Friday, June 20, 2014

Weekly Report: June 20, 2014

I'm struggling with how to title these.  In the past, I've called my Weekly Reports by their week number, but that didn't work so well when I only did 2 or 3 days in a week.  Then I called them by their day numbers, but that is also tricky, because what counts as a "day" of school?


I recently decided (and started) to keep track of our work by which subjects we covered with a goal to finish each book by June 1st next year.  Saxon Math, for example, has 130 lessons for the year.  Writing With Ease has 4 lessons a week for 36 weeks, so 144 lessons.  I don't have to do all subjects every day, but I do want to make sure we're on track.

To that end, I printed off this checklist sheet from Donna Young.  Donna Young's page is so useful.  It is also where I print off all of our handwriting paper.  Anyway, I put Lydia's subjects on the first half and Eleanor's subjects on the second half of the page.  So I guess I'll just do my weekly report by date and not worry about how many "days" or "weeks" we've done, just that we're on track.

That said, we're doing really well.  I'm more deliberate with doing school that I've ever been before and the girls are having really good attitudes for the most part and are pretty happy to do their school work.  All of the subjects/materials I chose for them seem to be working exactly how I was hoping they would.  School is going as well as I could hope.

Last week, our family took a break from school and took a trip to the beach.  It was a 4.5 hour drive from here and then a 2.5 hour ferry ride to the island we camped on.  It was beautiful weather, although a little windy and it did rain one morning, but we had a lot of fun.  The girls have never been to the ocean that they remember, so they enjoyed it quite a bit as well.

On the ferry to the island.
We had the beach mostly to ourselves

Burying Daddy in the sand.
After we got home, we took a day or two to recover and clean up and then got right back into school.  Then, this last weekend, I had a massive allergic reaction to something and was out of commission for a few days.  I'm still recovering, but was able to get a good amount of school done this week too.


Oh, and on Monday we got 6 little baby chicks in the mail!  I've wanted chickens for years but we never lived anywhere that would let us, but now we do!  They are adorable and the girls are loving them, especially Lydia.


As for actual school...

Lydia

Math:
She has finished through Lesson 8 in Saxon and we are continuing to do well with it.  I just hope it keeps going as well as it has been so far.  There are a lot of pieces to Saxon that many people ignore, but I am trying to do every little bit of it (morning meeting, lesson, work with mom, independent work).  I was concerned that this would be too much for Lydia, but there seems to be enough variation that is just right for her right now.

Reading:
We do OPGTR almost every day and are now on Section 18 out of 25.  A lot of this she has picked up already, but there are some definite gaps in her knowledge that I'm noticing, so I'm glad we're finishing through the book.  It is a relatively painless 5 minutes or so a day right now.
Lydia is also reading me a library book every day still.  Lately she's been a fan of Curious George and anything Mo Willems.
We are also working through Raggedy Ann as a read aloud.  The girls are enjoying it well enough.

Writing/Grammar:
We have one day left in Week 2 of Writing With Ease.  This week the story is Pinocchio and I was interested to see how she would like it when the story was unfamiliar (opposed to Little House in the Big Woods which she knew really well).  She did great with it and I definitely think the skills she is practicing will come back and help her a lot as she gets better at it.
First Language Lessons is going well.  Lydia is working on mastering the difference between common nouns and proper nouns, but she's getting the hang of it.

Spelling:
We are working hard at All About Spelling lesson 19 still, although she's almost finished it up.  It is a tricky one for her.  She's learning when to end a word with "k" vs. "ck."  I honestly didn't even know the rule for that before this, but she's almost got it down.  I love that I'm learning things from my daughter's 1st grade spelling book.  We take our time with AAS and do every little piece and all the practice words.  Because she was having difficulty with this rule, we've done many of the words several times now.  Can I just say how much I love our Sound Literacy app?  It is WAY better than using magnetic phonogram tiles on a big white board.  Plus Lydia likes doing spelling on the iPad most days.


Science:
We started science this week!  We are starting with My Body, which the girls are LOVING.  I have the book, but it didn't copy well, so I went ahead and got the PDF so I could just print out the pages I needed.  I would highly recommend the PDF over the hard copy in this case.  We traced the girls' bodies and have added their brains.  We talked all about what brains do, looked at the brain on our iPad anatomy apps, and Lydia and I even did this brain lapbook together.



I think that this project will be very worthwhile. They are both very engaged with it and excited to talk about what they are learning.
I also just purchased the first season of Zula Patrol which is a science cartoon.  I had never seen it before but heard good things.  After previewing it I've decided that it isn't really my style of show, but it has some good science in it and I think it will be a fine show for the car and hopefully the girls will learn something.


Eleanor

Math:
We're still just working with the c-rods and doing activities from Education Unboxed to try to help familiarize Eleanor with how they work.  I have seen improvement in her comfort with them and here pretty soon I think we'll start doing some Miquon as well.  She also sits in on a lot of Lydia's math lessons and is picking up things from that too.

Reading:
We are still doing Hooked on Phonics on the iPad.  She is getting a little better about trying new words and not guessing, but it is still a problem area.  My plan at the moment is to work all the way through the HOP app which covers basic cvc and cvcc words and then start with the cvc section of OPGTR.  I'm hoping with a little practice and confidence under her belt, she will do better with OPGTR than our first try.

Handwriting:
Handwriting Without Tears is going well.  We are working slowly, but are in no rush and she's enjoying it.

1 comment:

  1. Wow! Y'all have been busy! Hope you are feeling better. The chicks are adorable, and the little outlines of the girls are so sweet.

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