September 16-22, 2012

This week, we got a pretty big break.  Oliver's therapy center had a two-day conference, so he had two extra days at home.  That meant three days of not having to get up early to get him out the door on time.  It was pretty nice, honestly.  His time there is worth the inconvenience, though.

What we did this week:

Henry

• Saxon Math 1: Lessons 39-41 (writing the number 36, weighing objects using nonstandard units; Written Assessment 7, Oral Assessment 4; writing the number 37, addition facts - adding zero)
• The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading: Lessons 90-92 (the vowel pair EA as /ē/; review the vowel pair EA, sight words: do and who; the vowel pair IE as /ē/, sight word: friend)
• Zaner-Bloser Handwriting Kindergarten: Pages 101-106 (Xx, Kk, Zz)

We are quickly approaching the end of the kindergarten-level handwriting workbook.  At our current pace, I'd say Henry has another four to five weeks of pages to do.  Now, the first grade handbook is still manuscript, but the letter formation is smaller.  I think he'd be able to handle it, but I don't want to rush him.  I think we'll switch over to light copywork each day when he's done with the current book.  I have plenty of kindergarten writing paper for him to practice on, so I can just pull a sentence from a favorite book and have him practice his handwriting that way.

Henry is also about six weeks away from the point in OPGTR where it's recommended to begin a spelling program.  I do think he'll be ready to start Spelling Workout A at that point. It's a very gentle progression; the first 12 lessons only deal with letter sounds and beginning and ending sounds of words.

Based on all of this, our school "day" should look like this by mid-November:

Saxon Math 1 - 30 minutes (or one lesson) per day
The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading - 10 minutes per day
Spelling Workout A - 10 minutes per day
Handwriting/copywork - 10 minutes per day

Additionally, Henry will do at least a half hour of independent reading at or below his instructional level each day.  He'll also listen to stories above his level for at least a half hour per day, either read by me or from our growing audiobook collection.

If he continues at this pace and if he continues to demonstrate mastery, we'll be starting First Language Lessons for the Well-Trained Mind: Level 1 sometime around mid-January.  At that point, I'll need to assess Henry's language arts ability as a whole and see if he's ready to take on the complete Well-Trained Mind recommendations for level 1.  Will he, at roughly 5 1/2 years old, be ready for this?

• Spelling Workout A - 10-15 minutes
• First Language Lessons - 15-20 minutes
• Structured reading - 20-30 minutes (focused on ancient myths and legends)
• The Complete Writer: Level 1 Workbook for Writing with Ease - 5-20 minutes
•  Saxon Math 1 - 30 minutes

And, if he is ready for that, we'll probably go ahead and start easing in to history (the Ancients) and science (animals, the human body, and plants) with our chosen programs of RC History and Elemental Science. Exciting times are ahead!

Oliver

As I stated above, Oliver only had two days of therapy this week.  Both days were good ones, though.  At least 90% of his mands were above full prompt during both sessions and his problem behavior was minimal.  At home, he's still signing for pretzels independently, and for bananas and crackers with minimal prompting.  This morning, he manded milk independently too!

Jane

Jane has her colors down, thank you very much Starfall.com! Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, brown, white, black, and pink - all easily identified and she's even saying the names intelligibly.  I think it's time to move to shapes.

We're still carschooling, but she just thinks she gets to watch fun videos when we go to pick up Oliver.

Peter

Three months old and filling out his 3-6 month clothes like they're going out of style.