Weekly Wrap-up: 4/11-4/15/11

We had a really good week despite Daddy being out of the country and all the literal and figurative headaches that came along with that disruption to our routine.  Not to mention the fact that I have to cook dinner.

Language Arts
Georgie is continuing to advance quickly with his reading abilities.  I felt that using All About Spelling as a reading and spelling program wasn’t moving fast enough so we started Ordinary Parents Guide to Teaching Reading this week.  I started him on Lesson 40, which is a review of short vowels words, since this is where he is as far as official work is concerned.  He completed lessons 40, 41 (double consonants), 42 (ck combination) and 43 (lk, lb and lp endings) without any real problems.  We will do Lesson 43 again next week since he did have a little hesitation with that one but I think we will be moving pretty fast through this, at least for now.  We will continue with All About Spelling for spelling and the review of phonics rules.

Georgie read One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish all by himself and completely in one sitting (it’s 63 pages long).  His stamina for reading is definitely improving along with his ability.

I had the opportunity to let the kids try out Click n Read this week (Thanks Jana!!).  Both kids really liked it so I’m going to be adding this to our curriculum.  It won’t be a daily thing but it will be great to occupy one kid while I’m working with the other.  There is a special buy of $29.99 for a lifetime account through the Homeschool Buyers Co-op.
 
Georgie is loving Handwriting without Tears.  I’ve been keeping the plan for each day pretty short since he generally doesn't like writing.  We’re doing the Grade 1 book so we’re starting with a review of capital letters.  Since I want to make sure he’s doing them correctly, I printed off some gray block paper with the starting dots and I have him practice on that before doing the book.  He’s so eager he wants to do multiple pages each day.  I have to stop him since his hand gets tired and he ends up holding the pencil in his right hand but guiding it with his left.

We didn’t do any Explode the Code this week but we’ll start back up with that next week.  It won’t align exactly with OPGTR so will generally be a review.  We’re working in Book 2 and I haven’t yet decided if we are going to continue it after this book.  With OPGTR, HWT and AAS, not to mention Click n Read, it may be too much to continue with ETC as well. 

I started Vicki with Ordinary Parents Guide to Teaching Reading as well.  We started by reviewing all the letter sounds to make sure she knew them well.  She did, so next week we will try some blending and see how it goes.  For now we are using the letters from Fridge Phonics.

Vicki also played on Click n Read this week.  She enjoyed it as well and has no problem with doing it by herself.  I set her up with my laptop on her table with her back to Georgie.  She had to wear headphones this week since my laptop is set up to use a headset to do Skype video calls with Daddy.  This actually worked well (except I couldn’t hear what she was doing) since it didn’t distract Georgie as much as I think it would with speakers.

Vicki is doing the Pre-K level of Handwriting without Tears.  She used the capital letter guides I printed out, along with the foam pieces, to build letters this week.  She really enjoyed this and went through most of the alphabet each day.

Math
We continued with our new Math Mammoth this week.  We are doing a few selected pages from 1A to learn their method of teaching addition and subtraction.  Mixed in starting next week will be pages on Place Value, Clock, and Shapes and Measuring.  We will also continue doing MEP along with it but I’m thinking of moving Georgie up to Year 2.  Year 1 is going very slowly and he’s starting to get a little bored with it.

We played one of the games suggested in Math Mammoth – 10 Out.  Kind of like Go Fish but you put down matches that add up to 10.  Georgie was VERY good at this and was making matches using 3 or 4 cards at at time.

Electives
I never posted a weekly wrap-up last week but we finished Part 1 of our Prehistory unit (formation of the Earth) last week and Part 2 (fossils) this week.

We also spent an entire day outside since we finally had some beautiful weather. (Counts as physical education, nature study and art, right?)