Weekly Wrap-up

This has been an…….interesting week.  I talk occasionally about Georgie being a “quirky” kid but it’s often hard to explain what that really means.  This week, I have a couple of examples of what that actually looks like.

We returned to Georgie doing all his work out of a weekly binder a couple of weeks ago.  This way all his work is laid out and ready to go each day, making it easier for both him and I.  And, it also evidently made it easy for him to do all his planned work for Tuesday on Monday night when he couldn’t sleep.  ALL his work, including all the things we usually sit together and do.   Including things like multiplying fractions in math, something we were covering for the first time, and Beast Academy and Logic Matrix puzzles that require a lot of extra thought.  He did surprisingly well with it too.  Just two problems wrong in math.  What he chose not to do was handwriting.   Not really a surprise since it’s probably his least favorite school subject and we just started cursive.

Also interesting this week, Georgie has evidently been conducting his own research experiment.  His test subjects?  Daddy and I. 

Late Wednesday night (okay late-ish – about 10), I noticed Georgie standing in our bedroom doorway.  He wasn’t talking, making noise, or asking to come sleep with us (something we still get from both kids on occasion).  So I asked him what he was doing and evidently he was "observing" us, and had been for three nights, in order to make notes about his observation of us "kissing and stuff". The "stuff" evidently includes stuff like "Daddy snoring". 

I took a peek at is research notebook. I’m not sure what the dialog is supposed to mean. Shorthand for Daily Log, I think and he seems to have AM and PM mixed up.
Mon
DIALOG: 10:27 AM
So far nothing at mom and dad.
DIALOG: 10:30 AM
I steped on paper. Mom and Dad did not notice.
Tues
DIALOG: 8:59 PM
Quiet....
Tues
DIALOG: 10:17 AM
No kiss from parents
Wed
DIALOG: 10:22 AM
Finally got a kiss from M+D

Now, when he mentions kissing, he means seeing Daddy and I kiss each other.  Georgie doesn’t like to be kissed and will hide his face under the covers at night and only allow kisses on his hair or his clothes.

In addition to Georgie’s Independent Studies, what we’ve done this week…..

We learned about the Maidu tribe…

and the Nervous System……

We had some really, really hot weather and our neighborhood pool isn’t open yet, so we took a walk through the woods to take a dip in the river.

The kids decided they wanted a pet bird, squirrel or chipmunk so they set up a “classic trap” to try and catch one.    They were unsuccessful, although we’ve had mourning doves get trapped in the net around the trampoline and in the garden before, so maybe they’ll get lucky one day.

Both kids are now doing independent reading.  Georgie from a selection of books that I choose, Vicki from her AAR readers.

 

Now for the daily stuff:

LANGUAGE ARTS

Vicki

AAR : We are both enjoying All About Reading.  I like that she has readers for independent reading now (we read them together too), and she LOVES filling in a star on the progress chart after each lesson.   I didn’t buy star stickers from All About Learning Press or anywhere else, she colors in a star with crayon after each lesson.  We are currently up to Lesson 13, doing about a lesson a day since so far it is all review.

HWT K: Handwriting continues to be a bit of a struggle.   I am teaching each letter on the lined blackboard before she does it in her book, but she still likes to fuss about even the simplest letters.  She is getting slightly better at writing her name.

Games: We played some sight word Lotto this week.  She was able to easily pick out the words away, not, find, you, little, back, and this.

George

HWT 3:  He has just starting cursive with the HWT Grade 3 book.  So far he doesn’t like it, says it seems too hard, but anything seems hard if you don’t know how to do it.   Since this is so new to him I was handling it the same way I do Vicki’s handwriting – teach it to him on paper before he does it in the book, but I think it may actually work better the other way around – teach it using the set-up in the workbook, then let him practice on paper.

Evan Moor Skill Sharpeners Spell and Write Gr 3: He is still doing very well with spelling.  He hasn’t had any words wrong in a few weeks.  This week included lessons on action verbs and helping verbs.

Evan Moor Daily Reading Comprehension Gr 4:  These are going much better now.  He is reading more carefully, both the passage and the questions.

The Wand:  We did week 1 of Owl Moon this week.   Since he is very good at memorizing things and I want our French dictation to work on his listening skills, I used the passage from week 2 for dictation.  He felt the passage was weird with it’s “…was whiter than the milk in a cereal bowl.”  When I tried to explain that it was a metaphor, he informed me that he “knows what a metaphor is!”.   Okay then.

Evan Moor Word-A-Day:  I’m integrating some dictionary skills in with this by making him look each word up in his children’s dictionary to get another wording for the definition.  So far they seem to be words he already is familiar with.  This week’s words were prepare, drought, fragile, and spectacular.

Evan Moor Daily 6-Trait Writing Gr 3:  We haven’t really done any of this in the past week.

Reading: The past two weeks, he has read a children’s version of Journey to the Center of the Earth, Runaway Ralph and Ralph S. Mouse.   I purchased a reading log from Target’s Dollar Spot and he’s been writing a description of each book in it as he finishes.

MATH

Vicki

Math Mammoth 1A:  I’m thinking of stopping MM with Vicki for now.  She doesn’t like it and I think we can cover addition, subtraction, greater than, less than, etc. with games and more fun/less repetition.

Evan Moor Skill Sharpeners Math Gr 1:  She definitely prefers this to MM.  It’s colorful, has cute pictures, doesn’t have a lot on a page, and mixes up the topics.   This week’s lessons covered tally marks, graphing, addition and subtraction.

Games:  We played Step Up Addition this week.  She did very well doing the version with one 6-sided die (I found through Pinterest and can be seen here), and I think she may be ready to move on to the harder version I made that uses a 12-sided die and covers addition and subtraction (can be seen here).

George

Math Mammoth (3B, 4A, 4B):  We may have come to a place with fractions (4B) where we can’t proceed without getting farther in multiplication and division.  Specifically multi-digit multiplication and division.   He also seems to need a little bit more work on place value, numbers going into the millions seem to be causing some confusion.

Beast Academy 3A:  The perimeter chapter is fairly easy for him.   I finally have him looking to make 10’s when he has to add up a group of numbers.  Many of the problems in BA were set-up to make it easy (side lengths of 14, 6, 7 and 13 for example). 

Scholastic Algebra Readiness Made Easy Gr 4:  Still easy, although he did get a few wrong with careless mistakes from trying to rush through them.

Scholastic Solve the Riddle Math Practice Multiplication and Division:  These are working amazingly well for reinforcement of facts.  We haven’t done any other drill for multiplication, although we do quite a few problems using the chart, and he was able answer some of what I would consider the more difficult problems (like 9x8 and 6x7) without looking and without any appearance of counting.

Scholastic Logic Posters, Problems and Puzzles:  We have finished up with number problems and moved on to matrix problems.  Georgie LOVES these.  He has started doing them on his own instead of waiting for me to work with him, and gets so much satisfaction from figuring out the answer.

He is just about done with the Subtraction section on Xtra Math and will move right into the Multiplication.

We will continue with a fairly full schedule of school through the summer, with short breaks and more field trips.

Native Americans: Maidu

The next Native American tribe we learned about was the Maidu.  The Maidu lived in northern California, near the Sierra Nevada mountains.   The kids started with coloring in the title and dictionary cards from our History Pockets, while I read to them from the information pages.

They were hunter and gatherers rather than farmers. Acorns were one of their primary foods, and were ground into flour.   The kids found this very interesting since acorns are very easy to find around here.  They thought maybe we should go gather some acorns to eat. 

So we moved on to a discussion of how the Maidu were basket weavers and would make all kinds of baskets for gathering acorns and other food but also to use for cooking, as bowls, and for storing many items.  We were recently at the Newark Museum with 4-H (more on that will be coming later) and viewed an exhibit showing many Native American baskets, including some Maidu burden baskets and seed beaters.

As we continued reading, we learned about the earth lodges the Maidu lived in and about the Bear Dance celebrations.   We added all the information to our Native American chart.

We read more about the Maidu in a couple books we checked out from the library….

and we made necklaces using bear claws (made from clay left-over from another project), feathers (stuck into clay beads to make it easier to work with), and beads.  I tried to use beads that were at least colors that could possibly be found in nature, but George really wanted to put the word Maidu on his.

George then read a story about Maidu children living at a boarding school, Home to Medicine Mountain, and wrote in his journal about the Maidu.

Human Body: Nervous System

We had a great time learning about the nervous system this week.  Doesn’t George look like he’s having a blast wearing his brain hat?  ;-)

We started off with a reading of the Nervous System overview in RSO and with an attempt at the lab – Reaction Time.    The idea behind the lab was to see how fast a message can move from your eyes to your hand by trying to catch a ruler that is dropped.  The results are graphed to see if reaction time increases with practice.

Well, it turns out my kids do not have fast reflexes. They each managed to catch the ruler only once, and I suspect there was a little cheating going on.  So, not much to graph.

We moved on to making the above mentioned brain hats.  Vicki’s is from Ellen McHenry and she basically just colored it in.

Georgie’s is from the Scholastic Easy Make and Learn Projects: Human Body.  It includes cut-outs to add to the hat showing the areas of the brain that control the 5 senses and movement, and also has labels showing the Cerebrum, the Cerebellum, and the Brain Stem.

We read about the nervous system in our Scholastic Kid’s Science Encyclopedia and in our general science encyclopedia.

Georgie then used a diagram in our science encyclopedia to put labels on a nerve cell diagram I found at File Folder Fun.

 

We then watched a video on the nervous system at Kids Health and watched another video on the Brain at The Children’s University of Manchester.  There was also a puzzle and a quiz following the video that Georgie did twice and then helped Vicki to do.

We finished up with Georgie reading more about the nervous system in Look at Your Body: Brain & Nerves, and making an entry in his journal about the nervous system.

Next we will do an overview/review of all the body systems, learn about the 5 senses, growth, genetics and reproduction.

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.

New Jersey: Thomas Edison

I just realized I never actually wrote a post about our trip to Thomas Edison’s Laboratory complex in West Orange, NJ.    We went there as part of our US States study, specifically New Jersey, our home state. 

We started out by reading about Thomas Edison in a few books.  All of our general New Jersey books had a section on Thomas Edison, and we read Thomas Edison: Inventor with a Lot of Bright Ideas.

Our visit to the laboratory complex was fun, but I think the kids will appreciate it more in a few years.    We did get to hear an early phonograph, and take a quick guided tour of the Chemistry lab. 

There was an I Spy checklist the kids used to find things, which helped keep their interest for a little while.

The time clock where Edison and his employees punched in every day.

Thomas Edison’s desk in the library.

The machine shop..

The old elevator…

the photo department with the early fire extinguisher..

the music room….

 

Looking at all that glass, I can understand why the Ranger made our tour of the Chemistry lab a quick one.

The Black Maria, the first film studio.  It was built on a track so the whole building could rotate and utilize the sunlight.

After our visit, we came home and explored the website for the park.   The kids were most interested in the games but it was also a good review of our visit.

Weekly (??) Wrap-up

Hi all <<waves hello>>  I’m back.  I feel like it’s been forever since I last posted but it’s only been two weeks, so I guess that’s not TOO bad.   Of course, my last weekly wrap-up was a week before that.

We’ve been pretty busy.  Some school stuff (or at least educational in the broadest sense), some not.  The not stuff involved cleaning out the garage so there’s someplace to put all of Steph’s crap when she comes home from school for the summer, making changes to our school set-up (yep, again <sigh>), and organizing all my school games (I have 39 different games, that I printed, laminated and prepared for Georgie but hardly used because he never needed the practice, that I reorganized so I can easily use them for Vicki). 

The last posts two weeks ago were about our Fish study with 4-H Cloverbuds, including our field trip to the Pequest Fish Hatchery.  Lots of fun and very educational. 

We also learned about the Respiratory System.  This means we only have the Nervous System and the Five Senses, Genetics and a little bit of Reproduction to finish up our Human Body study.   I am trying to decide between electricity and space for our next topic.   Electricity because  Georgie received a Snap Circuits set for Christmas that I really want to break out.   Space because the kids have been playing a lot of space themed games lately.  We are scheduled to go to the planetarium with Cloverbuds in July so space may be better done then.

We have done lots of informal nature study in the past few weeks.  Spring has definitely exploded with color around here (despite frost warnings at night up until last week)…

we’ve been learning all about the different birds visiting, including a few new ones, like a rose-breasted grosbeak….

and a grey catbird….

as well as our favorites, like our red-winged blackbird.  It turns out we have at least two of these that visit regularly.

We also have what we think are house wrens building in a couple of our bird houses.

The kids both received binoculars in their Easter baskets so we’ve been looking at lots of birds while they learn how to use them, and how to look things up in the field guide.

The other field guide getting a lot of use around here, is the one for Insects and Spiders.    They have been searching the yard diligently every day for new bugs to make pets.  Since I won’t allow them in the house, they live in a big pot of dirt on the deck.  They’ve turned over just about every decent sized rock in the yard (including all the slate stepping stones) and I just love hearing my little girl exclaim, “awww, look at the adorable maggots!”.

They decided that they had so many bugs, they needed to sell them.  So, they started their own company, Bugs Inc., and made flyers advertising their services as bug babysitters and procurers of pets, that they planned to hang all over town.  When mommy showed little enthusiasm for hanging posters containing her cell phone number along with our last name, they decided they would sell the posters.  So for $1 you could get your very own poster, telling you how to buy a pet bug for just $10.  Add another $7 for a bug book, and our family receives a $5 discount.

 

We took a walk down to the river to see if we could find some different bugs, and to see if we could spot some of the peepers we would hear each evening.  We didn’t find either but Vicki had fun playing in the mud (Georgie was pouting because he got in trouble for pouring a bucket of water on me.  Lucky for him the bucket had a leak and I didn’t get that wet).  

Daddy picked up some more varieties of tomato seeds to get started, and the kids decided they wanted to plant something too.   After lots of deep thought and contemplation, George planted one pea and one cucumber. He named them Albert and Panner, and wrote out a schedule for taking care of them.
"What to do with my plant.
11:30 Water Albert and Panner.
1:07 Story Albert and Panner.
2:00 Story Them Again.
3:09 Water Them.
4:20 Music
5:00 Story"

Vicki planted a couple of cucumber seeds.  I’m still holding out hope that hers will actually sprout, but Georgie’s pea already has.

As part of our New Jersey study, we learned about Thomas Edison and took a trip to his laboratory complex in West Orange.   I will do the full write-up about that sometime this weekend but for now suffice it to say it’s a trip they may appreciate more in a couple of years.

Okay, since none of that counts as “school” <<insert eye-roll here>>, here’s what else we did the past few weeks…..

LANGUAGE ARTS

Vicki

OPGTR:  I’m giving up on OPGTR.  Vicki is still stuck on beginning blends and endless review is just not doing it for her.  I ordered All About Reading 1 and we will start it next week.   Even though she’s pretty good with CVC words, we are going to start at the beginning and work through the early lessons quickly.  I think the reinforcement with sounding out each letter will help since she has a habit of throwing random letters into a word – for example, pronouncing c-a-t as cart.

HWT K:  she is up to page 52 and has gotten much better with writing her name.  We’ve moved on from just writing her first name to writing her first and last names.   She is still likely to whine, and cry, and moan while doing it, though.  I will be returning to using the lined chalkboard more, along with the little sponges.  

ETC2:  On hold until she breaks through the beginning blends barrier.

George

HWT 2:  He is up to page 70.   After I made him do a whole second page for “forgetting” to write in lower case, he has been much better at watching his formation.   He did a couple pages that were all homonyms, so got some grammar in there too.

Evan Moor Skill Sharpeners Spell and Write Gr 3:
He scored 100% of the latest spelling test.  The latest unit told about Washington DC, worked on capitalization, and rhyming. 

Evan Moor Daily Reading Comprehension Gr 4:  He is up to page 40 in this book.  All except one page he did well, any mistakes were ones he could explain his reasoning and we were able to discuss why a different answer was correct.  That one day it was clear he paid no attention to what he was reading.

The Wand: We finished the first week of Harry and the Lady Next Door.  He is doing better than I thought with the copywork, the dictation is still pretty easy for him.  This weeks activities included some narration, and learning about adjectives and adverbs.

Scholastic Analogies Gr 4-5: He’s having a little bit of trouble with these.  One day it was because he misread the directions.  I can’t really blame him because when I looked at them, I didn’t understand them either.  But we were able to figure it out, and he did well once he knew what he was supposed to do.  He is having a little trouble when some of the terms are unfamiliar.   So far we’ve run into gingham, beret, tam, and a couple of bird names.  I gave him a dictionary to use when he needs to figure out what a word means.

Evan Moor Daily 6-Trait Writing Gr 3:  We haven’t even finished the first weeks worth of these.  He did okay with the couple of days we tried.   I’m thinking about adding some writing using journal prompts, and letting him type in on the computer.

MATH

Vicki

Math Mammoth 1A:  Still working on addition, but almost ready to move on.  I’m going to be adding in a lot more games, and doing a lot less worksheets.

Evan Moor Skill Sharpeners Math Gr 1:  Up to page 26.  Has worked on coin sorting, symmetry, ordinal numbers and graphing.

George

Math Mammoth (3B, 4A, 4B):  Georgie started division in 3B and found it “too easy, the is probably the easiest thing you ever gave me”.  So we may skip a few pages and move fast.   He’s also not having any trouble with fractions or place value but evidently they aren’t the easiest thing ever.  Whatever.

Beast Academy 3A:  up to page 61, which is balancing problems. 

Scholastic Algebra Readiness Made Easy Gr 4:  So far, there still easy but I can definitely see that they are getting harder fast.  He did make one mistake when he doubled 19 to 28.

Scholastic Solve the Riddle Math Practice Multiplication and Division:  He’s up to Riddle #6, although he is using his multiplication chart quite a bit.

Scholastic Logic Posters, Problems and Puzzles:  He is really enjoying these.  We finished up the garden themed puzzles and started flag themed puzzles (which of the four flags match the clues).  I have had to explain primes, squares, and cube-roots to him.