Weekly Wrap-Up

I made some changes this week partially due to Georgie’s CAT test results, partially due to wanting to get more structured and partially due to the general craziness of life.

Georgie started each day with either copywork or his HWT book.  HWT is going well but we are about 3/4 of the way through the 1st grade book and he is still having some struggles.  He tends to write too large for the lines and, when he does his copywork he still has a tendency to use mostly uppercase letters.   I probably will either increase his copywork and slow down his HWT book or continue they way we are now where we alternate each but when we finish the HWT book do copywork until he seems ready for the 2nd grade book.

ETC Book 4 is going well.  He experienced his first sign of trouble this week.  In the lesson on where to separate open/closed syllables, he had quite a few wrong.  I’m not sure if this is because he really didn’t understand the rule or if it was because he was whining, complaining and wanted to get it done as quickly as possible.   I will probably find or make some additional worksheets for the lessons so far to make sure he understands the rules before we continue on.

He’s continuing to enjoy his Algebra Readiness puzzles and math riddles.  He’s currently doing three digit addition without carrying for his riddles.

Spectrum Reading Comprehension is going well.  His CAT test grade equivalency for Reading Comprehension was 4.9 and Reading Vocabulary was 3.4, so a 2nd grade book shouldn’t really be a problem for him.  And it’s not but he still likes to complain about it.  Every day he complains that the paragraph is too long, then he reads it in about 30 seconds and has no trouble answering the questions right away.  I have no plans to accelerate but I am planning a few things to encourage him to spend more time reading that I will go into more next week after giving them a try. :-)

He’s been doing the various rules for capitalization in his Spectrum Language Arts book.  We are almost done with this section but I think I might need to get him more practice since I’m not sure if he’s retaining everything.

I did accelerate him some in Math Mammoth.  His grade equivalencies for Math Computation was 3.1 and Math Problems and Concepts was 4.1.  That, combined with the fact that he keeps insisting he shouldn’t have to do anymore math since he already knows it all, led to me deciding to change things a little bit.  I looked through our current chapters and skipped a few pages for things he seems to have a full understanding of, crossed off some problems for other thing and started some multiplication with him.  I also added in a few games for him to practice his facts without drilling, including dice & domino math from Confessions of a Homeschooler, dice addition from  Mrs. Meachem’s Classroom Snapshots  and flashcard war.  I am also thinking he can probably play regular Yahtzee at this point so I’m going to print out some scorecards that are available from various places on the internet.   I’m also considering getting the first unit of the new Beast Academy curriculum.

In spelling we’ve been reviewing all of the words for Level 1.  He did very well except for some confusion between when to use c versus k, and problems that arose from his speech.  He still pronounces th like f and that had him spelling some words wrong.

Vicki spent the week playing on the computer, watching Leapfrog videos and playing games with Georgie and I.  She does seem to have made some progress with reading that indicates that some of her difficulties may be due more to her being uncooperative than her being unready.  This week she clearly read the word EXIT and Chinese Noodle House.  Both were in plain black letters on white signs with nothing to give clues as to what they said.  I may pull out some of the old Kelly’s Kindergarten card games I used to play with Georgie and see how she does.

We took a field trip to a large bakery this week.  A post on that can be seen here, but below are some additional (better) pictures.

We finished up the week with Daddy and Georgie marching in the Little League parade.  While we were waiting, Vicki studied some ants eating a piece of candy off the sidewalk.