Weekly Report: Days 76-80

It has been a cold, cold week and for the most part we spent the week hunkered down in our house staying warm.  I've been thinking a lot about next year, but I won't talk about that now.  I'm sure I'll talk about it plenty when we get closer.

In their blanket fort in their room.

Reading:
We've now officially transitioned to reading her lessons straight out the book.  No more iPad or computer screen for Lydia!  She's doing a great job. She has finished through lesson 146 and is still working on silent letters.  She's also working on her Book-It goal for February which is 10 books.  She's well on her way.

Math:
I've been giving Lydia's math future a lot of thought.  I've been feeling like she's not really progressing for a while and I've been wondering where to go from here.  After tons of though I've decided to start drilling her math facts.  I wasn't planning on doing that this early, but as we do all of her math, she doesn't seem to be picking up on the patterns in math and it feels like all of the discovery activities we are doing are wasting her time.  I'm thinking that if she memorizes her math facts first and then we do the discovery activities, she'll learn a lot more.  This is not an approach I would take with most kids, I think, but for Lydia's unique learning style, I think it will work very well.  Here's hoping.

That said, I've started her on addition with zeros and ones first while she continues to work on patterns with her therapist.

Grammar:
Both girls are still loving LLTL.  We learned about capitalizing and writing the titles "Mr." and "Mrs."  I also discovered that there are some really cute Beatrix Potter videos on YouTube, so after we read the stories and do the copywork, I'm letting the girls watch the related video and they are loving them.
Lydia also wrote a thank you note for a gift.  I walked her through what to say and then wrote it out for her on a different page.  She copied it and then drew a picture.

Spelling:
Lydia finished Lesson 15 in AAS and will start Lesson 16 next week.

Weekly Report: Days 70-75

Crystal Bridges

We're powering on through.  We went on a family trip to the beautiful Crystal Bridges art museum this week.  It is only a half hour away and a block away from where Tyler grew up, so it is a wonderful resource to have.  We took the girls in the past, but never with the intention of focusing on their enjoyment of the museum.  That's what we tried to do this time, and we lasted a whole hour and a half!  We talked about what different sculptures were made out of and talked about several paintings.  Lydia got really good at picking out which sculptures were made out of marble and which were made of bronze.  They also have a fun kids room and the girls had fun playing with some of the puzzles and puppets.

Eleanor's favorite: "Pinocchio" by Jim Dime (neither marble or bronze... wood!)

"The Life of a Hunter, A Tight Fix" by Arthur Fitzwilliam Tait

Reading:
This week in OPGTR Lydia has been learning about silent and not silent "gh".  They are more complicated than I realize before teaching them and Lydia is struggling with them a little, but I am completely confident that she will pick them up soon.  She also read several books with her therapist.

Grammar:
This week we started Language Lessons Through Literature (LLTL) and it has been a hit so far.  We've done 3 lessons and both Lydia and Eleanor seem to look forward to it. We are still reading Beatrix Potter stories and although we've read all of them before, the girls are really connecting with the stories this time around.

Math:
Lydia is still primarily doing math with her therapist.  They are focusing on patterns and sequences right now and Lydia is getting good at them.

Spelling:
We finally got through Lesson 14.  I don't know why it took us so long, but it did.  We're well into Lesson 15 now and she's doing well.  Also, the SoundLiteracy app is finally updated so it doesn't crash all the time!  Its a little thing but I'm glad to have it working.