Weekly Review Aug 24-28

Here is our week in review...
3rd Grade
Below, my 8yo did the Problem Solving station, which involved filling in a multiplication/division puzzle. This was hard, but we worked on it together. She spent most of the week on mult/div, took the chapter test, and started the chapter on Telling Time.

She also did 2 weeks of spelling (scored 100% on week 19's pretest, so we moved on to week 20). We started Writing, using Writing With Ease as our guide. We did a little copywork & narration from Year 1, and Year 2 this week.

2nd grade:
In math, the 6yo worked on Addition with Renaming. She applied this to money (pennies, dimes), and also practiced estimation with adding (shown below). And yes, the kids write "help" on their pages when they want me to help them. I don't know why. It is a reoccuring theme, so you'll be seeing a lot of this throughout the year:)

She started 2nd grade spelling. Week 1 was a review of consonant and vowel sounds.

The 6yo also participated in Writing With Ease activities for Years 1 and 2. I'll probably start them both somewhere in Year 2. We also started a new subject: English songs. Every day we sang BJU's English songs for Nouns, Verbs, and Pronouns. I'm still trying to figure out the tune to Adjectives...

We've been studying ancient Greek myths. The 8yo has read 2 stories told from Hades' point of view - Have a Hot Time, Hades and Phone Home, Persephone. These stories are written by the same author as Dragon Slayer Academy. We've also been watching a series on TV called Clash of the Gods. So far, we've watched Zeus, Hercules, Hades, and The Minotaur. I've skipped through the occasional section because there is a lot of...um...adult themes in Greek mythology! I've been tying some of these myths into the world that the early Christian church lived in, and reoccuring themes such as the flood, heaven/hell, etc.

The baby is having some days of constant wakefulness/nursing, and alternate days of sleeping. Yesterday was a sleepy day. She actually slept in her crib for over an hour. This is a rare occurance. It was nice. I cleaned my house and did laundry. Then the girls had a friend over to play. The baby slept blissfully on and off through most of it.

Wordless Wednesday (wasp nest)

Review of our past year

With the start of a new "school year", I've become reflective of the work we've done in the past year. I see some of our strengths and some of our weaknesses.

In favor of keeping on a "test prep" path, we've cranked out the workbook pages. But we have ignored certain skill sets in order to stay on course. Writing skills and math facts have been ignored with the focus on getting those workbook pages done.

The workbook pages have been invaluable for covering materials that I never would have thought about covering. It definitely helps fill in gaps and keeps us moving forward. There is a lot of repetition within the books, and this helps us learn and practice these concepts. However, those 160+ lessons seem to stretch out forever, and we have yet to finish a workbook in less than 11 months time! This gives a sense that the work never ends and that we are always behind.

I would like to focus more on developing skills, rather than just filling in the blanks. We'll continue to use the workbooks, but (hopefully) with less of a focus on getting them done so that we have a big stack of finished workbooks to prove our success. I would rather have children that can write, read, and do basic math functions successfully than a stack of workbooks that have had every blank filled in.

My biggest goal has been to get the girls reading and enjoying it. We have definitely accomplished that goal! This summer alone, we signed up for 2 library reading programs, and breezed through the required number of books in almost no time. The kids continued reading, picking up whole series to read at a time. We've read through every available Rainbow Magic Fairy book, the Dragon Slayer Academy books, and have now embarked upon the Tiara Club books. (Uh, sure twaddle you say? Read on...)

Reading
The main reason I used BJU's Reading curriculum was so that the kids would learn to read. Now that we have that accomplished, I think I'd like to assign good and classic literature for reading instead. Once Alaithia finishes Reading 3, I will start assigning "real" books instead. I still want Zoiya to work through Reading 2, because I think phonics instruction is important in 2nd grade, even though her reading is probably 3rd grade level or higher.

Writing
Our quality of writing is rather poor, with very little effort. Actually, all of the effort is put into the thought of "what shall I write, and how can I put that in as few words as possible?" Much time is spent thinking of the shortest sentence possible, LOL. I would like to remedy that! I am going to put the Writing portions of BJU's English aside (for now) while we develop our writing skills and overcome our pencil phobia. I'm going to start small with the girls and then gradually increase. My goal is to have the kids read a passage and then be able to write a short summary of that passage. We'll start off on this orally, and begin adding more of it to the page each time. I'm going to read Writing With Ease by Susan Wise-Bauer, because I think that will help shape my expectations.

Math
Our grasp of math concepts is beautiful. The girls do a great job of learning new math principles. However, we do need to work on those math facts. I plan to incorporate a short, timed math facts practice every day to learn basic math facts (addition and subtraction for Zoiya, multiplication and division for Alaithia).

History and Science
Eventually, I'd like to do History and Science 4 times per week, but that is always the first thing to drop off of my list! This year, I may just load up on library books for any given topic and require reading and narration (and perhaps eventually a written narration! but we'll see on that! A mom can dream, right?) With a new baby and revamped schooling, something may need to give.

Our school days
I'd like us to work a little longer and a little harder every day...but, I'd love to then transition to a 4 day per week school week with extra, fun classes on day 5 (co-op, field trips) or library days. If we are gaining skills well, then I also think having some scheduled vacation days would be a nice reward for hard work! Right now, our non-history/sci school days last about 1-2 hours, and our vacation days are on an emergency basis. Eleven months of schooling and I still feel behind. I think this needs to change.

Weekly Review Aug 10-14

I think we did 2 days of school this week! But we had a busy week!

Monday: the kids' Great-Grandma spent the day with us and we did a lot of cleaning.
Tuesday: Registration for co-op. I helped get everyone signed up. It was great to see old friends and to meet some new families!
Wednesday: I think we did school ?
Thursday: school & Georgyana's baby shower
Friday: Zoiya was up several hours with hives that night, so I woke up groggy. Alaithia burned her stomach with hot water while making her ramon noodle breakfast (she has this every morning). It wasn't serious but she screamed like it was. Then we went to the store to get some things to try for Gg's thrush (the on-going battle). And then I took a nap.

3rd grade: continued to work on Division, adding in Division with 1s, 0s, & sets of things. She gets the concept as long as we use manipulatives. I think I'm going to add in some daily fact practice in addition to using manipulatives. She wrote a letter for English (wrote it to me, I'll read it when I get it in the mail!)

2nd grade: introduced to addition with renaming. Wrote a letter to 2 of her friends. Learned the letter e in cursive.

Weekly Review - Aug 3- 7

We managed 3 days of school last week. Tuesday was Georgyana's every-2-weeks eye exam. Three more left to go, and then she has to see a pediatric optomologist. Here is a slideshow of kids - you may need to click on it to see the captions (but I don't really know until I try it myself!)


3rd grade:
Learning about Division in Math. Somehow, backwards thinking is really hard. We have the same troubles when dealing with subtraction. We've been practicing with Cheerios & chocolate chips. We started the Letter Writing chapter in Grammar/Writing. She did a skill station day in Reading - working on character motivations within stories. She is also continuing copywork from Familiar Quotations, and writing these in cursive.

2nd grade:
Started double digit addition in Math. She began the story writing chapter in Grammar/Writing. She answered some comprehension questions in Reading (Little Bug story). She added "p" to her cursive letters and began writing sentences in cursive.

The Baby:
Coo'ing and smiling, especially during the morning hours when she is wide awake for a couple of hours. I call it "play time". Still trying to get rid of thrush, but seems to keep coming back, argh!