Weekly Wrap-up

Just a quick wrap-up before I let three weeks go between updates.  :-)

We haven’t done anything with our history or science in the past couple of weeks.  

We worked on preparing and planting our garden.  Vicki enjoyed helping, at least for small amounts of time.

We continued to enjoy the large variety of birds visiting our yard.

We did visit a diner while waiting for Steph to finish one of her last classes for the year, which I guess we could count as part of our New Jersey study since New Jersey is the “Diner Capital of the World”.   While enjoying some traditional offerings (french fries and gyros), we played some Pokemon to pass the time.

We also finally managed to go try homeschool soccer.  Vicki has talked about wanting to play soccer for a while, and this seemed a better way to try it out than paying for town rec.   It was a very hot day when we went, and she complained a little bit, “It’s harder than I thought!” but I think she’ll like it once she gets the idea.  Georgie even played for a little while.

Once again I made some changes to our set-up.  Georgie is back to using his weekly binder with all his work.  I prefer this because I don’t have to pull things out every day.  He prefers it because he can see exactly what he needs to do.

I’ve also followed through on giving Vicki more hands-on and games.

I also added dedicated reading time to each day. Vicki reads from her AAR readers or uses her TAG system.   I bring out three books that I think are at the right level and let Georgie pick which he wants to read.

LANGUAGE ARTS

Vicki

AAR : Vicki seems to be really enjoying All About Reading.   Since a lot of it is review, we’ve been doing one Step a day.  She is up to Lesson 7 and so far, so good.   We have spread some of the fluency pages out over two days.  She gets really excited to fill in a star on the progress chart each day.

HWT K:  We are continuing to work on handwriting using the chalkboard to practice before doing it in the book.  She’s also working on her name each day.

George

HWT 2:  George has almost finished the 2nd grade HWT book.  We will be starting cursive next week.  I plan to go over proper formation using the chalkboard before doing the workbook page.  I’m hoping this will help improve his technique.

Evan Moor Skill Sharpeners Spell and Write Gr 3: He is continuing to do well with spelling.   Recently we worked on adjectives and capitalization, as well as spelling.

Evan Moor Daily Reading Comprehension Gr 4:  He’s doing much better on these.  I have him redo any questions that are wrong (usually with a reminder to read carefully) and that seems to have helped a lot.

Scholastic Analogies Gr 4-5:  We stopped the analogies for now, in favor of Evan Moor Word-A-Day.  He was having a lot of trouble with the analogies, mainly from being unfamiliar with the words. 

Evan Moor Daily 6-Trait Writing Gr 3: He’s up to pg 19.  He doesn’t love it, he doesn’t hate it.  He does need a lot of hand-holding to come up with answers and we are still on the first topic.

The Wand:  We finished the activities that go along with Harry and the Lady Next Door.

Reading:  I instituted daily reading time after his independent work and before the stuff we do together.  So far he read The Mouse and the Motorcycle and A Cricket in Time Square.  He really liked both, so he’s finally realizing there are good things to read besides Magic Tree House and comic books.

MATH

Vicki

Math Mammoth 1A: Vicki is almost done with Chapter 1 in Math Mammoth.  She is getting a lot faster with her addition facts and doesn’t have to count as much. But, I also think she’s getting bored with it.

Evan Moor Skill Sharpeners Math Gr 1:   She definitely prefers the variety and color in the EM worksheets.   She worked on graphing, subtraction, addition, and measuring.

Games:  We played a lot of math games the past couple of weeks.   Popsicle stick math (draw two sticks with numbers on them, add them and cover the result on a bingo-type board), figuring out which symbol (< > or =) to place between two playing cards, or one playing card and one addition flash card, Flip 10 – played like concentration but instead of matching pictures keep two cards that add up to 10.  We played using colored glass stones (like you would see in vases), playing cards, Disney-themed Go Fish cards, flash cards.

George

Math Mammoth (3B, 4A, 4B):  George is up to pg 110 in 3B (division), pg 67 in 4A (place value) and pg 138 in 4B (fractions).  He seems to fully understand all three and I’ve been skipping pages and problems once he shows understanding.

Beast Academy 3A: We started the perimeter problems in Beast Academy.  So far he understands the idea but the problems have been very basic.

Scholastic Algebra Readiness Made Easy Gr 4: Still very easy for him.  He doesn’t fill in any of the steps they suggest to figure out the answer, he just jumps right to it. 

Scholastic Solve the Riddle Math Practice Multiplication and Division:   Great for drilling the facts.  

Scholastic Logic Posters, Problems and Puzzles:   We started on Number Logic problems.  He is having a lot of fun with these and even attempted a few of them completely on his own (these are in the part of his binder that we do together).   An example of these problems would be:
-This is an even number that has four digits.
-Only two different even numbers are used.
-The same digit is in the ones and the tens place.
-The digit in the ones place is 1/4 the digit in the thousands place
-The two-digit number made by the tens and the ones place is 1/4 the two digit number made by the thousands and hundreds place.
What is the number?

I’m hoping I can find something similar when we finish this book because these are really a lot of fun. 

Games/Extras:  We’ve played a lot of multiplication war.  He is almost done with subtraction in Xtra Math and will move right into multiplication.   I’m still giving him extra practice problems with addition and subtraction because he seems to forget about borrowing and carrying if he hasn’t done it in a few days.