Weekly Wrap-up

We are definitely getting into a good groove with school.   This week we found a new social outlet for Georgie, did a science unit on one of our project days, and completed all three days of core subjects. Well, except we still haven’t (re)started spanish, literature, music or art.

On Sunday, we found the perfect social opportunity for George -  Pokemon League!   Georgie has been into Pokemon for slightly over a year but only recently has become interested in learning to play the card game by the rules.   Last Sunday he went to his first league meeting.  He played about 7 rounds against slightly older kids who helped him out with the rules.   He played nice, didn’t whine when he lost, and had a great time.

For Science this week, we explored Magnets.  More on that can be seen here.

 

I’ve been trying to find some more books for Georgie to read.  He only has 4 more Magic Tree House Merlin Missions until he’s finished all the currently published ones.  They are currently on order at my local library so by the end of next week, he should be done.   Although, there is a chance that Georgie may not have read all the earlier Magic Tree House books we have (he’s being very vague on that point).    So far I have gotten him to try Bailey School Kids and Wayside School.   He’s not sure if he likes either but he was willing to give them a try.  Since he reads for an hour every night, I really need to find something for him.

For our second project day, we played a few of our board games.   One of my favorites is Very Silly Sentences.   This game is easy for both kids to play without either of them being bored or needing too much assistance, and both of them learning.  Georgie can get reinforcement on parts of speech, while Vicki practices some reading.   Unfortunately the flimsy cardboard die that comes with the game has been very abused, resulting in it landing on preposition every second or third roll.  I decided to take one of the 12 sided die from our Math Dice set and color 6 sides to match our Silly Sentences die.

LANGUAGE ARTS

Vicki

Vicki did three pages from Handwriting without Tears (pg 15, 16, 17) and practiced writing her name this week.  When she takes it seriously and really tries, she’s getting pretty good at her name.  Unfortunately, that isn’t too common.

She is still working through Explode the Code 1.   We were up to pg 44, but I realized this week that we had accidentally skipped a few pages.  So this week she did pages 21 through 24 and 44 to 47.   I let her do however many pages she wants in ETC, whether that is none or 10.

We are up to Lesson 36 in Ordinary Parents Guide to Reading.  She’s doing very well and can usually read all the words with little prompting.   I set up her sentence pad this week for her to review at random times.  Each week it will be changed to reflect the words that were learned the previous week.

We added more words to her word book and read through all the words that were already there.

We played the Character Uno that I downloaded from Kelly’s Kindergarten.    The original cards are “Sight Words Uno” but the thing I love is that these are in a Word file and the words can be changed.  I updated the file with the words Vicki has learned up until now.

GEORGE

All About Spelling – Georgie worked though Step 13, 14 and 15.   When doing Step 14 he said his mouth was too tired and he decided he wanted to write the words down.   He’s getting much better with the quantity of writing he’s willing to do.

He did pages 34, 35 and 36 in Handwriting without Tears. 

He did pages 46-51 in Spectrum Language Arts which covered quotation marks, colons in time, and abbreviations.

In Spectrum Writing we covered choosing a main topic.

He read Frogs are not Toads from Evan Moor Read and Understand with Leveled Texts, 4th grade.  He’s getting better at these reading comprehension assignments.  I love that they introduce a lot of new vocabulary and cover things such as homonyms, synonyms and alphabetizing.  He does still complain if the selection is more than 2 pages long.

MATH

Vicki

Vicki is continuing to do well with Math Mammoth 1A.   She does one page a day and this week we did pages 23-25.  I’m considering starting her with time and see how she does.

She is also doing one page from Evan Moor Skill Sharpeners Math – Kindergarten.  These are pretty easy for her but they cover different topics like graphing and subtraction, while MM is currently all addition.

She practiced addition in a variety of ways this week.  
-using a Bubble Gum Bingo board from our Scholastic 15 Fun and Easy Games for Young Learners: Reading.  It is a blank board that can be used for letters or numbers.  I filled in the 11 gum balls with numbers between 2 and 12.  Vicki rolled two numbered dice and colored in the gum ball with the resulting sum.  This was a big hit and she even said “I love this game!”.
-using playing cards, we each flipped over a card and she added the numbers together or we worked on one set of facts by flipping over cards and adding each one to the same number.

We played around with her 100’s chart.  I would point to a number and ask her what it was, then I asked what is “one more than 34?” or “ten more than 67?”  She did very well and enjoyed it quite a bit.

GEORGE

George is continuing along in Math Mammoth 3A and 3B doing a variety of topics.  This week he did 3A – pages 149 (money), pg 66-68 (order of operations), pg 131 (time) and 3B – pg 23 (borrowing), pg 155-156 (fractions).

We are continuing to slowly work through Beast Academy 3A.  We started the chapter on skip counting this week (after skipping most of polynomials).

George is continuing to enjoy his puzzles from Algebra Readiness Made Easy Grade 3 and I started giving him pages from Addition and Subtraction Riddles again to give him further practice with borrowing and carrying (since this seems to be something he forgets quickly when it’s not reviewed).

George has been doing practice drills on paper and using Xtra Math on the computer.  While these drills should be fairly quick, he played games to make them more interesting.  This weeks page had three columns.  He started at the bottom of each column and pretended it was a challenge.  The first column was climbing to the top of the mountain, the second was a worm trying to get up a hill and the third was a raccoon climbing up a tree.

Next week we will have a 4-H field trip, work on some US History, and hopefully get started with spanish, art, music, and literature.