We were all fighting colds this week so it was a slow go of things. Still we managed to stay somewhat on track.
Copywork and Bible: We continued with God's little boy and also are writing out Our Father. This goes along nicely with our Bible NIkV that we are listening to on Faith Comes by Hearing where we are in Matthew.
Math: Back to Righstart. I'm going to try and plod through the rest of book B because i think it does demonstrate things in a tangible way for Andrew. We also found a new math practice website. Variety is key for Andrew. He has money down pretty well and time is good as well although I plan to review time on 'Wacky Wednesday' next week.
Speech: We did nada, zip zilch this week. Having a cold and speech practice is just not fair to a child. We start speech back at Beaumont on Tuesday.
Science: We did some unschooling here. We read a book about frogs and also All Around You by Jeanne Bendick. We also read more about the scientific method.
Poetry, Art and Music: We read more about various types of poems specifically the limerick and villanelle. Andrew enjoyed reading though the entire book skimming for poems he enjoyed. You can see more of what we did I art here. We also did our hymn on Wacky Wednesday.
Reading and History: Plodding through Henry Huggins. It is fun and interesting and good to listen on CD but I have to say that Andrew enjoyed much more Leif the Lucky by D'aulaire. The illustrations are very rich and the text is wonderful. We have finished that book and I thought it would take much longer. We drew an illustration of his favorite together using the techniques we learned with our art instruction. He did a wonderful job narrating the book and was quite concerned that Erik the Red was not a Christian but quite excited when Leif decided to 'take the Christian faith.' I love narration.... we get to banter things back and forth and just have fun with a book. I plan to start video book reports soon.
I was on facebook and Andrew saw the cutest litte girl. He said with much gusto, "I'M IN LOVE WITH THAT GIRL!!" She just happens to be the daughter of a good cyberfriend. When we started giving him a hard time, he said..."I meant that with a question mark." Since Andrew is not teased in school we had to sing the little diddy; "Andrew and Brook sitting in a tree..." anyway it was too cute and a first so it had to be blogged. You can read more about Brook on Cochlear Kids. By the way... Brook has bilateral implants and apparently her baby has an implant too.
I did not plan on doing Language Arts with Andrew but I purchased these "Parts of Speech" Tales from Scholastic. (They also have Punctuation Tales, Vocabulary Tales and Grammar Tales). Andrew found them in a box and started reading with reckless abandon last night. What the heck! Let's do language arts. I did not read a single book with him, although I have done other grammar activities such as Mad Libs with him at other times. After lunch I jotted down a quick story to see what he could identify. He didn't get them all (but he was also a bit tired.) Regardless it was almost zero effort on my part- and on his. He really enjoyed it. I would not exactly call these 'living books' by Charlotte's definition because they are not 'high quality literature' but they are each a story- not a textbook. I purchased them, and the other "Tales" books through those scholastic flyers that they send home from school. You can do those book clubs as a homeschooler as well.
(I have no idea why these pictures are uploading that way...they are not pictured that way and when I flip them before uploading they are still sideways...sorry. You get the idea. )
It's only September and already we are in a rut (and getting through the colds that everyone else seems to have.) So... we are re-vamping Wednesdays to be WACKY WEDNESDAY. We are not doing 'nothing' or even 'unschooling' (which is great for some but we don't do it). I got the idea from a cyberfriend that does this every week with her daughter. It may be a field trip, educational video.... anything as long as it is not the regular routine. I hesitated against this as Friday is taken up by our homeschool enrichment hub classes and that means only three formal days a week of our assigned curriculum. But, what are we REALLY catching up for??!! I'm after heart issues with Andrew so if this will keep us involved and attentive the other three days I think it will work out for the best.
We are 'behind' in some of the subject like art and poetry so I thought this would be a 'catch up day' for fun stuff. So today we.....
Read Weights and Measures for our math and science and plan to play with volumes later this afternoon.
Read the definition of a limerick from A Child's Intro to Poetry and listened to some too. Did you know that "There Once was a Man from Nantucket" is a REAL limerick? (You can google it on Wikipedia. I could find no link that had ONLY the clean version so will not provide a link here.)
Read a story in our Hymn book. Andrew still is not keen on listening to music...so I let him just sing the words to his own tune. Hey! It's Wacky Wednesday!
Reviewed our Elements of Shape from Drawing with Children. Mom got a compliment from Andrew when she drew a fish (see above) that was on his shirt. "Hey mom! That's a great drawing. See, practice makes perfect." I can see this will be a course in drawing for me... I'll have other objectives for Andrew during it.
Did some household chores. Not fun- but Wacky Wednesday doesn't mean 100% fun...
Did a bit of copy work- OK this is an everyday thing but I felt it necessary. We will also do a few minutes of typing later tonight.
Copywork: We did a variety of work in this area including a letter to Andrew's pen pal.
Math: Back to Righstart;) We played addition war, worked on plus 8s with the '8 strategy' vs. the '5s strategy. We also did quite a bit of practical math with money. I was trying to teach Andrew to use a tissue to wipe his nose... so i said I would pay him a penny each time he used a tissue. He needed $2 more to get his Bionicle and he said, "MOM! I will have to get 200 pennies." Guess we got that one down.
Speech: We went for a mapping this week and Andrew participated quite well so we have a new map that we are trying out. We skipped working on speech because I felt Andrew should have the week to adjust to his map. Still when we were outside we did some descrim and speech work on Z and F which we did the previous weeks.
Science: We read from "How to think like a Scientist" and did the volcano experiment for the 100th time.
Art, Music, Poetry... a bit lax here but did manage to introduce the 'elements' in Mona Brooks "Drawing with Children" book
History: Andrew continues to be interested in Leif the Lucky
Typing: We finished "level 4" on type to learn!
Reading: We are still listening to Henry Huggins on CD and reading from Matthew in the Bible.
Field Trips: We went to the Hands On Museum in Ann Arbor.
We started our enrichment classes this week. All I'm going to say is that I came home and made four dozen cookies....Here is a picture of three dozen that survived.
Val from Cochlear Kids and I are doing Lessons of the Week for our Yahoo group Learn2Hear. This week's lesson is BOOKS! This was designed for our hearing impaired listening group in mind but I think useful for any homeschooling, afterschooling or other language type activities you may want to do with your children.
Vocabulary
Non Fiction Fiction Dewey Decimal System Genre Realistic Fantasy Poetry Mystery Science Fiction Biography Autobiography Reference librarian Library Library of Congress Dictionary Read Author Illustrator Binding Cover Edit Proof read Pages Setting Character
Activities
A trip to the library
Find a favorite fiction book and see if they have a biography in the children’s section of the author. (There is one on Beverly Cleary for example.) This provides a good contrast between fiction and non fiction.
Copywork and Poetry: We continued with our proverbs but also added a nonsense poem about a caterpillar from Simply Charlotte Mason. This goes along well with the poetry we did this week... Nonsense poems. I had also purchased Don't Bump the Glump. One of the pages is a poem titled How to Catch a Gleeech. As you can see from the above picture from the book and Andrew's handiwork, he is a boy of imagination. (I took this picture before his Gleech catcher was complete by the way. As I write this he is adding 'features.') In the area of fine motor, my little guy, who used to hate writing, cutting, pasting etc.. has made oodles of kiragami including the above 'Birthday Hat." hmmm..he wants it for his but my birthday is next. I'll take a picture if I so happen to wear it;)
Math: Oh what to do what to do... I switched gears. I know, it is only week two but I'm not that thrilled with Rightstart at present and I have other programs at my fingertips. I honestly don't know what to do- we did Primary math (Singapore) this week. We also did Mr. Martini's Math on the internet and Quartermile Math CD Rom. Quartermile works on speed and Mr. Martini provides additional practice. He can do 28+5 but has trouble with 8+5. We do very very short lessons a couple of times a day.
Reading: We are reading Henry Huggins on CD Rom and it is great fun.
History: We started Leif the Lucky. I figured we would do about a page a day but Andrew said, "keep reading." So...we kept reading!
Science: We did the 2nd week of NOEO science on Monday. So we forged ahead, did an extra experiment and started How to Think like a Scientist.
Speech: We are working on the final F sound. We also had a private therapist to the house and are going to try going back to Beaumont. They have room with a therapist I remember from our previous time there and I did like her. We go for a new mapping next week.
Typing: Not torture this week....just a struggle but making progress.
Andrew has had some wonderful narrations this week which I have blogged about previously.
We were just reading from the Bible; Matthew 3:1-12 where John the Baptist is telling the Pharisees and Sadducees that they'd better get with the program and change their hearts. I did explain a bit that the FRUIT he was talking about what their hearts- not a tree; however, when I asked him for a summary he said, "The Pharisees came. They were about to be condemned." I looked back in the text and the word condemned was not there. again..WOW!
Simply Charlotte Mason is having a blog carnival with the focus on narration. I thought I would provide just one small instance of what it brings to the table versus the 'ask and answer' question format. We are listening to Henry Huggins on CD. Today we listened to and read about 5 minutes worth of the book discussing when Henry brings home the fish from the pet shop. When I asked Andrew to give me a sentence or two from the passage, he said, "His mom appreciated the fish." Wow! The word appreciated was not in the text. And it sums it up well. I never would have gotten this word from him though a question and answer session. We do our fair share of worksheets however I encourage everyone when you read to or with your kids- homeschooler or public schoolers- when you are done just say, "let's share!" You will be amazed at what a child comes up with on their own. They must use their thinking mind and then you can proceed to have some additional 'together time' during a grand conversation of the book.
I like how The Black Pearl Academy does weekly reviews on her blog so I decided to do the same. That way I can also look back and see what we have done. I do keep track on paper but this also allows me to process the week in my head;) All of these resources can be found HERE and I will post a link on the sidebar shortly. Read below for the fun we had this week;) Also included are lots of listening and communication ideas for HI folks.
Math: We reviewed the 'nine's strategy' with much kicking and screaming. We use Rightstart. Love it... but we need to do some basic review in order to continue.
Copywork: We are using the God's Little Boy book to do much of our copywork. Andrew also wrote a letter to his pen pal this week.
Science: We started our NOEO science this week by doing an experiment from the experiment book as well as reading Smaller Than a Pygmy Shrew.
Speech/Listening: We did a speech eval last Friday and the SLP gave us a protocol of sounds to work on. We are starting with the Z sound to be contrasted with S. So I spent a goodly amount of dollars on Super Duper and Linguisystems as well as borrowing from a friend locally some supplies. I will post those resources at a later date.
Reading: We are listening to Henry Huggins on CD - so this could also go under Speech/Listening. I picked up a biography at the library on Beverly Cleary. It just happened to be on display. I didn't go looking for it. You have to love the little blessings from God;)
Typing: yep...did it.. not much...it's torture.
Poetry: We did nursery rhymes from A Child's intro to Poetry. Again there is a CD that goes along with this- GREAT listening practice. We then did our narration by acting out "Old Mother Hubbard" with his new Neopets from the Burger King Kid's Meals. That poem - in it's entirety- is funny. Here is a link to it.
Other: We have started allowance. Andrew can easily add to $1.00 plus has been introduced to 'tax' and percentages... a Neopet costs $1 but there is 6% tax so it equals $1.06. He can't quite do all that but it has been introduced. And we practiced our social skills at the counter asking for 'just a toy please and I would like a choice' as we don't actually EAT at BK. And their kid toys are cheaper than MDs. I did have to help a bit as there were people in line. But I have found our local BK to be incredibly friendly. I so wish we could EAT that stuff!!!! Maybe we'll try some fries for fun one day.
Sensory: I need to do more. We were draggin' this week a bit. I did do a few 'pre-balametrics' things of tossing a bean bag back and forth and the m/a relationship on that went quite well. That needs to be in place before any balametrics can take place.
What we didn't do: History, Art and Music...always next week..... Well we kind of did history talking about the presidents and stuff. I got Andrew straight on whose who and what's what since he was watching us watch the DNC and the RNC. I need to plan out an age appropriate unit for him over the next month. A friend did send out a great link which I will put in another post when I put together the unit.
This was our first day of school. I planned to dress up and be a bit more formal. really! But we did science reading (outdoors in our PJs) and an experiment. Andrew is peeking over my shoulder and says, "I tried to practice waiting. It was really hard." (We ran to the post office....) We also managed to eek in some writing of thank you cards and speech practice (the 'z' sound) and will tackle a tiny bit of math and typing later. Not bad for a first day!
