It never fails to amaze me how noisy the kids can be in the morning. Almost all the kids, including the youngest, want to be in the same room in the morning, but somehow we get through all our work.
Religion - We read about the Sermon on the Mount today and discussed what Jesus taught. Then Turtle did a word search as well. Racer got pretty involved in "helping" Turtle and may have just done it for him. The kids did a good job of summarizing the teachings they talked about in the video, including patience, helping others, and forgiving others. I was impressed.
Math - Sunshine needed a lot of redirection back to his math. He has some perfectionist problems with writing, but we are working on that. Ladybug did great on her math today. Racer is getting the hang of the quadratic formula still. He thinks Khan Academy does a better job of explaining/demonstrating than CTC Math does on this concept. He also liked Danica McKellar's book Hot Algebra Exposed. Turtle is doing great with all his fact families. He finally understands the concept of using the same three numbers to make four different equations. Chicklette is doing Addition with Big Numbers. Seriously, that's what the book titles it as. It's addition with hundred thousands.
Handwriting - Ladybug and Sunshine are doing really well with their cursive practice. We have done lower case a, lower case e, and lower case i. Now we are working on lower case o. We did practice on the dry erase boards today. They are both doing really well with connecting their letters.
Science - Ladybug and Sunshine started learning about pulleys. We colored a picture and found a couple Youtube videos explaining them. Then we used some supplies from Elemental Science to make our own set of pulleys. I should have grabbed a picture of them, but I forgot. We put some small spools on hangers and threaded a basket through some twine. One problem we noticed pretty quickly was that the spools needed deeper grooves for the twine because it kept coming off. We are supposed to make our own pulleys on Friday so we will see what the kids end up with. Turtle, Chicklette, and Racer did work out of the encyclopedias today. We found out that reindeer, or caribou, have hollow hair to help trap heat since they live in the tundra. Also, there are no trees in the tundra. They summarized some of the information that they read. Racer and Chicklette wrote for themselves; I wrote for Turtle and he copied it with much lamentation.
All About Reading - We are still loving All About Reading. Today Sunshine and Ladybug read a story about a pug who stole a bun that was cooling on a window sill. We also started discussing the concept of character motivation, or why a character acts the way they do in a story. I love that there is a warm-up page before each story and a short time to go over concepts that the kids may not be familiar with before we start reading the story. Sunshine and Ladybug are focusing on the TH sound right now. It's great that they have each other too, because I don't think Ladybug would do very well reading through a whole story on her own right now. Turtle needed to finish up a set of fluency sheets for his reading today. The first page was all single words which take a long time and he didn't have much patience for, but the next two sheets were phrases and sentences which go much faster. Chicklette read a story about a pig who decided to cook for himself and we talked about sensory words and different narrative voices. It was a really cute, fun story.
History - We read about the Vikings today and discussed their contributions to the English language. Some of my husband's heritage is from Sweden so we enjoyed talking about that. We did the mapwork today from the Story of the World book and the kids were amazed at all the places the Vikings traveled.
Latin - Chicklette and Turtle watched the video for their lesson and then played Rummy Roots with Racer.
Spelling - Racer and Turtle both struggle with spelling. Racer doesn't struggle on his tests so if you were only looking at that, you would think he was fine. He just forgets to use correct spelling when he is writing anything else. Turtle sometimes forgets whole concepts. I'm so glad in homeschooling we can go back and review anything that needs to be reviewed and that All About Spelling doesn't take any knowledge for granted. They really go step by step and have lots of strategies to help understand spelling. It's not just about memorization, or even about word families. Racer learned about spelling words that end in cal. Chicklette did PH and the sound of /er/ as in early. Turtle reviewed the long sound of u and the sound of /z/ at the end of words that can be spelled with s or z.
Religion - We read about the Sermon on the Mount today and discussed what Jesus taught. Then Turtle did a word search as well. Racer got pretty involved in "helping" Turtle and may have just done it for him. The kids did a good job of summarizing the teachings they talked about in the video, including patience, helping others, and forgiving others. I was impressed.
Math - Sunshine needed a lot of redirection back to his math. He has some perfectionist problems with writing, but we are working on that. Ladybug did great on her math today. Racer is getting the hang of the quadratic formula still. He thinks Khan Academy does a better job of explaining/demonstrating than CTC Math does on this concept. He also liked Danica McKellar's book Hot Algebra Exposed. Turtle is doing great with all his fact families. He finally understands the concept of using the same three numbers to make four different equations. Chicklette is doing Addition with Big Numbers. Seriously, that's what the book titles it as. It's addition with hundred thousands.
Handwriting - Ladybug and Sunshine are doing really well with their cursive practice. We have done lower case a, lower case e, and lower case i. Now we are working on lower case o. We did practice on the dry erase boards today. They are both doing really well with connecting their letters.
Science - Ladybug and Sunshine started learning about pulleys. We colored a picture and found a couple Youtube videos explaining them. Then we used some supplies from Elemental Science to make our own set of pulleys. I should have grabbed a picture of them, but I forgot. We put some small spools on hangers and threaded a basket through some twine. One problem we noticed pretty quickly was that the spools needed deeper grooves for the twine because it kept coming off. We are supposed to make our own pulleys on Friday so we will see what the kids end up with. Turtle, Chicklette, and Racer did work out of the encyclopedias today. We found out that reindeer, or caribou, have hollow hair to help trap heat since they live in the tundra. Also, there are no trees in the tundra. They summarized some of the information that they read. Racer and Chicklette wrote for themselves; I wrote for Turtle and he copied it with much lamentation.
All About Reading - We are still loving All About Reading. Today Sunshine and Ladybug read a story about a pug who stole a bun that was cooling on a window sill. We also started discussing the concept of character motivation, or why a character acts the way they do in a story. I love that there is a warm-up page before each story and a short time to go over concepts that the kids may not be familiar with before we start reading the story. Sunshine and Ladybug are focusing on the TH sound right now. It's great that they have each other too, because I don't think Ladybug would do very well reading through a whole story on her own right now. Turtle needed to finish up a set of fluency sheets for his reading today. The first page was all single words which take a long time and he didn't have much patience for, but the next two sheets were phrases and sentences which go much faster. Chicklette read a story about a pig who decided to cook for himself and we talked about sensory words and different narrative voices. It was a really cute, fun story.
History - We read about the Vikings today and discussed their contributions to the English language. Some of my husband's heritage is from Sweden so we enjoyed talking about that. We did the mapwork today from the Story of the World book and the kids were amazed at all the places the Vikings traveled.
Latin - Chicklette and Turtle watched the video for their lesson and then played Rummy Roots with Racer.
Spelling - Racer and Turtle both struggle with spelling. Racer doesn't struggle on his tests so if you were only looking at that, you would think he was fine. He just forgets to use correct spelling when he is writing anything else. Turtle sometimes forgets whole concepts. I'm so glad in homeschooling we can go back and review anything that needs to be reviewed and that All About Spelling doesn't take any knowledge for granted. They really go step by step and have lots of strategies to help understand spelling. It's not just about memorization, or even about word families. Racer learned about spelling words that end in cal. Chicklette did PH and the sound of /er/ as in early. Turtle reviewed the long sound of u and the sound of /z/ at the end of words that can be spelled with s or z.