May 12 - 18, 2013

Henry

• Math Made Easy 1: reading numbers, tens and ones, comparisons, 10 more or 10 less, ordering, halves and fourths, place value, expanded form, adding dice, adding, crossing out, subtraction, sets of, sharing
• The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading: Lessons 200-208 (Y as long e, sight word: busy; EY as long e; IE as long e; two-syllable plural words that end in ES; hyphenated words; three-syllable words)
• Getting Started With Latin: vocabulary: est
• Architecture - It's Elementary!: None this week
• Origami Math: Jumping frog (shape, measurement, distance, height)
• Life of Fred - Apples: None this week

I've started skipping through Math Made Easy since it is supposed to be review.  There are things he KNOWS and I don't want to waste a lot of time on them.  There are also things that we've never covered later in the book, like Venn diagrams.  I'd like to touch on those before we pick up with Saxon again.

I thought that the later lessons of OPGTR would take longer, but they're actually taking much less time.  It's kind of odd.  Henry has more issues with sounding out smaller words than bigger ones.  I'm still reminding him that "the e on the end makes the vowel say its name," but he'll spit out multi-syllabic words with minimal hesitation.  I can still hear him decoding, so I don't think he's memorized the longer ones.  It's not like he could have anyway, since he's seeing most of these words for the first time.  I guess it's just one of those developmental things.  Only 21 lessons left!

On a side note, I am all of a sudden noticing how many people wear shirts with inappropriate slogans on them.  We went out to eat the other night and a kid at the table across from us had this shirt on.  Which Henry promptly read, of course.  Thankfully, he forgot about the "n after m" rule so he was just rather puzzled by what he thought said "every damen night."  Sigh.

The Boxcar Children is a hit!

Oliver

Ollie is still making steady progress with the training protocol.  He also made some pretty big steps this week.  On one afternoon, we took all the kids to a local playground.  Although Oliver didn't follow along with the games the playground kids were doing, he did make a point of remaining in the midst of the group.  As they wandered from activity to activity, he went along with them and we could tell he was enjoying it all.  He also started counting along with us on his fingers!  I was counting fingers and toes with him and when I started holding each of my fingers up, he exactly imitated what I was doing.  So now, when I count to ten, he holds up each finger in correspondence.

Unfortunately, we've had a big regression with sleep this week.  I'm not sure if it's seasonal changes or what, but Oliver has woken up almost every night this week.  Most nights, he's gone back to sleep fairly quickly, but it's having a definite effect on his mood during the day.  I hope we'll get this nipped in the bud.

Jane

We received our Song School Latin CD on Wednesday and have been listening to it in the car.  All of the kids love it, not just Jane.  Thankfully, the songs are pleasant to my ears also so sum bene!

Peter

He had one upper tooth break through this week and another is soon to follow.  These aren't near as bad as the bottom teeth were. 

May 5 - 11, 2013

Henry

• Math Made Easy 1: 26 - sets, money, ordering stories, time, graphs, 2D shapes, 3D shapes, writing numbers, counting, counting on by 2s, most and least
• The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading: Lessons 194-199 (S as /zh/, sight word: people; review two-syllable words; possessive words; contractions, sight word: been)
• Zaner-Bloser Handwriting 1: Finished!  Days of the week, months of the year, writing quickly
• Getting Started With Latin: vocabulary: es, poēta
• Architecture - It's Elementary!: human proportions
• Origami Math: noise popper (spatial reasoning, shapes, measurement, symmetry)
• Life of Fred - Apples: Chapters 10-12

Oliver

Oliver's still doing the intensive potty-training protocol.  We're not able to mimic it at home because of the other kids, so I'm getting smaller sessions in during naptime and working on practicing mands and tacts instead.  He's getting pretty good at identifying things using signs.  It's a slightly different skill than requesting, but it's coming along nicely.

Jane

Jane's memory is a little mind-boggling for me.  We walked her through her bedtime prayer (the good old "now I lay me...") line by line and she picked it up pretty quickly.  She memorized our prayer before meals (the good old "bless us O lord") just from listening to us.  We started saying a family Hail Mary on May 1st during our evening ceremony for Mary in May and she has that memorized already.  She has episodes of Yo Gabba Gabba down pat, including the movements of the characters.  And she remembers our Latin lessons, too.  Right now, she's running around and singing, "sum nauta, sum nauta, sum nauta, I am a sailor!"

I'm curious to see how she would react to more singing-type lessons, so I ordered Song School Latin today.  I just got the CD, not the workbook.  It should be here next week and I'm going to keep it in the car to listen to on our trips back and forth for Oliver. 

Peter

Peter is still army crawling, is sitting up well, is able to sit up on his own, still has two teeth coming in the top, and is refusing every sippy cup known to man.  He has one month left of the bottle and then it's sippy cup or nothing.  (Big words now.  I'll probably be backtracking in five weeks.)

We're still on track for a July 1st start date, but I'm not sure what things are going to look like around here for long.  We are going to be moving out-of-state in the fall, so we had to put our house up for sale.  Amazingly, we got an offer on it the first day it was listed and we've already signed the contract.  We'll have to move to a short-term rental in the next couple of months before making the big move in October/November.  Part of me wants to get as much done as possible before the move; part of me wants to take an extended vacation and not start first grade until we're settled in our new home.  I'm sure we'll wind up with a mix of both.  For now, we'll just take it one day at a time.

April 28 - May 4, 2013

Very quickly...

Henry

• Math Made Easy 1: 16-25 - ordering, more than or less than, greater or less, comparing, halves, quarters, adding up, adding animals, subtracting, counting back
• The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading: Lessons 189-193 (CH as /k/, sight word: choir; the soft sound of the SC blend; silent W after S, silent T after S, silent M before N; TI as /sh/; CI as /sh/, SI as /sh/)
• Zaner-Bloser Handwriting 1: Pages 122-126 (Zz; X, K, Z review; writing sentences )
• Getting Started With Latin: vocabulary: nōn; grammar: verbs
• Architecture - It's Elementary!: acting out structures
• Origami Math: instant cup (spatial reasoning, shapes, volume)
• Life of Fred - Apples: Chapters 8-9

Let's see, today we're going to play some Uno and I think we'll start a read-aloud of The Boxcar Children. Henry will get a kick out of having the same name as one of the main characters.

April 21 - 27, 2013

Henry

• Math Made Easy 1: numbers, numbers and pictures, counting, counting out loud, missing numbers, making 10, count by 10s, count by 2s, patterns, adding machines, reading numbers, finding 10s, tens and ones, one more or one less?)
• The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading: Lessons 184-188 (the ING ending; practice with two-syllable words; OU as short-u; OR as /är/, S as /sh/)
• Zaner-Bloser Handwriting 1: Pages 116- (Review V, Y, W; write an invitation; Xx; Kk; )
• Getting Started With Latin: vocabulary: sum, nauta, ego, agricola, et; grammar: word order
• Architecture - It's Elementary!: geometric shapes; streetscapes;  neighborhood walks

Math Fun Friday has so far consisted of:

• Life of Fred: Apples:  chapters 1-7
• Simon Flash
• Rush Hour, Jr.
• Suspend
• Math Dice

Obviously, we're not limiting Math Fun to just Fridays.  Today, we added in some Origami Math.

"Is this math, Mommy?"  "Yes."  "Wow.  Math is fun!"

Oliver

Oliver has mastered more levels this week.  I'm looking forward to getting his monthly progress report.  Next week, he begins intensive potty training.  I'm really hoping that this won't be too much of a struggle, either at the center or at home.

Jane

Jane is working on tracing right now.  Nothing crazy; just a Kumon workbook.

Peter

He is so much happier now that those teeth are through.  He started army crawling this week, too!

April 14 - 20, 2013

Saxon Math 1 is done!

Henry

• Saxon Math 1: Lessons 126-130 (writing the number 114, identifying and counting hundreds, tens, and ones; writing the number 115, representing numbers to 500 using pictures; writing the number 116, subtraction facts - the leftover facts; writing the number 117; written assessment 25, oral assessment 13)
• The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading: Lessons 180-183 (compound words; the schwa; the LE ending; the ER ending)
• Zaner-Bloser Handwriting 1: Pages 111-115 (Vv, Yy, Ww)

Okay.  So now what?

Math - As I wrote about before, Henry is going to work his way through the first grade workbook of Math Made Easy.  This is going to be review, so I think he will get through it fairly quickly.  He already did the first five pages yesterday.  Granted, they were extremely simple concepts, but I don't think he'll take more than two or three months to complete the entire book, putting completion somewhere around the end of June.

Reading - We have 48 lessons left in OPGTR. At our current rate of 4 lessons per week, that would take us 12 weeks to complete, putting us at mid-July.  From this point on, the length of the lessons increases quite a bit.  I think I will keep our current one lesson per day schedule, but we are going to start doing school Monday through Friday beginning next week.  Five lessons per week has us completing the book before the end of June.

Handwriting - There are 24 pages left and Henry is completing one per day.  With a five-day week, he'll be finished by the end of May.

Based on all of that, it looks like first grade is going to begin in July.  July 1st is a Monday, so we'll shoot for that as our official start date.

In the meantime, I am going to work on developing Kindergarten Henry into First Grade Henry.  That means, as I wrote above, extending our school week.  I want to begin our Math Fun Fridays now.  We'll do the workbook lessons for four days, then have Friday for math games and books.

I have an eye towards some enrichment activities, too.  We've done the first few lessons from Getting Started with Latin and Henry (and Jane!) really like them.  We'll keep that up.  I also just came across an interesting (and free!) elementary architecture course created for kindergarten through fifth grade.  Henry has expressed an interest in learning how to design buildings, so I think he'll enjoy this gentle introduction. 

(And he lost his first tooth last week!)

Oliver

Oliver continues to progress.  Both Matt and I have noticed a definite upswing in his ability to listen and follow directions.  He continues to match and sort easily.  He remains highly interested in the letter portions of Starfall.  He is picking up new signs easily.  Overall, he's doing great.

Jane

Oh, Jane.  Jane wants to read, but she doesn't want to be read to.  Jane wants to count, but she doesn't want help counting.  Jane wants to write, but she doesn't want anyone to watch her write.  Jane is a cute little walking contradiction.  I get a touch of the vapors thinking about what she's going to be like in a couple of years.

Peter

Finally.  The glorious day has arrived.  Two bottom teeth have broken free.  It has been a long, hard slog.  Peter is also getting up on his hands and knees and rocking back and forth, so I think he'll be crawling soon.  He's also (finally) sitting up.  I guess it takes a lot of muscle control to keep that huge noggin steady.

April 7 - 13, 2013

Quickly, before the kids notice I'm trying to accomplish something...

Henry

• Saxon Math 1: Lessons 122-125 (writing the number 110, subtraction facts - differences of one; writing the number 111, drawing polygons; writing the number 112, identifying and counting quarters; writing the number 113, subtraction facts - subtracting using the doubles plus one addition facts,  written assessment 24 )
• The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading: Lessons 176-179 ( r-changed vowels review; compound words)
• Zaner-Bloser Handwriting 1: Pages 107-110 (review, keys to legibility, Vv)

Barring catastrophe, we will finish Saxon Math 1 next week.  I can't believe we're already done and it's only April.  We'll have plenty of time to meander through the Math Made Easy workbook and review concepts.  Once Henry finishes OPGTR, we're going to go ahead and begin first grade. Yikes!
 

March 24 - April 6, 2013

Two weeks at once because of Easter (Happy Easter!) and out-of-town guests.  I'm glad we worked ahead a bit because we are slacking off this week.

Henry

• Saxon Math 1: Lessons 116-121 (writing the number 105, addition facts - the last eight facts; writing the number 106, measuring line segments using centimeters; writing the number 107, identifying geometric solids (cylinders and cubes); writing the number 108, subtracting ten from a number;  written assessment 23, oral assessment 12; writing the number 109, adding three single-digit numbers)
• The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading: Lessons 168-175 ( r-changed vowels: ER as /ûr/; IR as /ûr/; UR as /ûr/; WOR as /wûr/; EAR as /ûr/; sight words: where, there, were; sight words: their, here; r-changed vowels: slightly-changed vowel sounds)
• Zaner-Bloser Handwriting 1: Pages 96-106 (review Uu, Ss, Bb, Pp; Rr; Nn; Mm; Hh; review)

I'm adding Latin and logic to first grade.  Nothing crazy, just Getting Started with Latin and a Mind Benders book.  It's maybe another five minutes to our day.  I think he can handle it.

Oliver

Oliver is doing great with matching.  His therapist gave him a letters matching game for his birthday and he can match each letter very quickly.  He's scanning the whole board each time, which is great.  We're also working on sorting by color.  I'm using our shapes and colors beanbags to set up an array and he's doing well.  We'll keep at it.

Jane

We're continuing with letters and numbers.  She's trying to count with one-to-one correspondence, but it's iffy (as expected).  She enjoys it though, and I want it to stay that way.

Peter

One tooth has finally broken free!  The other will emerge soon, I'm sure. 

March 17-23, 2013

We got quite a bit done this week.  Thank goodness.

Henry

•  Saxon Math 1: Lessons 112-115 (writing the number 101, identifying fractional parts of a whole; writing the number 102, graphing tags on a bar graph; writing the number 103, counting dimes, nickels, and pennies; written assessment 22)
• The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading: Lessons 161-167 ( r-changed vowels: WAR as /wôr/; review /ôr/ words; ARE as /âr/; AIR as /âr/; EAR as /âr/; review /âr/ words )
• Zaner-Bloser Handwriting 1: Pages 88-95 (Uu, Ss, Bb, Pp)

Oliver is doing fantastic.  He had three BCBAs sit in on one of his sessions this week and they said he is making great progress.  He's moved up a whole level with matching, his eye contact is great, he's sleeping well...  I'm really happy with how he's doing.  We've been playing on Starfall a lot during his eye patch time and he's enjoying the little games where he has to match capital letters and lowercase letters.

Jane is trying to write!  She actually wrote a legible "a" and "r" on her own during a coloring session.  She knew what she did too, because she brought the paper to Matt afterwards and pointed out the letters to him.  I can see maybe a "B," "C," and "V" in there too, but she didn't point those out.  I guess she is paying attention. 

Poor, poor Peter has bulging gums and chapped lips.  We're going through teething tablets like... well, like teething tablets.  He's miserable.  I feel like he's been teething forever.

I think I have our first grade schedule decided upon.  It will look something like this:

Sunday: Cathechism via MyCatholicFaithDelivered.com

Monday - Thursday:

• Morning session (1 hour): Grammar, writing, and math
• Lunch: Listen to our read-aloud audiobook
• Afternoon session (45 minutes): History, science

Friday:

• Morning session (1 hour): Grammar, living math books and games
• Lunch: Listen to our read-aloud audiobook
• Afternoon session (45 minutes): Geography, science

Saturday: Art and music (combination of creating art, picture/artist study, and listening to music)

I talked about the upcoming schedule with Henry and he was pretty excited, especially about the Friday math games.  I'm putting together more detailed lesson plans for the first month and it looks like first grade is going to be pretty fun.

March 10-16, 2013

Oh, here's the spinning week.  It's the week in which I caught what everyone else had.  At least Matt was home when I had the worst of it.  That helped a lot.

What we did last week:

Henry

•  Saxon Math 1: Lessons 110-111 (Written assessment #21, oral assessment #11; writing the number 100, identifying one dollar)
• The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading: Lessons 159-160 ( r-changed vowels: OUR as /ôr/; OAR and OOR as /ôr/)
• Zaner-Bloser Handwriting 1: Pages 85-87 (writing words, writing a letter)

It's strange to say this in March, but our year is coming to a close.  We have 19 lessons left in math, or about five weeks.  We'll start going through Math Made Easy as soon as we're done with Saxon.  Henry sneaked a peek at it this week and wanted to start it now, but we're going to wait.  We have 71 lessons left in OPGTR.  That's about 18 weeks at our current pace of one lesson per day, but once we're done with Saxon I'm going to increase to two or three lessons per day (depending on mastery).  Saxon takes up a big chunk of our school hour, so we'll have more time to work on reading once we're done.  We also have about six more weeks of handwriting left to do.

Based on all of this, I think we'll easily be ready to start first grade in July.  I've been slowly accumulating all of our materials and should have everything we need by then.  My biggest task is going to be working out what our schedule will look like for the week.  I also need to start some lesson planning.  While I'm a big proponent of "just do the next thing," there's quite a bit of overlap with the courses.  For example, there is copywork in grammar, writing, history, and science.  That's a little over the top.  I want to go through the materials and pare back the assignments so that we have a sharper focus in each subject.  I want grammar to be about grammar, writing to be about writing, etc.

Over the next few months, I'll be paging through The Well-Trained Mind, taking notes, drawing up sample plans for the first month or two of lessons and seeing what form our school is going to take.  I am just crazy enough to be excited about this.  Lesson planning: living the dream!

Oh, remember about two years ago when I posted about making my way through the Great Books?  And I thought that ten years seemed like a long time for it?  Yeah, I'm almost done with the first year's reading assignments.  Two years later.  I did have a baby in there, so that's my excuse.  Personal goal for me: finish the first year's readings so that I can start the second year in July.  Fingers crossed.

March 3 - 9, 2013

This week was pretty much a bust.  Matt came down with a bad cold early in and, despite our best efforts, every one of the kids caught it too.  At least it all hit them on the same day.  I'd rather run a mini hospital ward than have each get it one by one.

What we managed to do last week:

Henry

• Saxon Math 1: Lessons 107-109 (writing the number 97, identifying one half, one third, and one sixth; writing the number 98, addition facts - adding nine to a number; writing the number 99, estimating and measuring capacity)
• The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading: Lessons 156-158 ( r-changed vowels: AR as /är/, sight word: are; OR and ORE as /ôr/; OUR as /ôr/)
• Zaner-Bloser Handwriting 1: Pages 82-84 (Qq, G/J/Q review)

Hmm. I guess we did a little more than I thought.  I suppose it just felt like we were spinning our wheels.

Oliver's tolerating his eye patches.  He does really well as long as he's sitting on my lap and focused on Starfall.  He's made quite a bit of progress on the program.  He easily matches colors, remembers which letters have the games he likes to play, and is doing very well with matching capital and lower case letters.  I can tell he's trying to figure out how to play the memory games.  He knows that he's supposed to turn over the cards and find a match, but I think there are too many cards for him to really catch on.  We'll keep at it.

Both Jane and Oliver are diving back into Hooked on Phonics.  I actually think Oliver is a little bored with the alphabet lessons from the pre-K discs, so I may pop in the kindergarten disc this week and see if it holds his interest.

We're all really excited about the start of the conclave on Tuesday.  Matt is going to be off and Oliver doesn't have therapy, so we'll be able to watch the coverage together!