Racer is trying to get 100 good deeds for the Scout Jamboral so he's been especially cooperative lately. Let's just say, it's been nice. We're still mostly on track to get all of our stuff done before Friday. Chicklette has a few things that she's fallen behind in. It would be nice if her attention span was just a tad longer or her motivation a bit stronger.
Religion - Today we watched Chapter 5 in our Doctrine and Covenants scripture stories. It was about Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery. The kids all watched it and then wrote their summaries of it. Well, Racer wrote his and Chicklette dictated hers to me. I really like it when I see all the kids watching our religion movie and science experiments or when they are all listening to our history stories. Turtle is getting pretty good at Latin, but I digress.
Math - Racer got all his problems right in math again. He was doing some estimating combined with multiplication or division. It looked like he might have gotten some wrong because the puzzle in the workbook that is there to check your work didn't get completed correctly. However, Racer and I both checked and double-checked our work and it looks like the puzzle is wrong. Chicklette . . . Chicklette is not as math oriented as Racer. Thankfully, she's better than I was at that age. She only finished half of her work because of attention issues. She did get Xtramath done because we tried doing it first instead of last. That seemed to work out well.
Reading lesson - While Chicklette and Racer worked on their math problems, Turtle and I did a reading lesson. I was worried after his last lesson that he was not understanding what he was doing because he made a few errors. He whizzed through this lesson today and only made one error with the /n/ sound. I had checked out a book called Phonics Pathways just in case he needed some extra reinforcement, but we'll probably be fine. After he finished his reading lesson, I had him check out some apps I downloaded to the tablet. He loved them, maybe a little too much.
We went to the library where we chatted with our friends, watched a Sesame Street storytime with puppets and checked out interesting books. I showed Chicklette the Level 1 reader books and told her that she could probably read all of those. I'll have to see how well she does on them and whether she should go on to Level 2 type readers. Sunshine checked out a Level 1 reader about trains. He looked so proud carrying out his own special book for himself.
History - After lunch, we moved on to history. We read about Pocahontas in a book by Kathleen Krull. The illustrations aren't my favorite, but the story is factual and well-written. We stopped a couple times to discuss word definitions and motivations. It's interesting to try to explain to the kids why people wouldn't like John Smith and why people wanted to come to the New World. It's been great educating my kids because I get educated too. I used to get the Pilgrims and Plymouth mixed up with Jamestown and Pocahontas. After these next two weeks, I think I'll have them pretty much straightened out. We need to put a couple dates on our timeline tomorrow for when the Jamestown colonists first arrived and Pocahontas' birth and death dates. After reading our stories, we practiced our Fifty Nifty United States song and watched Wakko's take on all fifty states and their capitals. Turtle can sing probably half of the Fifty Nifty United States song by himself. Then we talked about Maine. After reading about Maine in our National Geographic Atlas, I really want to visit. It sounds beautiful.
Latin - We did our Latin flashcards and our review questions today. Racer seems to be doing really well with Latin. I haven't noticed anything that he is getting wrong. Chicklette did okay on her review questions and then took for . . ev. . .er on her flashcards.
Science - After Latin, I checked Homeschool Tracker and saw that we hadn't done science yet. Luckily the experiment was not too complicated. We used salt water to float an egg. It was interesting to see how much salt we had to put in to get the egg and the pencil to float. We also put the egg in regular fresh water to confirm that it did not float. Then we discussed density.
Writing with Ease - I had Racer come do Writing with Ease with me while Chicklette was still struggling over something. Maybe it was her science. Racer's assignment today was dictation and he did awesome. It was a longer sentence with a few commas and he wrote neatly. He got all the commas and he got the exclamation point at the end. The only thing he missed were two words he did not know how to spell and the capitalization on Man of Steel. I was so proud of him. Chicklette didn't make it to her Writing with Ease today so we'll have to try to make it up tomorrow. Tomorrow's assignment is only supposed to be copywork so she should be able to do a narration and copywork. I have to remember that both she and Racer have their DIBELS test tomorrow.
Racer left to go to Lego Club and my piano student came over. Chicklette was supposed to finish writing about the science experiment. She took a long time doing that and then she needed to finish her math. As of tonight, she still hasn't finished so it will be lumped in with tomorrow's assignment. She only has a few problems left really.
And then it was crepe night! We had crepes with broccoli and cheese, crepes with jam, crepes with pear sauce, crepes with ham and cheese, and crepes with peanut butter.
Religion - Today we watched Chapter 5 in our Doctrine and Covenants scripture stories. It was about Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery. The kids all watched it and then wrote their summaries of it. Well, Racer wrote his and Chicklette dictated hers to me. I really like it when I see all the kids watching our religion movie and science experiments or when they are all listening to our history stories. Turtle is getting pretty good at Latin, but I digress.
Math - Racer got all his problems right in math again. He was doing some estimating combined with multiplication or division. It looked like he might have gotten some wrong because the puzzle in the workbook that is there to check your work didn't get completed correctly. However, Racer and I both checked and double-checked our work and it looks like the puzzle is wrong. Chicklette . . . Chicklette is not as math oriented as Racer. Thankfully, she's better than I was at that age. She only finished half of her work because of attention issues. She did get Xtramath done because we tried doing it first instead of last. That seemed to work out well.
Reading lesson - While Chicklette and Racer worked on their math problems, Turtle and I did a reading lesson. I was worried after his last lesson that he was not understanding what he was doing because he made a few errors. He whizzed through this lesson today and only made one error with the /n/ sound. I had checked out a book called Phonics Pathways just in case he needed some extra reinforcement, but we'll probably be fine. After he finished his reading lesson, I had him check out some apps I downloaded to the tablet. He loved them, maybe a little too much.
We went to the library where we chatted with our friends, watched a Sesame Street storytime with puppets and checked out interesting books. I showed Chicklette the Level 1 reader books and told her that she could probably read all of those. I'll have to see how well she does on them and whether she should go on to Level 2 type readers. Sunshine checked out a Level 1 reader about trains. He looked so proud carrying out his own special book for himself.
History - After lunch, we moved on to history. We read about Pocahontas in a book by Kathleen Krull. The illustrations aren't my favorite, but the story is factual and well-written. We stopped a couple times to discuss word definitions and motivations. It's interesting to try to explain to the kids why people wouldn't like John Smith and why people wanted to come to the New World. It's been great educating my kids because I get educated too. I used to get the Pilgrims and Plymouth mixed up with Jamestown and Pocahontas. After these next two weeks, I think I'll have them pretty much straightened out. We need to put a couple dates on our timeline tomorrow for when the Jamestown colonists first arrived and Pocahontas' birth and death dates. After reading our stories, we practiced our Fifty Nifty United States song and watched Wakko's take on all fifty states and their capitals. Turtle can sing probably half of the Fifty Nifty United States song by himself. Then we talked about Maine. After reading about Maine in our National Geographic Atlas, I really want to visit. It sounds beautiful.
Latin - We did our Latin flashcards and our review questions today. Racer seems to be doing really well with Latin. I haven't noticed anything that he is getting wrong. Chicklette did okay on her review questions and then took for . . ev. . .er on her flashcards.
Science - After Latin, I checked Homeschool Tracker and saw that we hadn't done science yet. Luckily the experiment was not too complicated. We used salt water to float an egg. It was interesting to see how much salt we had to put in to get the egg and the pencil to float. We also put the egg in regular fresh water to confirm that it did not float. Then we discussed density.
Writing with Ease - I had Racer come do Writing with Ease with me while Chicklette was still struggling over something. Maybe it was her science. Racer's assignment today was dictation and he did awesome. It was a longer sentence with a few commas and he wrote neatly. He got all the commas and he got the exclamation point at the end. The only thing he missed were two words he did not know how to spell and the capitalization on Man of Steel. I was so proud of him. Chicklette didn't make it to her Writing with Ease today so we'll have to try to make it up tomorrow. Tomorrow's assignment is only supposed to be copywork so she should be able to do a narration and copywork. I have to remember that both she and Racer have their DIBELS test tomorrow.
Racer left to go to Lego Club and my piano student came over. Chicklette was supposed to finish writing about the science experiment. She took a long time doing that and then she needed to finish her math. As of tonight, she still hasn't finished so it will be lumped in with tomorrow's assignment. She only has a few problems left really.
And then it was crepe night! We had crepes with broccoli and cheese, crepes with jam, crepes with pear sauce, crepes with ham and cheese, and crepes with peanut butter.