Weekly Report Sept 24, 2010

We were sick this week. Last Friday was Roo's first ballet class and she got partnered with the kid that had the runny nose. By Sunday night she had a fever and by Monday night it was a full blown cold. She was pretty much better by Thursday though, but I got some random flu like bug last night and spent a huge portion being sick. I still feel off tonight and am going to bed as soon a I finish this.
This week I upped the memory work. She has the seven continents memorized, and I added The Egyptian Ennead and the list of Vertebrates. In First Language Lessons we continued the common noun proper noun and did a picture narration. The copywork and narrations from Writing with Ease this week has made her want to have me read Rumpelstiltskin to her. Which since we have The Blue Fairy Book I probably will this weekend. We completed a lesson in Spelling but the test will have to wait until Monday. In Phonics I am breaking from teaching new lessons because we have reached lesson 190 and it is getting harder so our focus is all  about review right now.
Math this week focused on number bonds up to 10. We did this over and over this week  trying to get some retention. I think if we spend one more week going over them thoroughly, she will probably have them. In history we began to study Egypt. We also finished the cave painting project from last week this past weekend. This weekend we will work on the next project since I really didn't feel artsy today.
In Science we started to study animals. She seems to be getting a kick out of this is enjoying this more and more lately.

Doing her cave painting, but mom had to help paint some of the animals.

Colouring her History Osiris and Set picture while listening to the story.

She seems to love Latin. We finished ch.3 this week and really, really likes what she is learning. She even makes us listen to all of the songs sometimes, even though we have only done the first 6. French focused on counting from 1-5. She already knew this but it allowed us to do a lot of review of previous lessons.
The weather this week fluctuated between cool and really hot (like today) so we took many walks and trips to the library to enjoy these before mom gets too fat and doesn't want to leave to house;)

I had to carry the library books, so she had to carry my purse for me.

Posing outside a public garden before it gets too cold and all of the flowers die.

A picture Roo took of me because she wanted a picture of the baby to be on here.

Bedtime = A Book on the Head? - WW

What a long week - Weekly Reports

All of our appointments for various things seemed to fall this week. Doctor, Dentist and Opthamologist, and first Ballet class ever. It was enough to make it hard to stick to our schedule. But we prevailed and all was accomplished except the History cave painting activity. That was because I had neglected to buy the paint needed to complete the project, but we are going to do that this weekend. Actually we wouldn't have had the time to spend on it today anyway because today was Roo's first day of Ballet class.



Before Ballet, excited and nervous.

The after Ballet face.

The Caterpillar poem has been officially memorized, but we are still working on the continents. She can't name them off by rote but can name them when I point to the area on the wall map, so she is almost there. Like most people say on the WTM boards, First Language Lessons goes very slow. But I figure she is only 5 and going slow is good at this point. I don't want to overwhelm or overload her right now. We made it through week 2 of Writing with Ease and lesson 3 in Spelling Workout B. She passed her test with only one mistake, so I am hoping our method of doing this will work for her.

She is smiling because she got most of her spelling words right and she doesn't have to copy a big list out 5 times each.

Singapore Math I am hoping is the winner. We were introduced to number bonds this week so we are going slowly over them to ensure that she understands. She seems to enjoy it though and the lessons are fairly quick in comparison to Saxon that we used last year.

For History we read about Nomads becoming the first farmers and did our narrations and mapwork. She drew a picture showing her nomadic family growing wheat and she was holding a spear. We then based her narration on the picture she drew since the idea came from the story. Science introduced us to animal Habitats. Elemental Science suggests making a habitat diorama from a shoe box to add animals to as we study them.  Of course I didn't have a shoe box, so I ended up drawing the habitats and sticking them in page protectors in her Science binder. We will draw and glue each animal onto the proper habitat as we come across it. Not quite as cool or exciting as a diorama but it will work.

Once again she brings home sticks and rocks for "science experiments". I have a lot of sticks and rocks in various stages of experiments in my home.

In Latin we learned Quid est tuum praenomen? and Meum praenomen est... What is your name? and My name is....She really likes this subject. We do it 5 days a week but usually only for 5-10 minutes a day. We spend the same amount of time on French and this week was all about reviewing what we learned in the summer and learning the extra vocabulary at the the end of the unit. Next week is counting in French which she kind of already knows (at least to 10).

We studied bodies of water within and around North America in Geography. Finding it on the globe and then trying to label it on the worksheet. Not overly exciting but she likes to look at globes and maps.
She completed a watercolour paining in Art, but she used too much water and it turned out very light colour. She told me that was the look she was going for so I said nothing. Our composer study brought us to week 2 of studying Hildegarde von Bingen. We watched a YouTube video and listened to some of her pieces that I had downloaded. We listened to the music while she was painting. When the music was done she asked why I shut it off, so I assume that she enjoyed it.

Even though our schedule was interrupted each day, we managed to pull through. I am looking forward to a nice quite evening and hope to avoid the crazy pregnancy dreams I seem to be afflicted with.

Umm Daddy, Please Fix the Hair - WW

This was the test run of the new ballet outfit by suggestion of her father. Instead of daddy fixing her hair into a nice bun she looks more like Olivia Newton John from the Let's Get Physical Video.

First Week of Grade 1 Done

I haven't blogged in over a week because we just started our first week of grade one and we were trying to get our groove going. That plus the fact that I am 6 1/2 months pregnant (I don't actually think I have posted on here that we are having another baby) and honestly wasn't motivated  to talk about being tired or iron deficient, which I actually just found out that I was today. Vitamin B12 as well:(

I think we got our school groove going well though. This week has felt successful as well as each day taking way less than what I had them scheduled for. No complaints there, it actually makes things go much smoother. Although we are doing a lot more work, a lot of it only takes 5-15 so we zip through fairly quick. This way we have time in the afternoons now to go to the library (which is just down the street) or run errands/buy groceries for dinner. I bought her, her own grocery bag because she has the habit of wanting certain treats when we go. I told her anything she wants, she has to carry home in her own bag.

This is her not happy that I have to carry my own stuff face.

When one goes out, one must always sport some kind of wings. This is her new obsession.

So onto what we learned this week. Roo memorized the Early Periods of History, which she recited for my husband and then stared at him until he clapped. I had to pull him aside and tell him that was what she wanted so be prepared for next time. She started to memorize the Continents (and location on a map) and almost has down The Caterpillar poem from First Language Lessons. We did week 1 of Writing with Ease in which I have to consistently rephrase her answers for her so she answers in complete sentences. In phonics OPTGR we have entered into the two syllable words and the use of the shwa. I saw the moment of comprehension when she realized that a large word can be broken into smaller words to make it easier to sound out. She also liked the concept of clapping to break down the syllables in a word. There is a lot of clapping currently going on in the house as she speaks. It's very distracting and somewhat irritating. In Spelling we completed lesson 1 and had her first spelling test. Any words she missed are written several times and tested each day until she gets them down.

We started Latin this week and she loves it. The songs annoyingly get stuck in your head, but it works. She uses Salve and Vale all the time and I heard her muttering to her Barbie Discipuli  to listen to the Magistra yesterday. In French which we started this summer, we learned different animals from the zoo and had a quiz on the various questions we have learned and what they mean in english.
Singapore Math is so much a better fit for us than Saxon was....so far at least. She doesn't complain, I don't dread it and she actually asked to do more workbook pages than was scheduled for the day. I'll keep my fingers crossed with this one. Story of the World - Ancients  is what we are using for history and she seems to like it, has good comprehension of what we read and asks good questions. I am excited to progress through this because History is one of my passions. Actually Medieval History is, but that's for next year:)

For Science I chose Elemental Science because of how it was based on the WTM recommendations. I must admit that I really like this program and the way it is set up. It's so easy to follow, and it was easy to change it from a 5 day schedule to a two day schedule which works better for us. Every time I pull out the Science binder she yells, yay science. I guess we must be doing something right. Hopefully this will get her away from conducting her own experiments that include putting random gross things in an empty water bottle and then filling it with water and leaving it sit to see what happens.

Drawing something from a science book while I was reading.

For our art and music study this week she did week 1 from Artistic Pursuits which included a picture study and an ebony pencil drawing. We did Hildegarde von Bingen week 1 of our Composer Study and she decided to draw a picture of Hildegarde while we were listening to some of the music.

This is her interpretation of Hildegarde von Bingen

This week went from extremely hot to Fall weather cool in a 24 hour period and it is so much nicer. On Thursday we signed her up for Ballet class for the first time. I need to go out and find her the proper requested dance attire before next Friday though. She wanted me to take some photos of her doing various "dance" poses after we signed her up.


 
So we had a good week. We both learned a lot and I can't wait to see how much we learn over the next few months.