The kids took a trip to our favorite local museum last week. The Lego exhibit, featuring artist Nathan Sawaya, has returned to the museum (we saw it when it was here in 2011) and the kids had a great time checking out the sculptures and then doing some building of their own.
They also visited some of their other favorite exhibits….
hanging out in a dinosaur nest…..
and stopping around the corner for a special treat after.
This week the kids went on a nature walk to learn about tracks and millipedes….
learned all about snakes, thanks to the new member of our family…..
and went to the library for a Valentine’s craft.
VICKI
Language Arts
HWT 1st: completed through page 54. Sometimes does 1 page a day, sometimes 2 pages.
Scholastic DoDEA Skill Builder Grammar, Usage and Mechanics Grade 1: learned about question sentences and when to use a question mark
Scholastic First Grade Basic Skills, Reading Comprehension: Vicki is almost done with the 1st grade book and will move right into 2nd grade. Jen has been successful at transitioning from doing these orally to having Vicki write in the answers.
The Wand: Week 2 of Level 1 – Hop on Pop
Reading: Vicki has been reading a mix of Dr. Seuss, Junie B. Jones, Magic Tree House, and all about snakes.
Math
Math Mammoth 1A: She is almost done with MM1A and will move into MM1B.
Evan Moor Skill Sharpeners Math Gr 1: This week’s Evan Moor included pages about the calendar, counting, numbers before and after, addition and subtraction to 14, adding three numbers, and number words.
GEORGE
Language Arts
HWT Cursive: Completed through page 52, he usually is just doing one page a day.
Evan Moor Skill Sharpeners Spell and Write Gr 4: This week’s passage was about Pompeii and the spelling words were: also, almost, awful, awesome, early, earth, wonder, shower, world, worst, volcano, erupt. Jen has been working with him and he’s doing a lot more of his writing using correct case, instead of always in upper case.
The writing assignment this week was to pretend to be a tv reporter sent to report on the eruption of a volcano. George’s report:
The smell was awful. It made my nose want to explode. They should call it a stink-ano. The ash and meteors coming out of it was green with a green fire trail. It seems like this is the world’s stinkiest eruption ever. It was stinky but awesome. I hear big eruptions that sound like 1,000 garbage cans falling at once. About halfway through it started sounding like 1,000 stinky boars.
He also wrote an acrostic poem:
Volcano’s
Or
Landmines
Could
Adventure?
Neither
Omega.
Not sure where he came up with Omega from.
Evan Moor Daily Reading Comprehension Gr 4: George has completed through page 86, which is about 1/2 way through the Grade 4 book.
Evan Moor Word-A-Day Grade 3: This week’s words were irritable, mob, launch, fidgety.
Writing with Ease: This week’s passages were on Mary Poppins.
Reading: George has been reading the Stink books, and enjoying them a lot.
Math
Math Mammoth (4A): George has started MM4A. He has been doing a lot more of his own writing here as well.
Scholastic Algebra Readiness Made Easy Gr 5: These have all been array problems lately, which seem to be harder than some of the other types (even to me!). He only has a few more pages before he starts a new section that I suspect will be easier.
Scholastic Solve the Riddle Math Practice Multiplication and Division: He’s doing much better solving these without using his chart.
Scholastic Logic Posters, Problems and Puzzles: He is currently working through the section on poster puzzles. Each poster has four different pictures – a garden, a flag, etc. and questions need to be answered to figure out which picture is the correct answer. Once he’s finished with these (there aren’t that many), I’ll have to find another good book of logic puzzles.
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The kids have both been making great progress and enjoying their work with Jen.
The kids went on a hike to learn about animal tracks at a local nature center. Lucky for them they went before the recent ice storm. The crust we now have on top of the snow is strong enough that the 50+ pound kids aren’t breaking through (I barely break through and can walk on top is places) so it probably wouldn’t show tracks well. But, they went when the snow was still nice and soft, and had a nice trek through the woods.
Back at the Nature Center, Vicki was able to get a close-up look at a millipede. Evidently I’ve been successful at not infecting her with my dislike of bugs, especially those with lots of icky little legs.
Over the weekend Daddy took the kids to Petco to spend the gift cards they received for Christmas. They were supposed to be used just for fish but decided on Galactic instead.
I handled snake a lot in a previous life as a zoo docent so I think he’s great! He (could be she, we really don’t know, it’s not that easy to find out) is a hatchling red albino corn snake. He’s tiny, about the size of a large earthworm.
We’ve been learning lots about snakes in general, and corn snakes in particular. Like all snakes, Galactic is cold-blooded so it’s very important he has proper heat provided in his tank. We started off with heat lamps (recommended by the pet store) but soon found out an under tank heater is better for corn snakes.
It’s also important for corn snakes to have a few hides in various areas of the tank. Hides can be purchased from the pet store or made using egg cartons or tp tubes(at least for a snake as small as Galactic). Corns like to hide and it’s important that he can be comfortable in all areas of the tank so he can self-regulate his temperature by moving around. We have the skull seen in the above picture, a cave, two sea shells and Galactic can fit under his water bowl. Plenty of place for him to hang-out.
Corn snakes are nocturnal so they are most active at night. Galactic seems to be settling into a pattern where he comes out around 6pm each evening, explores his tank for a while, including climbing up the thermometer probe wire to see if there’s any chance of escape.
I’m looking forward to this weekend when we feed him for the first time (they eat every seven days and he was fed at the store before he came home), and the first time he sheds.
Since corn snakes can live 20+ years in captivity, Galactic will provide years of observation.
Well, the big changes I alluded to back in December are here. The kids are being taught by our new homeschool nanny/private teacher/governess – we haven’t really figured out what the proper term is yet. Whatever we end up calling her (I’ll probably go with nanny most of the time just for simplicity), we are very glad we found her. Jen is a certified teacher, familiar with homeschooling (her much younger brother homeschools), and familiar/comfortable/ amazing with quirky, active, excitable little boys and girls.
The kids are now back to doing school using most of the resources we were using last summer. Math Mammoth, Evan Moor, Scholastic, etc. I’m excited because now I can go back to doing weekly updates! There just wasn’t that much interesting to write about Time4Learning. For anyone paying that much attention – the wrap-ups will be about a week behind to give me extra time to get pictures together and write them up.
Starting with the fun stuff: what have the kids been doing for the past few weeks? Lately it seems to be all about the snow. Like many other areas of the country, we are having a very cold, snowy winter. The kids have been sledding and tubing more this year than they have their entire lives before.
The day of one of the snow storms, Daddy decided we should take the kids down the road to a local golf course to try some sledding. It worked well except for the water trap at the bottom that required catching the sled to make sure they didn’t land in it. (and the fact that it was COLD!! and in the middle of a snow storm!) The kids had fun (good thing they got snow pants, snow boots and new gloves for Christmas).
Jen has a good hill near her house without trees or water traps, and close enough to get inside when it gets too cold, so she’s taken the kids tubing there a few times.
They also ventured out to a local art museum for a homeschool class in collages. They had a great time. Vicki decided her collage needed a coating of black paint and threw herself wholeheartedly into the project.
And on to the important stuff. Since going back to written work is a big change from T4L, they are starting off with the basics and gradually adding stuff back in.
LANGUAGE ARTS
Vicki
Vicki took some amazing leaps in reading while doing Time4Learning. She literally went from sounding out CVC words to reading Magic Tree House and similar level books. She now has her own caterpillar for her completed books and she’s doing great.
Vicki currently isn’t doing any phonics, but in the next few weeks will start All About Spelling with Level 1.
She started The Wand with Level 1, Stage 1 – Hop on Pop. (I have The Wand from a group buy on Homeschool Buyers Co-op so it may not match up with the current subscription choices).
Vicki is doing Reading Comprehension and Grammar using Scholastic for now, but may drop the Scholastic Grammar if The Wand appears to be enough, and switch to Evan Moor for Reading Comprehension.
HWT: Vicki is back to working her way through Handwriting without Tears 1st grade book, with some extra practice on the lined chalkboard.
George
HWT: George is doing HWT 3rd grade Cursive book. He’s doing okay with it but when he’s allowed to write however he wants, he still tends to go with printing in all caps.
Evan Moor Skill Sharpeners Spell and Write Gr 4: He’s doing very well with the 4th grade spelling. He never gets more than one or two wrong. I like this program because it also covers various grammar topics – like homophones, contractions, etc.
Evan Moor Daily Reading Comprehension Gr 4: These are still pretty easy for George. In addition to just passages, they also introduce reading a Table of Contents, Index and charts.
Evan Moor Word-A-Day: He’s currently doing the 3rd grade Word-A-Day and mostly has no trouble with the definitions. He’s also practicing dictionary skills by looking up some of the words each week.
Reading: He’s doing quite a bit of reading. He’s read through the entire Diary of a Wimpy Kid series (multiple times), and is currently reading Judy Moody and Stink series.
MATH
Vicki
Math Mammoth 1A: Vicki is almost done with MM 1A and will move on to MM1B. She’s does one page a day.
Evan Moor Skill Sharpeners Math Gr 1: Vicki is slightly more than halfway through the Evan Moor grade 1 math. She usually prefers this to MM since it’s much more colorful. It’s great for review of previous topics since it has a mix of problem types.
George
Math Mammoth: George is currently finishing up MM3B. Once that is done, he’ll be once again doing a mix of chapters, but all from 4A. As he gets farther along it’s much harder to mix between levels, so it’s likely he’ll work within one level at a time from now on.
Scholastic Algebra Readiness Made Easy Gr 5: He has moved on to grade 5 Algebra Readiness. He found much of the Grade 4 easy but he’s having to really slow down and think it out now.
Scholastic Solve the Riddle Math Practice Multiplication and Division: SInce he hadn’t done these in months, I started back toward the beginning. They are a good drill to help with memorizing multiplication facts.
Scholastic Logic Posters, Problems and Puzzles: He enjoys doing these but there aren’t that many so shortly I’ll have to find something new. This has a mix of grid puzzles, poster puzzles, number puzzles, venn diagram puzzles.
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Jen has all kinds of resources and books that she’s been bringing for the kids to use. The kids were amazed when I knew a bunch of the songs on the Schoolhouse Rock dvd (and even more amazed that they were actually played on tv when I was a kid).
She’s brought over lots of books for them to try and that’s how George “discovered” Stink and Judy Moody.
Our homeschool journey has changed once again but I think this one is going to work really well for all of us.
Wow, it’s really been a long time since I posted. My job went from temporary to permanent back in September, so things have continued to be crazy. I’m hoping to get back to regular posting soon. Meanwhile, here’s what we’ve been up to:
The kids are doing great with Time4Learning.
Vicki is now working in second grade for Language Arts and will be doing third grade Science and Social Studies once her reading is strong enough.
George has moved on to fourth grade in everything except Math.
They are moving very quickly through T4L. It’s not a very rigorous program but they are learning. Vicki’s reading took a huge jump once she started T4L and she is now working her way through the Magic Tree House books (among others). They frequently share interesting tidbits from science and social studies.
I’m very glad they are showing progress with T4L because we’ve been really bad about getting to the supplemental stuff. I’m hoping to change that once we get through the holidays.
What else have we been up to….
We celebrated the kids’ 8th and 6th birthdays in August…
We reviewed bear safety thanks to a visitor to our yard…
The kids went to the beach with Daddy and some of his friends, and it turns out they LOVE the ocean. We might have to visit more frequently next summer.
We had a great time visiting Big Sis Steph at school for homecoming and seeing her dance (she was Ginger Spice in a 90’s tribute)!
The kids were a pretty pink unicorn…
and a Purrloin (a purple cat Pokemon) for Halloween…
and had a great time getting candy and dancing to the DJ at our town’s Trunk or Treat.
We celebrated Thanksgiving, where I once again attempted to get decent pictures of the kids together….
This one isn’t bad if you ignore that neither of them are actually looking at the camera.
We did get a nice girls picture…
and a boys picture.
We’ve already enjoyed playing in lots of snow. We’re currently experiencing our second snow storm in a week. I think this is going to be a fun winter.
And then they decided they were tired of me taking pictures of them through the window (I stayed inside where it was warm!).
Now the kids are doing Christmas crafts with Granny Kaye and we’re getting all decorated for the Holidays (more on that later).
