Weekly Wrap-Up: 9/20-9/24/2010

We had a pretty short week this week.   I knew this week was going to be a little crazy with Steph here and the running around that goes along with that, and the little guys had their annual physicals on Thursday, but it ended up being worse than I anticipated.  I made their appointments for first thing in the morning (10:00 am) so that we would be in and out early and could get home to do some work.   The day started out according to plan - we were done at the doctor by 11:00 (both kids are very healthy, BTW).  That's where things went downhill starting with a flat tire and ending with me finally returning home with a repaired and remounted tire at 4:30pm.   Yes, that is 6 1/2 hours spent in the car because of a flat tire, NOT counting the 2 1/2 hours spent driving Steph back and forth to dance that night.  BLEAH!!!

Anyway, on to what we did actually manage to accomplish.

Georgie:
For Reading/Phonics:  We are continuing with Explode the Code and it's going well.  Georgie seems to find it pretty easy right now but I don't give him too many pages at a time because of the amount of writing.  He doesn't seem to mind it being easy and we only have a few more pages before we leave short A words for short I words.  I pulled out a couple of games I had made a while ago from Kelly's Kindergarten.   I had UNO using Nickelodeon characters and short A words.  As I was discovering with the ETC, this was too easy for Georgie although good for his confidence.  We also played Space Mission which had simple CVC words and some sight words.  This was a little more challenging for Georgie but he still enjoyed it.  What I like about Kelly's games is that they are in Word files so the words can be changed as he progresses (as long as I want to spend the time printing, cutting and laminating).   I also made a dice game that I first saw the idea for on Confessions of a Homeschooler.  I didn't make mine as pretty since I didn't want to fuss with painting.  Georgie really enjoyed playing this game and was pretty good at determining if something was a word or not.

For Spelling:  We continued with AAS.  We are moving much faster through this than I thought we would.  This week we introduced the letter tiles which Georgie absolutely loved.  He jumped right in spelling words and was a little resistant to alphabetizing them but did eventually.  It didn't seem like he was reciting the alphabet at all in order to put them in order.  I think this is going to be a good program for him.

We went through the sound cards next.  He had no problem naming the letter when any of the sounds were given.  We did this first by having him point at the correct letter tiles.  He decided it would be more comfortable to do this lying on the top edge of the couch and pointing down at the letters. I tried to tell him that it would be easier if they were alphabetized, but he didn't care.  Since he had previously showed that alphabetizing was very simple for him, I didn't push it on this occasion.

For Writing:  We did another worksheet on Bb that we didn't get to last week and did a sheet for 3 and 4.  It wasn't much but he also did writing for AAS (writing down the letters for the Sound Cards), our dice word game and ETC, so I didn't worry about it too much.

For Math:  We did MEP Lesson 16 which introduces the number 0 and it's placement on a number line.  This was very easy for George since we've had number lines up for about a year.  We also played a few math games using our large foam dice.

Vicki:
For Reading/Phonics:  In order to keep her from helping George with his AAS letter tiles, I let Vicki play on Starfall while Georgie did his spelling.  She just recently has been able to work the mouse with any degree of control. She's been watching Georgie while he played on the computer for a while now and she can now turn on the computer, launch the internet and find Starfall, PBSKids and NickJr. on the favorites list.  This worked one day but the next day I ended up giving her the extra set of letter tiles (and keeping my fingers crossed that she wouldn't lose any) on our wall mounted dry erase board.

Vicki also did an "a is for alligator" magnet pages from Making Learning Fun.  I don't ever give her small magnets so she usually does these using dabber paints.  This time she used circles punched from various scrapbooking papers and glued them in place.  Since she LOVES glue, this kept her busy for a little while.

She also did a bottlecap game I had sitting around where she matched lowercase letters to uppercase letters.  She only had trouble with one or two letters.

Both:
Both of the kids spent some time playing with our various lacing activities.  I had large colored pasta noodles, cut pieces of straw and foam shapes with holes punched in them to lace onto pipe cleaners or shoe laces.  I no longer give them beads unless I can watch them VERY closely since I had to fish one out of Georgie's nose.

Science:
We finished up our Day/Night study by learning about the phases of the moon.  Vicki has always loved the moon and looks at it often through our living room skylight.  When we did our demonstration with the globe and lantern (here) we also discussed/showed how the earth blocks part of the sun light so the moon only partially "shines".  We painted different shapes for the phases of the moon using sponges to add texture.

Once they dried (which in Vicki's case took 2 days), we cut them out and mounted them to show the changes.

Thursday was the first day of Autumn so we took a walk and looked for signs of the coming season.  We actually had temperatures in the 80's again this week so it certainly didn't feel like Fall (except first thing in the morning or after dark - lows in the 50's).  We found that many of the trees in our area were starting to change colors. 

There have been acorns everywhere for a few weeks now.  If you sit outside quietly, all you hear is the sound of acorns falling in the underbrush.  Vicki loves acorns and kept collecting as many as she could carry then throwing them.  I'm going to have to look up some crafts for her to do with them.   Acorns are so small that most of the crafts I see would be too difficult for a 3 year old.

I don't know about it as a sign of Autumn but we saw a lot of really pretty Queen Anne's Lace.

Well, considering we didn't do much, this ended up being a really long post.

Visit Preschool Corner and 5K too at Homeschool Creations to see what others are doing.