Weekly Wrap-up

We had a pretty boring week except for starting our human body study by learning about cells.

I do feel like we’ve established a good routine for doing school and we completed 15 days of school in January.  Considering we didn’t do school the week of New Year’s, that means we averaged 4 days of school each week.

LANGUAGE ARTS

Vicki

Vicki is up to pg 23 in Handwriting without Tears.  She was still having a really hard time with writing her name and some letters, although it seemed to be a mix of goofing off, not wanting to try, and lack of confidence.    Just today I found something that seems to have helped a lot.  Her letter for today was W.  The first few she did, the first line came down to the middle of the box, which made the rest of the letter squished (which upset her).  So I put little marks in each spot she should start or end a line.   I did the same thing for her to practice her name and she was so happy when she formed perfect letters.   I think this might help her get past the lack of confidence and improve her letter formation.

She is up to Lesson 40 in OPGTR.   So far she is doing well, only occasionally needing to be reminded to sound a work out when she goes with the wrong vowel sound.   I’ve heard that somewhere between Lesson 40 and Lesson 60 corresponds with the end of Kindergarten level, so we seem right on track there.

She finished 12 pages in ETC this week.  She is up to page 71 so we are getting close to needing book 2.

We played high frequency word Uno a few times this week and she can read quite a few of those words.

We add new words to her word wall book each week.  She discovered notepad on the computer and decided she wanted to write a story “about my favorite thoughts” but didn’t know how to spell.  She decided to use her “word book” to help her spell the words she wanted to use.  

George

George is continuing to do a Step a day in AAS2.  Pretty soon I’m going to make a decision on whether we are going to order AAS3, or if I’m going to try Evan Moor spelling lists.  I like AAS but George doesn’t seem to need that level of reinforcement.

I’m trying out Evan Moor Daily Reading Comprehension for him.  I printed out Week 1 of both the 3rd and 4th grade to see where he falls.  So far he’s done 3 days of the 3rd grade level without any problems. 

He is currently working his way through his Spectrum Language Arts and Writing workbooks.  I really think I’m going to switch over to Brave Writer pretty soon.  I want something more literature based, but with guidance so I think some back issues of The Arrow (available through Homeschool Buyer’s Co-op) and Jot It Down will work well.

He is up to page 42 in his HWT.  He is willing to do more of his own writing now but his formation is still atrocious.   When he’s not working in the book, he still tends to use mostly capital letters or a mix of lowercase and capital.  He also writes some letters backwards.  I’ve been told that many of his issues may be resolved once he start cursive writing, which is the next level.  We shall see.

MATH

Vicki

Vicki is continuing to do one page from Evan Moor Skill Sharpeners K and one page from Math Mammoth 1A each day.  She’s able to do both pretty easily and seems to have some of her addition facts memorized.  I thought about starting some time with her but decided not to use MM initially, just our Judy clock and some games.

She is playing various file folder games to practice/drill addition facts.

George

George has finished the Time chapter from 3A, is working on the Fractions chapter from 3B, and the Multiplication Tables from 3A.  We are doing multiplication slowly since I want to make sure he has them memorized, and I don’t want to move on to division until he has them down.  

I think I made a mistake in not drilling addition facts enough.  Most concepts come so easily to him, and he usually memorizes things so quickly, that I didn’t give it enough attention.

He is currently drilling addition facts using Xtra Math and the puzzles from Scholastic Addition and Subtraction Riddles.  He is also reviewing the mental math tricks from MM.

He is currently drilling x2 and x5 using Gum Ball Bingo boards from Scholastic 15 Fun and Easy Games for Young Learners – Reading (the idea is to use it to match upper and lower case letters but the boards are blank so can be used for many other things), and cardstock discs with equations.   I think I’m going to set up the same games for +9, +8, +7 and +6.   He started doing timed drills, sometimes using his multiplication chart and sometimes with it covered up. 

He has almost completed the skip counting chapter in Beast Academy but he seems to have made the connection between skip counting and multiplication because he is answering some of the problems by looking at his multiplication table instead of counting.

He is still having way too easy of a time doing his problems from Algebra Readiness Made Easy 3rd Grade.  I’m hoping Scholastic has another Dollar Days sale soon so I can pick up the 4th and 5th grade books.  He really really likes doing these.

Next week I’m hoping to finally get back to Spanish, and do some Art and Music.