Sunday, January 16, 2011

A New Year 1/15/2011

These past two weeks:

  • we finished The Witch of Blackbird Pond
  • Leah listened to some old favorites around here such as: Blueberries for Sal, The Salamander Room and Make Way for Ducklings.
  • Evelyn read books 1 - 4 of the Rachel Yoder series, The Smugglers Treasure and Almost Home: A Story Based on the Life of the Mayflower's Mary Chilton

  • Quinn read the first two books of The 100 Cupboards trilogy, The Skippak School and he started reading Treasure Island.




  • We worked on making Story Sequence Charts for The Jabberwocky. Hopefully next week I can report on how that turned out!
  • We completed Lesson 4 in Who is God?
  • I'm really not loving the Sonlight history this year. The book Landmark History of the American People just seems really dull and unnecessarily difficult for the ages I am teaching. I understand their defense of the book on the website but I just can't swing it. It is making history dull for us so I have gone back to The Story of the World Volume 3. Hopefully now we can make up for some lost time here! For now though we have been working on learning about the thirteen colonies.

  • Quinn is working on averaging in Singapore 5b
 
  • Evelyn's mental math abilities are really coming along. I have been able to help her by modeling the problems with the  base ten set and then gradually having her do steps in her head instead of with the manipulatives.


 
  • Over the vacation I worked on moving all of the kids' memory work to Anki. It is a similar program to that which I use to study Scrabble anagrams before a tournament. Their memory work has been rapidly outgrowing the little recipe box over the past few years plus ANki will space out the cards based on how well the child knows the information. So far it has been a great change. I can even record my own voice for the french vocab.
  • Leah has been working on making an alphabet book which involves spotting, cutting out and gluing letters and pictures from magazines. Here is a picture of her working on her 'F' page and on writing some of her letters.





  • We started Volume 2 in our Bible study on the book of Acts. Currently we are in chapter 16. 

  • After a half year break we resumed dictation. I placed Quinn in list 17 and Evelyn in list 31. One change I have made this time around is to have Quinn write out any missed words three times WHILE saying out loud the spelling. He usually responds well to auditory methods of learning. So far I have noticed an improvement in his ability to remember how to spell words he got wrong previously. Evelyn doesn't spell words wrong so that is a break for me. I am thinking of getting her an independent spelling program like Phonetic Zoo or something.

Leah
Evelyn
Quinn
  • We started Ski Club directly after vacation. Once a week we ski all day with our friends instead of doing lessons. (homeschooled kids have it so rough!) We were blessed to have someone lend us some tiny skis for Leah. As I predicted she took to it pretty quickly. The only problem now is to delay her from getting on the lift. Luckily we have several wonderful teenagers in our group who enjoy taking the little ones up! I only have pics and videos of Leah so far since I rarely see my own kids when at the mountain. I will try to get some pics of them next week.




Wednesday, January 5, 2011

December School

It has been a few weeks! Christmas has come and gone. I figured I will do one giant report for the whole month. I am looking forward to getting back into the swing of things next week. But for now I am enjoying a low key month. We kept up with regular lessons through the 17th and then took the rest of the month "off" (if there is such a thing). Here is a run down of some school work and some not-so-schoolish work that we have been busying ourselves with.

Reading
  • Together we are continuing through our Advent book, Tabitha's Travels.
  • We are still reading aloud The Witch of Blackbird Pond. It has been our slowest read aloud this year. Partially because, with Christmas approaching, we have had many late nights where our read aloud time is cut short or nonexistant. It also isn't a favorite of the kids'. Evelyn doesn't mind it but Quinn can't stand all of the "romance" and people "falling in love with each other" as he puts it. I think the story is awesome. I remember loving it as a kid but had forgotten much of the story. Either way it has helped them to get an understanding of Puritans and Quakers and the problems faced by the two groups back then.
  • Evelyn's independant reading has consisted of: Ben Franklin of Old Philadelphia, Phoebe the Spy and several non-school related books.
  • Quinn read Mr. Revere and I, Young George Washington, The 39 Clues 9 & 10, and is starting the trilogy The 100 Cupboards.
  • We are having fun reading many old favorites to Leah such as Caps For Sale, Click Clack Moo and many others.
  • For years we have LOVED Story Nory for free stories narrated by a wonderfully dramatic and enthusiastic storyteller named Natashia. It is well known in the homeschooling crowd but I just wanted to put a shout out in case anyone is looking for great stuff to put on their mp3 players. This past month we have been listening to The Christmas Carol and The Nutcracker as well as several other favorites of ours from StoryNory. Leah LOVES Natasha's version of The Three Little Pigs and laughs uncontrollably everytime the pigs say "chinny chin chin".
  • We love the dramatized audio Bible Word of Promise and have been listening to the account of Jesus' birth from all four Gospels.


Math
  • Quinn completed through lesson 20 in 5b. He is working on percents. Changing fractions to percents and percents to fractions and decimals to percents etc.... He has caught on quickly. Let's hope that after the break he will remember some!
  • Evelyn is continuing a little more quickly through her book. She seems to be grasping the concepts a little more now. I have been having her do five minute math drills to help her pick up some speed with her math facts. Every correct answer earns her a minute on her DS later that day. A good reward considering video games are generally pretty limited during the week.
Writing
  • We completed another unit III assignment. This time we did The Fox and the Crow. Both kids had fun with this one and it was a tad shorter than the last. I am thinking we will do one more Unit III after ther break then move on to Unit IV.







ART

Lots of self initiated creativity occured like usual as well as some Mark Kistler drawing lessons.
Evelyn drew Baggins and then decided to add the girl
looking in so taped on another piece of paper.


Quinn's boat from two perspectives from a Mark Kistler drawing lesson

Evelyn loves to draw people on stage in extravagent costumes.




Quinn likes to draw tanks, cannons and other things that fire!

Quinn also likes to draw scenes from video games.
This is from plants Vs. Zombies.












DANCE

Evelyn had her dance recital. Each age group performed a jazz routine and a ballet routine. Also one of their teachers performed. The kids really loved to watch one of their teachers dance.






RANDOM OTHER STUFF




Quinn made cookies for his CBS Christmas party
COOKIE DECORATING
Every year we have at least one cookie painting session. This year we had two. Once with friends.
















 




 The kids attended a homeschool class on aviation at The McAuliffe Shepard Discovery Center. The 5th-8th graders got to use Flight Simulation programs and the 1st-4th graders did various projects to learn about planes and flight. They had a lot of fun.




 Leah and I amused ourselves for two hours during the classes. Her favorite activity was the Walk on the Sun.