The kids have eased back into school for the year,
completing two weeks of their core subjects and starting back into a few
extra-curriculars.
Both kids are using an assortment of resources that hit on
topics such as grammar, phonics, spelling and math in various ways. The repetition and diverse approaches seems
to be working very well for both of them.
VICKI
Language Arts
Handwriting: Vicki has finished the Handwriting without Tears: Printing Power
book (2nd grade). She is
definitely not ready for cursive writing yet so will continue to practice
handwriting using copywork from WWE1, The Wand and other resources she’s using
for literature, grammar and/or spelling.
Evan Moor Daily Reading Comprehension Grade 2: She is up to Week 9 in the second grade book
and is doing great. The passages these
weeks worked on Fact and Opinion, Compare and Contrast, and Making Inferences.
Evan Moor Grammar and Punctuation Grade 2: The Grammar and Punctuation book is set up by
rules. Vicki worked on three rules the
past two weeks that dealt with sentences.
Every Grammar curriculum seems to start with sentences, and we’ve
switched a few times in the past year, so she should really have that down
pretty good by now. ;-)
Scholastic Success with Vocabulary Grade 1: Vicki only has a few more pages to finish up
the Scholastic Success with Vocabulary
Grade 1 book. Once she has finished, she
will move on to Evan Moor Word-A-Day, Grade 2.
She worked on contractions,
adverbs, and adjectives this week.
Evan Moor Skill Sharpeners Spell and Write, Grade 2: This spelling is a new thing for Vicki. Last year she was still concentrating on
building up her reading skills. This is
the same program Georgie has been using but at a lower level. I love the mix of memorization (write 2x and
puzzles), phonics rules, grammar and writing.
She has completed unit 1 so far which had the theme of A Good Pet. She was able to spell all her words correctly
– came, mine, name, dog, ride, cat, bone, bird, cute, and pet.
Math
Math Mammoth 1B:
Vicki is finishing up the last couple of chapters of MM1B before
starting 2A.
Evan Moor Skill Sharpeners Math Grade 2: She has started the second grade book and is
up to page 10. So far it’s covered
addition and subtraction through 18, counting to 100, time to the half hour,
and graphing.
Scholastic Practice, Practice, Practice: Addition and
Subtraction: This is a nice fun book
of practice problems using puzzles, games and butterflies. J She only has a few more
pages left and will move on to Scholastic Success with Addition/Subtraction,
Grade 2 which uses a similar format. She
has been working on addition and subtraction with regrouping.
Scholastic First Word Problems: Time and Money: She has finished up the time problems and
started the money problems.
GEORGE
Language Arts
Handwriting:
George has almost finished his Scholastic
Cursive Writing Practice: Jokes and Riddles book. He will continue practicing using copywork
from WWE, The Arrow and his other programs.
Evan Moor Skill Sharpeners Spell and Write Gr 5: He is up to Unit 7 in the 5th
grade level and has done great with all the tests. This weeks’ theme was Great Kid Inventors and
included the spelling words: change, though, decided, special, children,
example, dangerous, device, chasing, stretches, thought and awhile. This week concentrated on the digraphs ch,
th and wh, and proper use of quotation marks and commas. The writing passages included making up a
simple invention, drawing it and describing how it would work. George made a cooking robot, the J007
(CookBot or Jerald) who will “act like a basic chef and cook what is wanted”. He also had to write sentences to describe his favorite
invention of the 20th century and no surprise, he picked computers.
Because “Computers do fast work.”, “Games on the Computer”, “Fast typing on the
keyboard” and “Computers have fun on them”.
No Boring Practice Please! Spelling: he is still alternating
this with SS Spell and Write. This week
he worked on the “au” digraph, and punctuation and capitalization.
Evan Moor Daily Reading Comprehension Gr 5: George has just started the 5th
grade level of Reading Comprehension and is doing fine.
Evan Moor Word-A-Day – Grade 4: George is up to Week 25. These weeks have covered the words admonish,
foreign, gallery, harass, indulge, destitute, jumble, and lecture. This level has brief writing assignments
included. He was asked to write about a
foreign country he would like to visit and why.
He wrote: “I would like to go to a foreign country, Egypt to get a pet
armadillo.” When asked Do you like
having things in your room in a jumble? He answered with “I’m okay with it.”
Writing with Ease:
The weeks’ passages were from The
Velveteen Rabbit and How to Eat Fried
Worms. As long as he does okay in
the next couple weeks, George will probably move up to WWE2. He will be alternating WWE with The Arrow and
maybe some Literature Pockets.
Reading: George has been reading a variety of books
all summer. The kids would read for an
hour during school and for another 30-60 minutes in the evening.
Math
Math Mammoth (4A): George is working on the last
chapter of 4A – Time and Measuring and will move on the 4B shortly. He spent time over the summer working on
reinforcing his multiplication and division facts.
Evan Moor Skill Sharpeners Math – Grade 4: George is working on Unit 4. This is a great spiral review of the various
math concepts that are taught in MM. He
worked on constructing and interpreting graphs, multi-step computation,
figuring out area, fractions, 3-D shapes, volume, and balancing equations this
week.
Evan Moor Daily Word Problems – Grade 4: George is
starting to struggle a little bit with these.
He still wants to be able to solve them in his head and most of them are
multiple step problems that are impossible to do without writing them out.
For some fun drill and reinforcement of facts, George has
also been continuing with the Scholastic
Super Sudoku Math: Multiplication & Division Facts and Scholastic Fast Facts: Multiplication and
Division.
For even more fun he’s been doing Sudoku puzzles from Easy
Sukoku Puzzles by KrazyDad and logic grid puzzles from Mental Floss.
BOTH: Extra-curriculars
Both kids returned to swimming lessons this week. Vicki has
moved up to the Guppy level at the Y and will probably move up again fairly
quickly. George is doing great and has
made a new friend in his class.
I’ve been looking into 4-H clubs and we’re probably going to
be checking out a Herpetology group next month, and maybe a Lego Club.
We are participating in a postcard exchange and will start
working on a US Geography study to go along with that once a week.
I’m excited about a new year starting.
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