Introducing Avanleigh Hope

Born Saturday, November 17 at 11:15 AM. 8lbs 1oz, 20.5 inches long. She's a sweetheart and has pretty much gotten all of us wrapped around her little finger, especially her smitten big brothers! 

Weeks in Review 8/27 - 31 and 9/3 - 7

I missed posting last week, but I'll cover both last week and this week with this post.

We're continuing to do well with getting school done consistently and (mostly!) without complaining or arguing.  I could do better with getting an earlier start in the mornings, but I'm working on it!  There are still a few things I want to work in (art and music, occasional fun activities, etc.) and a few details I'm still working on (memory work review and a plan for reading other than "fly-by-the-seat-of-our-pants"), but I'm making progress.  Baby will be here in about three months, which seems an incredibly short time, so I'm starting to feel the pressure to get my ducks in a row (with school and other things!).  I need to dedicate some serious time to that this week!

Here's what we've been up to!

Connor

Math:
He finished RS level C!! We were both excited. We finished up the last couple of lessons (including on introducing negative numbers, which we had already discussed a bit and which he was totally excited about exploring!), took a couple of days to review, and then he took the end-of-book test.  He only missed 3 problems--one he wasn't paying attention and added instead of subtracting, one he just got wrong, and the third he had a bit of trouble setting up on his own (RS usually has a grid for them to write the numbers for vertical problems, and I didn't even notice that the test didn't have that for the problem until he was having a hard time lining it up. I don't recall any other times--i.e. on worksheets or in the lesson plans where they were given that task, so it's something I'll need to plan to address with him on my own and make sure I remember to do with Brennan too!). Since it was something we really hadn't worked on, I helped him get it lined up, and once we did that, he got it with no problems, so I knew he could actually do the math. I was really pleased with how well he did.  And so was he!

Fitting all the tangram pieces together to make a large triangle

Serious concentration in a game of Corners

Hard at work on the end-of-book test

After he finished the test, we took a day off to play math games and then jumped right in to level D with a review of calendars.

History:
We also finished SOTW volume 1! He learned about the legacy of the Roman empire, how they left us everything from the names of the planets to swimming pools to the tradition of putting pictures of our leaders on coins. Then we capped off our Ancient History study (FINALLY!!) with an Ancient Rome party--I'll post about that in a minute, because Brennan did it with us.  Volume 2 is ordered and on its way (should be here tomorrow!).  I'm really looking forward to studying the middle ages with them!

Reading:
He finished Holes, which he really enjoyed, and then for his independent reading for the rest of the last couple of weeks I've been letting him choose books on his own for now while I work on a plan.  I've started on a list of possible assigned books, and I'll add some more ideas when we get SOTW 2, since the plan is for much of his reading to go along with history. Then I'll have to whittle the whole thing down. Ugh.

Reading Jeremy Thatcher, Dragon Hatcher by Bruce Coville for independent reading

Grammar:
He completed lessons 190, 191, and 192 in FLL 2, reviewing synonyms and antonyms, parts of speech (that one took two days), and beginning a composition on giving directions.  He chose to write out instructions for how to feed the cat. *grin*

Spelling:
He reviewed steps 10 -  16 in AAS 2, finishing the rules for dividing words into syllables, making words plural, and some of the r-controlled vowel combinations.

Practicing words with "er"

Dividing into syllables and labeling syllable types

Latin:
He finished lesson 16 and began lesson 17, both of which are about different constellations with Latin names. He really enjoyed making the flashcards for these lessons!

Latin makes me crazy!

Listening to the vocabulary on CD

Hard at work making flashcards

Writing:
He finished week 24 lessons 3 and 4, week 25 lessons 1-4, and week 26, lesson 1. Week 25 used excerpts from Kipling's "The Elephant's Child," one of our favorite stories from Just So Stories, and he had a great time illustrating his narration.

The poor elephant's nose being stretched all out of shape by the crocodile!  I love the colorful forest. *grin*

Working on dictation

Geography:
He completed notebook pages for Illinois and Indiana.

Memory Work:
Over these two weeks he was memorizing/reviewing:
John 3:16, John 8:12
The hymn Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing
Catechism questions 16 - 25
Poem: "All Things Bright and Beautiful" by Cecil Alexander
Latin Prayer: Table Blessing (Benedic, Domine, Nos)
List of pronouns, list of helping verbs
History chant
Twelve sons of Jacob

Practicing the history chant

He has mastered "All Things Bright and Beautiful," so I'll have to get both boys to recite their recently memorized poems and post them later this week.

Brennan

Math:
Brennan finished lessons 91 - 94 in RS B.  We spent several days practicing 4-digit addition without using the abacus to make sure it was solidified, and he's doing really well with it. He was also introduced to the greater than/less than symbols and officially began subtraction.

Who needs an abacus??

Playing Corners with mom

 I've also been giving him at least one math worksheet a week to do for independent work (in his independent work folder--stuff to work on while I'm working with Connor: handwriting practice, review, etc.).  One of his pages was a "secret code" worksheet, which he loved so much that he begged for more.  So, being the good mom that I am (Are you kidding me?? Asking for MORE school work???  YOU BET I'm going to do it!!), I found a set of 15 superhero-themed code worksheets and a couple of "name the place" code worksheets for him. I went ahead and printed them all, figuring they'd hold him for a while and he could grab one or two a day when he wanted one. Oh, no. He sat there that afternoon and did ALL 15 of the superhero sheets (12 2-digit addition problems apiece) and got started on one of the other sheets as well (he finished both of those the next day). The only reason he stopped was because it was time for dinner!!

Hard at work figuring out the superhero's name

Phonics/Reading:
After reviewing the long vowel digraphs we had been working on, we moved on to the soft "C" sound and then took some time to practice decoding multi-syllable words.  He enjoyed his scavenger hunt so much last time that I made him another one where he had to find only the items on the list that had a soft "C" somewhere in the word.

Hard "C," soft "C" worksheet

Reading or hiding from the camera?  He *said* he was reading . . .

Grammar:
Nouns, nouns, nouns . . . I had forgotten how long FLL goes on with nouns at the beginning of the first grade section!  He can recite the definition of a noun flawlessly and easily distinguishes between common and proper nouns. We have been taking advantage of the focus on names (he finished lessons 7 - 12 over the two weeks) to practice writing, spelling, and capitalizing his full name.  He also enjoyed listening to the fable, "The Lion and the Mouse" (lesson 12), narrating, and illustrating his narration.

Illustrating his narration (I wrote as he dictated)

Writing:
He completed week 21, 22, and started on week 23 in WWE. His writing skills have definitely improved in the weeks that we've been back at school (as long as he's being careful!), and his listening and narrating skills are definitely growing too. He loves the narration days--I'm not sure if it's because he doesn't have to do the copywork or if it's that he likes doing narrations!

Spelling:
I just realized that we've been doing spelling, but I haven't been including it!  He's doing All About Spelling level 1 (AAS 1).  So far he has finished steps one, two, three, and four.  He still needs a little bit of practice on reciting the sounds for a couple of the phonograms, but he can write them all from dictation and is pretty good at segmenting words.  He's also doing well with putting the letter tiles in alphabetical order.

Alphabetizing the letter tiles

Memory Work:
Over the last couple of weeks he has been memorizing/reviewing:

John 3:16, John 8:12
Catechism questions 16 - 25
The hymn "Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing"
Poem: "The Cat of Cats" by William Brighty Rands
Books of the OT (through Daniel, so far)
Definition of a noun
Twelve sons of Jacob

He learned "The Cat of Cats" pretty quickly, and I still haven't gotten a video of him reciting "The Caterpillar," so I'll have to make sure that gets done this week!

Illustrating "The Cat of Cats"

Together

Bible: 
We did lessons 4, 5, and 6 over the last two weeks. We're still learning about Joseph and how God took care of him in Egypt.  Although Connor loves making his own review drawings on the second day of each lesson, Brennan is much happier when I print out a coloring page for him, so I've been doing that.  We had a good discussion about making things right when we mess up after talking about how Pharaoh's cupbearer forgot about Joseph for two years after Joseph interpreted his dream. The default answer (at least from one of them) on what to do if you mess up was to try to hide it, so it was an interesting talk.  It helped that we had a recent real-life example to refer to.  Which reminds me that someone still has an apology letter to write!

Science:
We covered the immune system for science over the last couple of weeks, reading about how white blood cells attack germs and using the How the Body Works website for more information and fun. This site has been an invaluable tool in our human body study!  We're almost done--hopefully next week (well, I guess it's actually this week since I'm writing this so late!) we'll be putting together our lapbooks.

History:
Ancient Rome Party!!  We celebrated finishing our study of ancient history with several crafts and activities related to ancient Rome.

We made a standard like the ones groups of Roman soldiers would carry into battle:

Making a medallion for the standard

Brennan colored the eagle for the back, Connor colored the one for the front

Our finished standard

They also wore a toga (alas, only one white sheet at Goodwill, so they had to share!) and reclined on cushions to have a snack like the Romans would have at meals. Later we made crowns of leaves to complete the Roman outfits:

Brennan was bummed when  I said we couldn't eat all our meals like this!

Brennan made mosaics. Connor wasn't really interested, but Brennan again showed his ability to focus on a task for a long time and get it done.  I should really stop being surprised that he does this!  It did take him two days to complete this, but only because he had to stop because it was time to leave for church! He was fascinated by the pictures of ancient Roman mosaics I showed him online.

We made coins out of clay, talking again about some of the leaders we had learned about that would have been featured on Roman coins:

(You can't really see the designs they made on the coins--too bad.  I wish we had a better camera. Or knew better how to use the one we do have!)

And that was pretty much it! They had fun, and I was glad that we got to get to a few history projects that we hadn't done earlier.

Oh, and soccer started up again.  Busy days!

Our Week in Review, 8/20 - 8/25

A little late, but I really want to make sure I'm better about keeping up with posting about our weeks.  So better late than never (and better than trying to post at the end of this week about two weeks and writing another novel!).

This was our third week back, and was supposed to be our first full week (with school every day).  We didn't get quite everything done because I caught whatever Connor had last week (ick), but we did some school work on Saturday to make up for totally missing it on Thursday (when I spent most of the day in bed) and got almost everything done that I had planned.  So I'm calling it good!

I really think both boys (but Connor especially) are doing better for being back on a regular routine and being expected to work again.  Attitudes this week have been much improved, and it's been a lot easier to get things done.  I'm thankful!  Anyway, here's what we've been up to.

Connor

Math:

He finished lessons 144 - 148 in RS C this week. We'll finish the book next week!  Some multiplication practice, addition facts review, problem solving, and working with tangrams.  He looooves the tangrams (not a surprise--they're fun!).  It's interesting to see him persevere in working on solving some of the puzzles presented, because I think the same kinds of things would have caused a melt-down a year or so ago.  What a difference a year of maturity makes!  That reminds me that I wanted to see if I can find some tangram puzzles/patterns online to print for him to try . . .

Solving and recording tangram puzzles

Timed addition practice!  We had been doing multiplication so much he forgot on a couple of them and multiplied instead of adding!

History:

We did get the first section of the last chapter of SOTW 1 done this week, but it was one of the things that mostly fell by the wayside.  We read about the final Roman emperor and the fall of the Western Roman Empire and he did a narration.  I had planned to read the final section and then have an Ancient Rome party, but that fell through when I got sick.  It's on the plan for next week (well, *this* week, now)!

Reading:

He is almost finished with Holes, which is great, except for the fact that I'm not sure what I'm going to have him read next!  Still hashing out the reading assignment issues (which includes planning/selecting read alouds).  The good thing is that I should be able to order SOTW 2 and the AG this week, so it'll be easier to get down-n-dirty with planning literature once I see what we'll be studying for history!

Grammar:

He finished lesson 189 in FLL 1, which was practicing working with prepositions.  The other lesson I had planned to do got lost in the sickie shuffle (we alternate spelling and grammar each day).

Spelling: 

We continued our review, covering steps 7-9 in AAS 2, paying special attention to syllable division rules and labeling syllables.  Some of his independent work has been to copy the "key cards" (each card has a spelling rule) from AAS 2 into his spelling notebook to reinforce the concepts.  

Latin: 

We continued reviewing this week, working on the vocab from unit 3.  He makes flashcards for the vocab for each lesson, so I had him match the Latin and English words one day, then we played charades with the Latin cards another day--one person chooses a card and acts it out, while the other has to guess the Latin word that he's acting out.  He loves it, but some of the words are tough to act out (and he has a boy-block on acting out anything to do with women or girls--he refused to act out queen! *grin*).  Next week we  start back with lesson 16!

Writing:

He completed lessons 23.4, 24.1, and 24.2 in WWE 2. Week 24's literature selection is The Plant that Ate Dirty Socks by Nancy McArthur, which we may have to find for a read-aloud--it seems pretty funny!  The writing instruction focused mostly on practicing writing with direct quotations.

Geography:

He completed notebook pages on Idaho as part of his independent work.

Memory Work:

This week he was memorizing/reviewing:

Matthew 17:20

The hymn To God Be the Glory

Catechism questions 11-15

Poem: All Things Bright and Beautiful

Latin Prayer: Gloria Patri

History Chant

Preposition list

Twelve sons of Jacob

Memory work was mostly the same from last week since last week was still a short week.  He's just about got all this down, so next week's list will be pretty different!

Brennan

Math:

This week he finished lesson 89 in RS B and began lesson 91 (which is supposed to take 5 days or so)--adding 4-digit numbers.  As I discovered with Connor, the way RS set up previous learning made mastering 4-digit addition pretty easy for him.  Once they have a good understanding of place value (the abacus is a WONDERFUL tool for this) and have done previous work with trading using the base ten picture cards and abacus, transferring those concepts to paper is the next logical step, and they understand *why* they're doing what they're doing.  He did a few problems with the abacus on Friday (the abacus gives a visual, tangible demonstration of what he's doing with the numbers and clearly shows why he's carrying, or "trading" as RS calls it), but Saturday he tried one without it and he was off.  He even had to bring a worksheet along to show off his new skill to Oma (grandma) when we went over there for dinner Saturday evening. *grin*

Adding using the abacus

Phonics/Reading:

This week we finished up learning the different digraphs for long vowels in this section of Phonics Pathways.  I gave him a scavenger hunt for independent work one day.  He had to read the words on the list and *only* find the items that included one of the long vowel digraphs that we'd been working on.  He loved it!

He reads aloud to me each day; he's currently reading The Josefina Story Quilt by Eleanor Coerr.  Like with his brother, I don't know what I'm going to have him read next, but he's almost done with it, so I'd better get on the ball!

Grammar:

Still working on nouns (and will be for a while, from what I remember when Connor was starting out!). This week he was still focusing on common and proper nouns, including learning that proper nouns are always capitalized.  He's got The Caterpillar down pat--I'll have to see if he'll let me make a video and post it next week!

Writing:

He finished lessons 20.3 and 20.4 in WWE 1 this week, learning about initials.  He had to take a picture of his copywork:

Memory Work:

This week he was memorizing/reviewing:

Matthew 17:20

The hymn, To God Be the Glory

Catechism questions 11-15

Poem: The Caterpillar

Books of the Old Testament

Definition of a noun

Twelve sons of Jacob

Together:

Bible:

We continued learning about Joseph this week (lessons 2 and 3).  The specifically asked to do Bible first at least one day, so they really seem to be enjoying it.  I think the fact that the lessons have so many different parts keeps the interest level high--reviewing previous material, memory work, interesting facts, reading/answering questions about the passage, application, timeline/mapwork, etc.  We do each lesson over 2 days, and we start the second day by drawing something from the passage/story that they remember from the day before (which Connor loves & Brennan resists a bit!).

Brennan drawing Joseph in prison

Connor's comic-style drawing of part of Joseph's story

Friday/Saturday's lesson was a bit awkward . . . Potiphar's wife enticing Joseph.  We've had a basic birds & bees discussion, so that helped some (as did an out-of-the blue discussion of what adultery was when Connor brought it up the other day).  Fun times!

Science:

We finished reading and talking about the reproductive system and the basics of healthy growth and development this week.  On to the immune system next week and then we're DONE with the human body!

Some miscellaneous pics of the boys working on independent work:

We dug out a silly story starters notebook and they had fun mixing and matching the different parts.  Connor--definitely my writer--chose to write and illustrate one.

Brennan pulled out the Cuisenaire rods and made his own take on the stairs. 

Brennan's color-by-sum worksheet that he completed over several days.

It was a good week--looking forward to another one this week.  Must remember to take pics of more than just math . . .  *grin*