Weekly Wrap-up

Okay so this is, once again, a two week wrap-up.  But at least I have a little bit of an excuse this time – lots and lots of fun stuff going on.

First, Steph graduated from high school!  It’s unbelievable to me that I have a child that is a legal adult and a college student.   She finished up with a 3.6 gpa and proudly wore her National Honor Society cord with her cap and gown.  I am so proud of her.

Also in the past couple of weeks was Steph’s last ever dance recital.  She’ll continue performing as she minors in dance at college but the days of studio recitals and competitions are over.   Lots of pictures and even a video about that, can be seen here.

Now on to the usual stars of the blog.   We finished up our healthy foods unit for Cloverbuds with a field trip to Whole Foods.  More about that can be seen here.

I spent a lot of time with Vicki this week trying to see what kind of things work well for her, what she already knows and what she needs to work on.  The index card/fly swatter and foam puzzle piece activities are continuing to go well.   I decided to give Ordinary Parents Guide to Reading a try with her since I already have it.  Like Georgie, I did not sit down with her and the book but made it more interactive by using our mounted whiteboard, dry erase crayons and some extra letter tiles from AAS.  I have an entire set of tiles since I ordered another set when we lost a bunch, only to then find the lost ones.

She worked through Lessons 27, 28 and 29 without a problem, except the word “the” which she tried to sound out but couldn’t.  We will review lesson 29 and continue from there next week.

She also played quite a bit with her Word Whammer which now lives on the side of a metal bookcase along with Georgie’s magnetic words.

I’ve also decided to go ahead and start MEP Year 1 with her.  I already had it printed out so it was easy to jump right in.   Since we were already comfortably sitting on the floor at the white board, I pinned these up to the white board using some of our magnetic shapes and went though them that way.    We did Lessons 1, 2 and 3 and she found parts of them a little too easy. 

I was given a better idea of why MEP was a little easy for her while we driving to our field trip Wednesday.  She was counting in the back of the car - “18..19.. Mom what comes after 19?”  After each –9, she asked what comes next, some I gave her, some I asked her what she thought came next and she knew.  She counted all the way up to 100 this way. 

Then she told us “2+2=4 and 5+5=10 and 1+1=2”  She said she learned that playing Math Adventure on her laptop, which is a VTech Brilliant Creations Beginner Laptop toy.

So after doing MEP, I decided to check her recognition of higher numbers.  First I showed her what 11 through 23 looked like with a very brief explanation of place value.  I then wrote random numbers and asked her what they were.  She knew them all.

 

We also used our magnetic foam shapes this week.  First to do some patterns….

then to build the shapes on our tangram cards.  She was so excited when they matched.

The rest of the time she spent doing crafts.  Lots of glue, scissors, wiggly eye.  She set up her laptop to play “decorating music” while she crafted.

Now for Georgie.  He was a little….shall we say…reluctant to do school the past couple of weeks.   He’s been doing okay with his reading time, although it is still centered mainly on his Pokemon book.  While reading it this week, he took a pink pompom so he could experience what it would be like to be Gigglypuff.   Handwriting and math were the two subjects he was the worst about procrastinating on.   But perseverance (and the threat of no computer) had him completing most of his work each day.   When I kept pushing him to do his handwriting he asked me “why are you so obsessed with ONE LITTLE PAGE??” 

The subject that went best this week was Spelling.  We finished AAS 1 and will be moving right into Level 2 next week.   He also showed that he could spell beyond what we actually learned.  In the same conversation where Vicki was counting and doing addition, he told her there was nothing  called Math Adventure on her laptop.  After they argued discussed it for a while, he said “OH, I was saying LAUGH not MATH…L….A….U….G….H”.  Vicki replied “Oh.  No. It’s Math.  MMMMMMath.”   Since we haven’t covered au making the short /a/ sound or gh making the /f/ sound, he evidently picked that one up through his reading or computer activities.

I am trying to lighten things up a little since it’s summer and I want to be spending more time outside or doing activities.  Since it’s been very hot lately with high heat indexes and air quality warnings, we aren’t going out much during the middle of the day anyway.  Something I hope will change soon.

Now for this week(s) Pinterest activities.  We have some really straight and tall sticks that daddy cleared out of some of the more overgrown areas of our yard.  I was planning to use some of them to make outdoor easels.  When I started tying them together I realized they were long enough to make a teepee.  So, I did that instead.   I just finished setting it up (and realizing it might be better with a few more supporting sticks) when one of our late afternoon thunderstorms came rolling through and we had to run inside.

I made more of those yummy strawberry banana muffins using Greek yogurt and oatmeal this week.  The recipe recommends using silicone cupcake liners since a flour-less muffin will stick.  When I pulled my liners out to make the next batch, I realized they hadn’t been as easy to clean as I thought.  There was residue stuck in the groves inside them.  I finally did find a way to get them nice and clean – turning them inside out and scrubbing with a toothbrush.

Next week is a holiday week so I don’t know how much school we will be doing.  We were thinking about a camping trip but I think some recent changes to daddy’s work schedule may have us staying home.