it as he finishes.

MATH

Vicki

Math Mammoth 1A:  I’m thinking of stopping MM with Vicki for now.  She doesn’t like it and I think we can cover addition, subtraction, greater than, less than, etc. with games and more fun/less repetition.

Evan Moor Skill Sharpeners Math Gr 1:  She definitely prefers this to MM.  It’s colorful, has cute pictures, doesn’t have a lot on a page, and mixes up the topics.   This week’s lessons covered tally marks, graphing, addition and subtraction.

Games:  We played Step Up Addition this week.  She did very well doing the version with one 6-sided die (I found through Pinterest and can be seen here), and I think she may be ready to move on to the harder version I made that uses a 12-sided die and covers addition and subtraction (can be seen here).

George

Math Mammoth (3B, 4A, 4B):  We may have come to a place with fractions (4B) where we can’t proceed without getting farther in multiplication and division.  Specifically multi-digit multiplication and division.   He also seems to need a little bit more work on place value, numbers going into the millions seem to be causing some confusion.

Beast Academy 3A:  The perimeter chapter is fairly easy for him.   I finally have him looking to make 10’s when he has to add up a group of numbers.  Many of the problems in BA were set-up to make it easy (side lengths of 14, 6, 7 and 13 for example). 

Scholastic Algebra Readiness Made Easy Gr 4:  Still easy, although he did get a few wrong with careless mistakes from trying to rush through them.

Scholastic Solve the Riddle Math Practice Multiplication and Division:  These are working amazingly well for reinforcement of facts.  We haven’t done any other drill for multiplication, although we do quite a few problems using the chart, and he was able answer some of what I would consider the more difficult problems (like 9x8 and 6x7) without looking and without any appearance of counting.

Scholastic Logic Posters, Problems and Puzzles:  We have finished up with number problems and moved on to matrix problems.  Georgie LOVES these.  He has started doing them on his own instead of waiting for me to work with him, and gets so much satisfaction from figuring out the answer.

He is just about done with the Subtraction section on Xtra Math and will move right into the Multiplication.

We will continue with a fairly full schedule of school through the summer, with short breaks and more field trips.