Weekly Wrap Up - October 29th & November 5th

I missed a week again.  Last Friday I spent most of the day at the hospital with my Dad who was having surgery on his foot.  With Halloween stuff over the weekend, I just never got caught up.  This will be a quick accounting of the last two weeks.  As always, I hope to do better in the future.

Language Arts

• Trevor did a page for letters S, A, I, J & T  in his Handwriting Without Tears book which completes all the capital letters.  He did practice lines of the new letters he learned these weeks.  He completed lessons  8 & 9 in All About Spelling Level 1 .    Trevor read books 12, 13 & 14 in Collection 2 of Bob Books and stories from the Beehive Reader, which is part of his All About Spelling program.  He completed lessons 22 - 30  in First Language Lessons .
• Anneliese started work in her new Handwriting Without Tears Cursive Success book.  She has been continuing to practice upper and lowercase letters in cursive and is working on making her letters smaller.  Anneliese completed lessons 15 & 16  in All About Spelling Level Two.  Anneliese completed lessons 22 - 30 in First Language Lessons.  Anneliese did Writing with Ease and completed lessons for weeks 2 & 3.

   Math

• Trevorcompleted his Singapore Earlybird Math.  I decided against getting him book B and have ordered Rightstart Mathematics (Level B Lessons For Home Education) for him.  He has been working on some worksheets I printed out the last couple days.  He is having no trouble adding to quantities of 20 and the Singapore math hadn't started any adding yet.
• Anneliese worked in her Singapore Math 3A book.  She has done multiplication with carrying and started on long division.  I have ordered RightStarts Level C program for her.  She doesn't mind doing the long division, but Singapore's book had no information about why long division is done that way, only to memorize the process and get the problems done.  She is looking forward to working with some new manipulatives and cementing her multiplication tables before getting back to long division.

  Social Studies

• Anneliese finished reading Squanto, Friend Of The Pilgrims by Bulla.  She also read On The Mayflower , Squanto's Journey: The Story of the First Thanksgiving , Thanksgiving on Thursday (Magic Tree House #27) , Thanksgiving on Plymouth Plantation (Time-Traveling Twins) ,  and Magic Tree House Research Guide #13: Pilgrims: A Nonfiction Companion to Magic Tree House #27: Thanksgiving on Thursday (A Stepping Stone Book(TM)) .  She completed pockets 3, 4, 5 & 6 of  History Pockets: Life in Plymouth Colony.   Anneliese completed 3 mini-books about Squanto and made a timeline page for Squanto.  She completed a lapbook for Thanksgiving on Thursday.  Anneliese and Trevor watched the movie of Thanksgiving on Plymouth Plantation.  For free reading Anneliese picked up John Billington: Friend of Squanto and Squanto and the First Thanksgiving (On My Own Holidays).

    Science

• We completed unit 6 & 7 in RSO Level 1 Life about the respiratory and digestive systems.  We did two experiments for each unit.   We read Breathe In, Breathe Out: Learning About Your Lungs (Amazing Body) and What Happens to a Hamburger? (Let's-Read-and-Find-Out Science 2) .  Anneliese and Trevor attended their homeschool science class at the Tacoma Nature Center.

  Fine Arts

• We skipped art both weeks.  I think I need to reschedule this from Thursday to earlier in the week to make sure we don't skip it because we are too tired by the end of the week and ready to be done with school.

Five in a Row

• We spent one more week on Grandfather's Journey by Allen Say.  We read The Bicycle Man by Allen Say, Yoko's Paper Cranes by Rosemary Wells and completed a Japanese culture mini-book.  Last week we read Cranberry Thanksgiving by Wende and Harry Devlin.  We also watched the movie, read Cranberries by William Jaspersohn and completed a cranberry mini-book.

Comments

[Dee]

I'm curious why you've decided to switch from Singapore to Rightstart for Trevor? I'm in the market for Kindergarten math and Singapore is my top choice right now.

[Emily]

Trevor finished the first half of Singapore's Kindergarten program in about 2 months, and I was holding him back from doing more each day. I used Singapore for Anneliese from books 1A through 3A and it was a great fit for her. She picks up math really fast and doesn't need many practice problems or to use manipulatives to understand concepts. Now that she is in the 3A book, I've come to realize that there isn't a lot of "why" instruction, just follow the rules, it's done like this, do this kind of instruction. I wanted to slow her down a bit and do some work with manipulatives and wanted to challenge Trevor more without jumping into the 1A book. I think he could do the 1A book just fine, it starts out with simple addition, which he is already doing. It also seems like it will be easier to have them both working with the same program, if it will work for them. My RightStart stuff hasn't arrived yet, so I don't know how it will work out.

Did that make any sense?

[Dee]

Yep, I totally understand! Thanks!