2 Week Wrap-up

We basically took two weeks to complete a week’s worth of work.    A more than usual level of chaos has been going on the past few weeks but hopefully things are settling down now.

Handwriting and copywork are continuing to be the hardest for Georgie.  I finally got him to stop putting lines between each word by showing him how to use his finger to make sure there’s proper spacing.

(I just realized Georgie is wearing the exact same outfit he is wearing in our latest science post.  These pictures were actually taken almost 2 full weeks apart and I promise he didn’t wear the same clothes for that long).

Instead of random sayings that mean nothing to him I also changed his copywork to information from our science lesson, like “Rocks are made of minerals.” or spelling rules, like “Make a word plural by adding –s or –es to the end.” or a selection of our spelling words using the latest rule.

I gave Georgie a couple extra practice pages for the syllabication rules we had already covered before we moved on in ETC.  It seems to have helped a lot and he’s been doing very well since.  He is doing an entire lesson each day from ETC 4 and there is only one more lesson left before we move on to ETC 5.  I already have book 5 but once we finish that, I’m not sure we will continue with ETC.   We will be reviewing the phonics rules as we get to them in AAS and I don’t think ETC is necessary any more.

Math is continuing to go well.  Georgie still loves his math riddles and his Algebra Readiness puzzles.  We will be starting carrying and borrowing in MM very soon and that will allow us to move on to some of the more advanced math riddles.  Right now we are working in 2B for Addition/Subtraction, Multiplication and Fractions, 3A for Clocks and Money, and 3B for Place Value. 

For some reason, Georgie has always hated the Shapes and Measuring chapters in MM so I decided to order Beast Academy 3A for him and see how he does.  He really liked reading the introduction in the Guide Book and did fine reading the first lesson on angles.

Spectrum Reading Comprehension is continuing to go well and we finished the capitalization lessons in Spectrum Language Arts, but not so well.  He didn’t seem to be remembering the rules for when to capitalize and was having a lot of trouble with which nouns would be considered proper nouns.  I printed off some extra practice pages from Evan-Moor Teacher’s File Box and they seem to have helped a lot.  They did a much better job of explaining about nouns that referred to specific places, people or things.  We have a couple more pages to practice before we return to do the final review in his Spectrum workbook.

In AAS, we started Step 23 on making words plural.  I don’t like that it doesn’t really explain when to use –s versus –es.   It has them say the word and hear if the plural adds an extra syllable rather than saying what word endings use –es and which use –s.

I’ve been working on finding ways to encourage Georgie to get more practice reading books and I settled on a combination of finding books that interest him and bribery.  The first part was solved by buying some Ninjago chapter books and graphic novels, the second with Pokemon cards. 

I really wish I had kept track of Stephanie’s Pokemon cards.  She had a shoebox full when she was 7 or 8 years old.  But, lucky for me they now sell them at the dollar store.   Georgie gets about 1/3 of a box of cards for reading for 30 minutes.  The first day he read for his 30 minutes, whining about every 10minutes, got his cards, spent another 30 minutes reading the cards (BONUS!) and then asked to read  more so he could get more cards.   Subsequent days went about the same but with less whining.

Georgie also had his first baseball game last week.  He’s old enough now for coach-pitched rather than t-ball.  He actually did very well.  Daddy helps coach his team, which means he’s right on hand when Georgie starts to get a little crazy (although he’s only one of about 4 or 5 boys on the team that are prone to crazy behavior).    Georgie got a hit and made it to base all three of his turns at bat.

Vicki had a much less eventful two weeks.  She’s been very reluctant to do much school lately but she’s been playing on PBS Kids Island, Jumpstart and Toon Town on the computer.  Two out of the three are educational.

I’ve been trying again with the sample chapters from All About Reading to see how she does.  She did slightly better than last time but still is uncooperative.  I need to find something new since in the past few weeks she’s clearly read “Exit” and “Chinese Noodle House”.  Plain black and white signs with no clues as to what they said.

We didn’t do much nature study in the past few weeks but I showed the kids a picture of the robin’s nest Daddy found in one of the bushes on the side of the house.  Three little blue eggs inside.

We did the next lesson in our Rocks & Minerals study this week:  rocks are made of minerals.  That can be seen here.