Tuesday, November 12, 2013

Weekly Report: Days 39-42


At the Houston Arboretum, waiting for Daddy to finish his interview.
Well, I mentioned in my last weekly report that I was sick.  I still am. This is the cold that never ends.  Luckily, I'm at least functional and have done a little school.  Unfortunately, Tyler isn't as lucky.  He had another medical school interview last weekend, so we all took another car trip, this time to Houston, TX.  On the drive down, he progressively lost his voice more and more until it was completely gone, just in time for his interview.  Poor guy.  His voice is just now coming back, a week later.  He really missed being able to read the girls their bedtime story like he always does.  As a result of his cold, he was home most of last week and I never get as much school done with Daddy home.

Reading:
Lydia finished Lesson 113 in OPGTR.  She's zooming through it at a pretty fast pace now.  I'm actually starting to combine some of the shorter lessons into one day.  That is a far cry from where she was only 3 or 4 months ago where a lesson might take 3 or 4 days to complete.  At the rate she's going, I'm anticipating that we may actually finish the book by the end of Kindergarten, which would be amazing.

Since it is now November, Lydia has been working toward her new Pizza Hut Book-It goal for the month.  Last month, I vastly underestimated her and her goal was to read one story, which she did in one day.  This month, she has to read 5 stories to earn her pizza.  She has been really on top of it, asking me all the time if we "can work on my goal."  She has read four of her five required stories, so she'll probably be hitting that goal today.  The stories she read were Going to Town, Hop on Pop, and two Little Bear stories.  She is averaging a middle 2nd grade reading level, which is very exciting to me.

Eleanor continues to ask for a reading lesson every day I do reading with Lydia.  How can I say no to that?  We are slowly working through the McGuffey app I mentioned last week and watching a few of the Reading Bear videos where they sound out words for her.  Blending is holding her back a little.  That, and I'm really not feeling inspired to start teaching her read yet.  I think now that Lydia is starting to really catch on, the idea of starting over at the beginning isn't appealing to me.  That's my own issue, and I'm trying not to let my own inclinations affect Eleanor.  She's so young (newly three), that I don't think I can hurt her at this point, regardless of what we do. Thus all the reading apps and videos.  They are the happy medium for now.  I've promised myself that if she figures out blending with any sort of reliability, I will buckle down and start doing reading with her in earnest.

Adelaide loves reading too!

Math:
I'm trying to figure out what to do with math.  I feel like Lydia is sort of floating along and not really learning anything new or grasping any of the extra number-sense concepts that Math Mammoth is trying to teach her.  I'm also trying to figure out if I should start teaching her math facts.  Right now, I'm leaning towards stepping back from Math Mammoth for a bit and focusing on Miquon and math games.  We'll see what we do, but I do think I need to pause a bit at the moment and make sure she gets some of these concepts down solid.

"Winie the Pooh and Piglit (and Eeyore)"

Spelling:
I'm doing so much better with spelling now that we have the Sound Literacy app.  Lydia likes it too and is much happier to do spelling.  We finished through Lesson 11.  She has also been writing a lot in her free time.  Usually, she writes words that describe the pictures she draws.  I just love to see her using the things she's learning.