Week in Review - 4

A month of school already, this month has gone by so fast. This week we worked on memorization work, he learned his first poem, 10 spelling words, phone number, address and Korean numbers 1 - 10. I feel like all we did was work on memory this week but we did manage to work on math facts, study nouns, read about Egypt and the Nile river.

He is reading number 4 in the Magic Tree House chapter books. These books have been a big hit here, I need to start looking for more books for him, at the rate he is reading them we will be finished in 2 months.

We have started reading, "It's Disgusting and We Ate It", it is a fun book and he thinks it is funny. This is one of the extra reading books suggested in the SOTW history book. I can tell he is going to love the horrible histories books when we get to them.

This weekend we hope to pick blueberries and go to the Home Depot kids workshop.

He did it!

We have been working all week on memorizing name, address, phone number, spelling words (from last week) and 1 - 10 in Korean. He needed to know his phone number, address and the Korean numbers for TaeKwonDo class. He memorized the poem from earlier in 2 days with no trouble and the Korean numbers came easy to him( I still can't say them). His phone number and 3 of the 10 spelling words have been problematic. The phone number I understand, we just switched to only cell phones and he has been trying to learn both mine and Dad's number. Since my phone is now the main number, we worked on learning just that one but he kept trying to get Dad's in there too so he had to many numbers or would mix them up. The spelling words I have no idea why he couldn't get 3 of them down, other than he really didn't want to. Repetitive work is not his thing, he is a get it one try and move on kind of learner and when there is something we have to work at a little he gets frustrated. Finally today, after reading, writing and talking about them we got through all the spelling words, phone number, address and the Korean numbers without any errors.

As a reward, I am blogging and he is building a Lego space police dog.

The Caterpillar

Today he had his first poem memorized.

The Caterpillar by Christina Rossetti.

Brown and fury
Caterpillar in a hurry
Take your walk
To the shady leaf, or stalk

May no toad spy you,
May the little birds pass you by,
Spin and die,
To live again a butterfly.

Week in Review

Last week was our 3rd week homeschooling. It was a good week, we began the Story of the World and First Language Lessons.

I really like the Story of the World, I think we will enjoy it this year. While little bit works on his handwriting, I read the chapter from STOW and then we discuss. For instance, we were talking about the Shaduf that the first farmers used to water the fields and he thought a tractor would work better:) The activities in the workbook are nice, and help reinforce the information given in the book.

I am not sure about First Language Lessons, it seems repetitive and he does not like repetitive work. We will see how it goes as the year goes on.



This week we read our first Magic Tree House chapter book. I bought both the Magic Tree House and Magic School Bus chapter books for us to read. Since, he advanced in his reading level I wanted to make sure we encourage and keep up with him. I had planned for the sets to last the year but I don't think they will. Last night he read the entire Magic Tree House book in one sitting. Silly me, I was thinking a chapter or two a night but he loved the book and read the whole book. He even read the word, "Tyrannosaurus" without asking for help.


We also went to the Adventure Science Center for the science of NASCAR day. We had a great time as always. There were race cars to look at and sit in, pinebox cars to build and race. Also, they had cars powered by wind, solar, and water to test and see which worked better.

Magic School Bus Science

Here is our science for this year. There are 7 different subjects:
Diving into slime
World of germs
Journey of human body
Mystery of rainbows
Secrets of space
Soaring into flight
Going Green

There is approximately 10 experiments per box, we have oodles of hands on experiments to do this year. I have the set of 20 Magic School Bus chapter books we will also be reading. Between the books, experiments, and coordinating shows we have a fun well rounded overview of different science topics to cover. We also have a butterfly garden project to do, I sent off for the caterpillars the first May but we have yet to receive them, hopefully soon.

Muffin Tin Monday

Today's theme is dips and sauces. I will admit I did not work hard on this one. We have a ton of fresh fruit right now and so I knew that was going to be the main part of my plan. We had cantaloupe, watermelon(so sweet) and grapes. For the dip, I used strawberry yogurt, cool whip and a cream cheese dip. Really the fruit needed nothing but it was fun to try different things. If I had any jello gelatin I would have used it for the grapes. I did have a thought later that day for a nacho theme that I think I will use for our first football game feast. Little Bit loved it and wanted to eat the whole cantaloupe, he loves cantaloupe.

Bug Club

Today was Bug Club, the focus today was crickets, katydids, etc. There was a lecture on grasshoppers and they listened to the sounds of different crickets. Today he found a snowlace cricket, which was very exciting to the instructor, a lady bug, milkweed bug and a robber fly. This month they had more of the magnifying cups in, so he came home with one and has been searching for bugs ever since.

Can I just say, as one who is not a fan of crickets at all, I'm so glad bug club is on Saturdays so Dad can go.

Singapore Math - Primary Mathematics 1B

We started our new math workbook today. Until today we had been practicing our counting and addition facts. As I was reviewing the workbook last night, I was thinking this looks hard, I don't think this way how will I ever teach him. I was beginning to doubt myself on starting with 1b instead 1a. He loved it, he kept asking me one more worksheet please. We finished 3.5 worksheets today.

I am happy to see I was right in starting with 1B, trying to remember to trust your instincts and not get overwhelmed with all the choices there are is so hard. As my huuby can tell you I can drive myself insane trying to pick the right curriculum for us to use. As he tells me, so what if it doesn't work out, sell it and try another one. I do try to remember that homeschooling is about options and choices and we have the ability to exercise those rights at any time.


We had a great school day today.

Muffin tin Monday

It is actually muffin tin Tuesday. Since yesterday was a sick day, and all we were doing is sipping on coke, we did not get to muffin tin Monday. The theme this week is big/little. It was a snack theme with, marshmallows, ritz cracker with peanut butter and grapes/raisins.

Spelling

We are using the Spelling Workout Level B for spelling this year. I really like this workbook, not only does it give you a list of spelling words, there are several activities for the week also. For example in Lesson 1, there is a find the missing consonants, a word puzzle, find the missing word, and proofreading worksheet.

Our spelling words for this week are:
1. FOX
2. CUT
3. HILL
4. WIND
5. PUT
6. ALL
7. MOON
8. SAW
9. TELL
10. NEW

Week 2 Day 1 - Sick

It is the second week and he is sick. He has been running a fever and is congested. With him a fever makes him feel terrible, so we are laying around and watching movies today.

I do have a book for us to read, The Trojan Horse: How the Greeks Won the War (Step-Into-Reading, Step 5).

Edited to add: We read the first 3 chapters of the book today. He liked it fairly well, we did discuss some new words such as furious, hollow, and allies. As talked about what these words meant, I gave the example of hollow being like a ball, nothing on the inside. He was quick to point out, there is air on the inside of a ball so it can't be empty on the inside. He is a riot this kid, I love him!

Friction and Momentum

Today my sweet, always curious, wants to know everything in detail, kiddo, said, "Mom tell me about friction and momentum". Where does he come up with this stuff, Popular Mechanics for Kids, naturally. He loves those videos, I am pretty sure I could come up with one of those, everything I need to know in life I learned from Popular mechanics for kids sayings.

Once I thought about it for a minute, and considered calling my engineer hubby to say, "help, how do I explain friction to a 5 year old". He was already telling me about how it works and what slows things down and helps them go faster. So we got some hot wheels cars and compared how friction helped cars go faster and slower on different surfaces. Honestly, I am not sure who knew more me or him but I think for safety sake, I will start watching those videos with him:)

Math and spelling.

Yesterday, we opened up our math mastermind manipulative set and it was a huge hit. He had the best time working with the blocks, foam shapes and dominos. He played with them for hours and did not even notice me sneaking math questions in there. I ordered the mastermind sets grade 1 and grade 2 from Christian Book Distributors.

Today, the lego name plate came. To say we are huge lego fans here would be an understatement. We have more legos than I can care to admit to, and last year legos was all he wanted for both his birthday and Christmas. I bought the name plate for spelling. It comes with a long plate, 179 pieces and the instructions to make all 26 letters. It is fun, now I just have to make sure the pieces don't end up in the mass of other legos in the house. Someday I will take a photo of the craftsman cart we use for lego storage.
I ordered the nameplate from lego.com. A lego store might have them in stock they are new, but unfortunately we do not live near one.

First Day

We started our second year of homeschooling today. I call it school "lite", this week. To get us back into a schedule we are reviewing and checking out the new curriculum.

I really had hoped to start in full this week, but last week with someone being up every night from 12:30 to 3 or 4 with his rash itching and burning, 3 visits to the doctor, 4 different meds, one being steroids(a.k.a. the demon child creator) we are just exhuasted. I never did get my lessons plans done in detail thus the review week.


Today was fun, we started with muffin tin Mondays. I wasn't not sure how that was going to go over but he liked it and asked when I would do it again. I did breakfast instead of lunch. He had grapes, apple slices, strawberry yougurt, a cheese wedge and frosted mini wheats(his current favorite). Please forgive the throw away muffin tin, would you believe I could not find a 6 count muffin tin at Walmart. I will find you before next week.


Today we worked mostly on handwriting, our problem subject. He learned to make his letters around 3.5 years old and to him that is good enough. Why should he have to practice if he already knows how to make them, this is his agurement. It is a struggle to get him to work on it. Today I let him pick 5 words and I wrote them out in pencil for him to trace in a color marker, that worked really well. He choose his name, lego, car, lost and ball. I also made numbers 1-10 both the numbers and words for him to trace. He was quick to point out I forgot zero it is a number too, I was told. I can't imagine where that came from, my sweet but geeky engineer of a hubsand, is my guess.