Thursday, September 24, 2009

Co-op

Co-op today was interesting. Quinn did his expository speech on Ball Pythons and therefore Squeeze accompanied him to classes. He figured he might as well use the snake as his "still" life subject for drawing class too. The speech was good but the snake was not a very "still" object to draw. Next week he will bring something else. Everyone enjoyed holding Squeeze after classes and he was a good sport. He allowed dozens of kids to handle him. He didn't even bite anyone!


Rockets Class: The kids pushed each other on skate boards with various weights and then measured how far they were able to go depending on the weight. They also did a similar experiment afterward with balloons.





Evelyn is learning so quickly from her sign language class. She can do the whole alphabet on her own and most of the colors. She also remembers a lot of the various other signs from her classes every week. She finger spells everything now and even has started finger spelling messages to me from across the room rather than coming and speaking to me.

Saturday, September 19, 2009

Week One Down

We had a fabulous, though chaotic first week. Everyone got back into the swing of things more easily than I anticipated... including myself!

Math: Quinn is starting fractions in Singapore 3B. So far it is pretty easy but looking ahead it will be getting more difficult soon. For now I am happy with the easy stuff. We reviewed times tables a few times and he did well. Evelyn is working on carrying in Singapore 1B. She is grasping it well. We had left off here last spring and worked on basic math facts for a while. Now she seems ready to move forward.

Spelling/Dictation: I love love love Spelling Plus. It has helped my son's spelling better than anything else we have tried(and we have tried a lot of things!!). We do 4 dictation sentences a day. Both my kids are on the same list which makes it easy. We went back a couple of lists to #13 just to review a tad. Like usual Evelyn is able to write a sentence very quickly while it takes Quinn a lot longer. Though he has improved his time considerably since last year.

History: We started out Core 2 by reading about Benedictine Monks in CHOW, Usborne and SOTW

Writing: We did a keyword outline from the Sonlight summary. By the end of the week they each had a two paragraph paper (rough and final drafts!) to add to their history notebooks. We added Benedict to our timeline.

Reading: Our read aloud this week is red Sails to Capri. I didn't so much like it at first but it is getting better. Both kids reading independently. Evelyn devours a good sized book every day. She is currently reading the Ramona series. Quinn is reading the Guardians of Ga'hoole series.

Bible: We all had our CBS homework done by Tuesday and continued to work on the next week's homework every day.

Art: Quinn is taking a drawing class at co-op This week they did a still life of some pumpkins. Evelyn is taking Art Through Literature.

Music: Evelyn is taking a music class at co-op and Quinn is continuing piano lessons.

Science: Quinn takes a rockets class at co-op. They are learning about Newton's Laws in preparation for building their rockets.

Miscellaneous :
- Quinn started a public speaking class at co-op. The first assignment was a recitation. Quinn recited "After the Paty" by William Wise. We had learned it last year from our IEW Poetry program. He did well reciting it but didn't do any of the hand motions he had practiced. I think he just got nervous..

-Quinn and I are going through Lee Strobel's Case for Faith for Kids. It has been fun hearing him come up with examples of the Kalam Argument throughout the week. He has been excited to do this and it helps him understand more when he is listening to Stand To Reason with me... (which he loves!)

-The kids took a class at the Mariposa Museum about kids around the world. they learned about different games, stories, clothes and other things that kids do in various cultures.

-Evelyn started dance classes. Her teachers are a couple of teenage girls who seem to be enthusiastic and very friendly with the kids.

Thursday, September 17, 2009

Co-op

This morning we squeezed as much in as we could before heading to our second week of co-op. We finished Bible study and dictation and some math.

At co-op Quinn recited his poem "After the Party" in public speaking class. He did a still life drawing of some pumpkins in drawing class and learned about Newton's second law of motion in his rockets class. Evelyn learned many new signs in her sign language class. She was teaching them to us during dinner and also taught the town clerk a few signs while registering the car with Daddy. She is very excited! It is amazing how quickly she picks it up! She also says that she really enjoyed her art and music classes.

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Wordless Wednesday

This morning I awoke to Quinn shoving his math book in my face and announcing that he had completed his lesson. One may not understand how incredible this occurrence was. However, Quinn is not known for motivation or the ability to look ahead and strategize. This is the second day in a row that Quinn decided he was going to get his school work done early so he would be able to play sooner. His motivation this morning was to be able to ride his bike over to the Museum where they take classes once a month. Needless to say it was a shocking but welcome start to my day. We did complete the rest of our work in a timely manner and Quinn was able to leave early and ride his bike to the class.
Our class this month was about Children Around the World. It was very interesting and as usual the teacher had a ton of enthusiasm which always rubs off on the kids.

Monday, September 14, 2009

First Day

Well, our first day of lessons has come and gone and it went very well. We went out for breakfast at the Bagel Mill and got all of our lessons done by 12:30. Then we headed to Twinkle Town for lunch, a round of mini golf and ice cream. After that I decided to go grocery shopping so that we wouldn't keep eating out.The sunshine was plentiful and begged us to be outside so we were.

The mini cubicles came in very handy. I caught Evelyn practicing her sign language alphabet in between dictation sentences while she waited for her brother to be done. (That can take some time!) Quinn utilized the writing checklist after he was done his writing to find out that he had forgotten all of his punctuation and most of his capitalization BUT had in fact used his very best handwriting. He was able to fix everything on his own without me telling him. What a spectacular feeling!

We did our first key word outline on Benedictine Monks after reading our section in CHOW. I realized to my amazement that Sonlight provides little summations of the readings in the notes section and we did our outline from that. Coming up with three key words per sentence proved to be pretty simple for both kids and by the end they wanted to do another! They were able to tell back the information after with no problems and even added their own articulation. Something tells me Quinn won't be so motivated at the end of the week when we get to write up the paper but I am pleased with the excitement level today.

CBS homework was a lot easier with the new handy dandy booklets that they put the lessons in. I am very excited about this change. They even added a splash of color.

Our new read aloud Red Sails to Capri is even pretty exciting already. We read the first chapter and then Quinn finished reading the book on his own.

We kept math short an sweet so as not to ruin the day completely. I was relieved to see that Quinn still remembered his times tables despite the longer than usual break.

Overall I have declared today to be a success!

Saturday, September 12, 2009

Mini Cubicles


I stumbled across these on someone's blog a while back and instantly I knew that they were the answer to all of my problems. Actually the are called Mini Offices but I thought the term Cubicle was more encompassing of the many functions they serve. My husband came up with the idea of using tag board instead of the multiple file folders glued together that we saw in the other examples. I am glad he did because they are much more sturdy (and taller!) . They are a great way to block out distractions from around the room and each other. They also contain many useful tidbits of info that they seem to need on a regular basis. In theory they will commit some of the info to memory more easily now that it is right in front of them. I will let you know how that goes! On Evelyn's Board I put a hundreds chart which is useful for visualizing addition and subtraction, a money chart, place value chart and clock diagram. I also put a sign language alphabet since she is taking that at co-op this year and a cursive alphabet since she is determined to write in cursive now. I made a handy dandy picture of the word "bed" with a picture of someone sleeping. Both of my kids tend to reverse their b's and d's. Telling them to picture the word "bed" always helps them. (If you turn the b or d around the bed falls down) However, I always had to remind them to do it until now! Yay! I printed out history figures from our Homeschool in the Woods CD that correspond with the various people and events we will be reading about this half of the year. (Not sure what I will do after Christmas!) On Quinn's board I cut out miniature pictures of the Times Tales stories so he can refer to them when he needs. Although he knows most of them already.













Other resources I either made myself or downloaded from the following links:
http://www.busyteacherscafe.com/teacher_resources/mini_offices.htm
http://www.teachingheart.net/minioffice.html
http://www.jmeacham.com/mini.offices.htm
http://www.squidoo.com/minioffice
http://www.abcteach.com/directory/teaching_extras/mini_offices/
http://www.mrsdryzal.com/minioffice.html