Week 6

We didn't get a whole lot of school done this week, although we did do some.  We had a birthday this week and that, combined with a playdate at our house, made our week pretty hectic.

Math:
We did pages 115-120 in Essential Math A.  We're working on comparison words like longer, taller, shorter, etc.  She was struggling with it at first, but is starting to get it.  I love seeing her learn a concept she didn't understand before.
A week or so ago, I can't remember, we were working on place names like 1st, 2nd, and 3rd.  Lately she's been telling me things that go in order.  She'll say, "Lydia is first, Ellie is second, and Adelaide is third!"  I'm happy to see her applying things to life.

The kitchen table ready for Lydia to start school!

Since we stopped doing MEP Reception, I decided we'd pick up Miquon Orange, which I have but have just been waiting to start for some reason.  It is a fairly intimidating curriculum, because it isn't written for parent educators.  There aren't lesson plans, or even a regular set of worksheets and problems.  It is also a very unusual approach to math.  After spending many hours studying it and learning about its methods, I was still nervous to start.  I wasn't even sure if its approach would even mesh with Lydia.

Well, it is going really well!  Miquon relies heavily on the use of Cusineaire Rods, and in order to use them to teach concepts, a child has to be familiar with them.  We've owned ours for several months and I let Lydia play with them regularly.  We did the first few lab sheets from the Orange book, and Lydia went from not having a clue which rod corresponded to which number, to now knowing about 70% of them.  As we were working on it, I could see how this would really help a child internalize a lot of math concepts, and I'm excited to continue.  And Lydia loves it so far too!

Reading:
We're through Lesson 40 in OPGTR.  Well, that is, she's read words from each.  She hasn't read all of the assigned sentences from the lessons yet, so we aren't going to move on until she does.  Lesson 40 is the end of Section 3 in the book, so it is a good stopping point.  So far she can read all standard cvc words, the sight words "the," "I," and "a" (which give her more trouble than you would think), the sound "qu" and "s" as the sound "z" as in "has" or "as."  We're going to pause for a bit and work on fluency with these concepts before moving on.

Memorization/Calendar:
Same as usual.  We didn't add anything new yet.  Although I did take a video of Lydia saying all of her memorization (minus the geography).  She lost interest quickly, but if you listen carefully, it is all there.  I promise she knows them.

Miscellaneous:
We finished Bigger Steps and started Color, Count, and Cut, which is the third book in the Rod and Staff series.  We also started looking at our Renoir prints.  We talk about the names of the paintings and we talk about some of the things in the paintings.  We are still listening to our Debussy playlist regularly too.