Sunny and Warm to Blizzard - Weekly Reports

For February we had an abnormally warm day today at 10 C (50 F) and now at 10 p.m. I just looked outside and there is a blizzard. Bizarro weather. Now I have to get up extra early to clean the car off before dance class:( 

I decided this week I really need to get myself motivated and start working out. I did the 30 Day Shred before I got pregnant and then I stopped. Now I am scared to start it again because it kicked my butt before and now I am in even worse shape. Blah. I am also on the hunt for a used elliptical. I keep searching Kijiji but all they have are cheap ones that people are probably selling because they were cheap to begin with. The search continues.

This week in review:

Memory Work - The months poem, Days of the Week poem, and Periods of Egyptian History

Phonics - We have finished lesson 219 in OPTGR with adding common prefixes.

First Language Lessons - Lesson 58-60, we are on action verbs and recognizing nouns and pronoun uses.

Writing with Ease - Completed week 19 of copy work and narration exercises from The Light Princess as the quote and narration guide.

Latin (Song School Latin) - We studied the names of several parts of the human body.

French (Nallenart) - Still working on the memorization of words that are found on a farm and review of greetings. 

Math - We are taking a break from Singapore at the moment because I bought Math Mammoth levels 1A and 1B. We are starting at the beginning and reintroducing the math facts as we come across them in the lessons. I am hoping that this will give her a better understanding of math concepts. We may go back to Singapore if and when we feel confident with where we are.

History (Story of the World) - We finished chapter 18 Life in Early Crete. We learned about Bull Jumpers, and King Minos and the Minotaur. The Story of King Minos and the Minotaur actually reminded me of the Lego game Minotaurus  (but we also want the Harry Potter, Pirate Code and Ramses Pyramid). Who am I kidding, we want them all. 

Map work while licking peanut butter off her face.

Narration and drawing of the sinking of Thera.

Science (Elemental) - We are studying fish this week. This weeks animals included fish, seahorse and sharks. We are getting close to finishing the animal study and moving onto the body soon.

Art - A still life painting she did of her Ruby Gloom display dolls.

Composer Study - We listened to our last week of works by Henry Purcell with some YouTube videos of people and orchestras playing his pieces. 

Merle's nickname has become Merle the Squirrel and while looking at Amazon I came across this. We definitely need to buy her that. Everytime I try to get a picture of her smiling, the flash always makes her close her eyes. So if I want to get an open eyed shot I can't use a flash, making the picture colour come out bad. I then have to change the picture to black and white. Now I have a lot of black and white photos, it's a good thing they look good like that.

Weekly Report for Two Weeks Since I Missed Last Week. Oops

Welcome back to myself. I haven't posted anything in over a week, when I promised myself I would post at least weekly. I am blaming it on the heat. Since our central air is broken, we only have an a/c in one room and it is not the computer room. I have pretty much been camping out in the living room and avoiding all other rooms. That's my excuse.

Taken in front of the newly bloomed flowers on our walk through town.

As for what we have been up to, we have reached lesson 140 in The Ordinary Parents Guide. I have decided I would stop new lessons at this point and just do review for the next little while. I have been checking out a lot of I Read, You Read books from the library and they have become a large part of our phonics lessons.

In Spelling Workout we have finished lesson 21 this week. My goal is to finish book A by the end of summer so that she may start book B when our Gr.1 officially begins. We may have to do 2 lessons a few of the weeks to be able to accomplish this goal though.

Math focused on basic addition, skip counting and telling time to the half hour on an analog clock this week. She is getting better at trying to tell what time it is, and I find that she periodically will announce the time throughout the day. She tries especially hard if a commercial tells her that one of her favorite shows will be on a certain time.

It was supposed to rain that day, but chose to be incredibly hot instead. The umbrella became a handy sun blocker.

For Geography we worked on Europe and Africa. Where they are located, some important facts and how to find them on a globe. She knows Italy is shaped like a boot and uses that as her reference for finding it's location. In French we have been working on colours and review of past lessons. I am finding that we are spending 2 weeks to cover a new concept. I do not move onto anything new until she is quite familiar with what has been taught. She is really enjoying it though which makes me happy because I would like her to reach fluency in a second language as an end goal.

Art class was cancelled this week, but last week she made a painting. Next week is the last class, so she is going to be sad over the summer because she really enjoys it. For September she falls into the next age group, so classes are longer and more independent of parents.

She is still working on a name for this painting. 

I have been trying to figure out next years game plan for the last few months. When I think I may be onto something I find myself over thinking and changing things yet again. I have the curriculum that I want, I just find myself leaning more towards the Latin Centered Curriculum concept vs. The Well Trained Mind. I don't know though, because for me personally history is a huge part of my life and so very important for education. So if I do go more LCC I will still have to try to integrate a larger focus on history than once a week. I hate stress:( These pictures made me laugh though. Yet again some pictures she took of herself that I found on my camera when I uploaded pictures. She's obviously not very camera shy:)

Weekly Report 5/17/10 - 5/21/10

This week it feels like summer has officially hit and it is hot in my house. The central air is broken and the landlords have not gotten it fixed yet. I swear it is sometimes hotter in here than outside, the only plus is that we can sit in front of a fan in the house. If that is considered a plus. There are no plans this long weekend so I figured I would do my weekly report tonight, eat something and then read a book until whenever. We had a good school week this week and I must say her new favorite subject seems to be French.

Walking with her homemade wind sock.

In phonics we have started to cover the silent letters. Her reading is getting more fluent and we have begun the 4th set in the Bob Book series for her to read to me at bedtime. Thank goodness for inter library loans that I didn't actually have to buy the 4th set. A money saver that is:) We have begun a review of lessons 14-18 in Spelling Workout. Her writing the words out is currently our only handwriting practice, but for the moment that's all I am going to use until she gets more comfortable with printing. She doesn't really like to write a lot so I think adding handwriting again will be overkill.

Collecting Pinecones

Math has become a less time intensive subject for us since we dropped Saxon. She worked on odd and even numbers, telling time on a digital clock, and skip counting practice. In French we worked on people in a family, made a small family tree and learned how to introduce people in the family. Next week we work on colours.

Making a wish. I'm sure the neighbors love the fact that the Dandelion seeds blew all over their lawn.

Art class is always fun, but this week she got to make a fairy garden. Since fairies are close to her heart, she really enjoyed this project. We finished Pinnochio this week and have started to read The Wizard of Oz as our next read aloud. I'm trying to figure out what to read after this so I can make sure the library has it and put it on hold, but I am drawing a blank. I am open to any suggestions for books you may have enjoyed with your kids.  I think I hear rain beginning and I am keeping my fingers crossed that it will cool the temperature and not make it more humid. I need to move someplace that has cooler summers, I hate the heat:)



Fairy Garden

Weekly Report

I'm sitting here across the hall from Roo, who is in bed but refuses to sleep. Sometimes I just don't have the energy to get her to bed when she fights me, it is almost easier to sit back and ignore her. She is currently humming and singing as song about Iza the cat. I wish I had that much energy, if I even had a portion of it I would definitely be some kind of domestic goddess who has several Phd's and is fluent in 5 languages. Now it is staring to thunder, which normally I find relaxing but of course it freaks her out and she screeches at every rumble.  Now on to our week.

In phonics we finished lesson 131 in The Ordinary Parents Guide. We are doing practice reading from The McGuffey's First Eclectic Reader. I find that the sounding out is getting less and less (or at least the sounding out loud is getting less and less), so the reading sounds more fluent. We have the first 3 sets of the Bob books and I want to order the fourth, I just don't want to fork over the money for it. I wonder if I can get it from an inter library loan? That thought actually just came to me and I will try after I finish this post.

My husband bought a great child size school desk off of Kijiji for $20. The guy even threw in a child size wooden rocking chair which she seems to love for some reason. I am excited about the desk, I just need to figure out a better school set up than what we have. It's hard to carve a niche out of a apartment that has every part of it in use.




Math is smoother now that we have dropped Saxon. Our main focus this week was telling time to the half hour. We haven't practiced skip counting for a couple of days and I was a little concerned. But earlier this evening I walked into the living room and she was pretending to do sit ups with a makeshift ab roller (that she made from a really big stuffed horse) and was counting by 5's during "exercise". Strange but funny, for some reason she likes infomercials.

For Spelling we completed lesson 17 and she did her spelling test on a Magna Doodle. She got all the words correct on her first try. I'm glad we started the Spelling Workout A this year because it is easy enough for her right now and it seems to be a nice review of her phonics. For French we were still working on greetings and introductions. She has been practicing il and elle by introducing her dolls to one another. We came up to our first French quiz today. I had to hold up a picture of a historical figure (they came with the lessons) and then introduce it. She had to listen to ensure a) that I was using il and elle right, and b) that I was saying the correct name. She did really well and I was glad to see that she understood.

Magna Doodle spelling

For art class the theme was Mothers Day. So they made some crafts, the biggest one being a painted and decorated pot with a flower in it. I was impressed that she did most of it herself aside from using the hot glue gun.



Today was a rainy, colder day so we went through the "what can we do today" whines. I think she jumped from one thing to another today without finishing anything. I made a collage of photos of her started projects/activities.

She started a human body puzzle and started to use her knitting machine.

She made me some clay earrings but didn't paint them like she said she was going to. Last photo is of her attempt at redecoration. She dragged her couch and toys into the living room to set up a "house" but decided that she needed to go listen to Abba in the other room instead.

I'm tired and cranky tonight, probably from lack of sleep. I tend to stay up really late and read every night because I enjoy the solitude. The problem is, I'm not a morning person and it definitely makes it worse. Oh well, off to read anyway.  Good night.

I always feel so late with my Weekly Report

Although it is technically still Friday, I always feel so late posting. Especially when you see other posting  weekly reports Thursday, friday morning etc, all way before I even think about it. This was our week back after a nice break to visit my parents last week. I think she was on over stimulation mode this week though, because it was hard to get her back into the groove. I'm tired and it is really stuffy hot in here so I'm sure this will be short and to the point. Roo lost her second tooth last week with a little help from her Nanny;)

Here she is displaying her two missing teeth while wearing headphones to ignore me.

We are on lesson #128 in the OPGTR Phonics and we have really slowed down in order to try to get these rules to stick. I honestly don't think I even realized how many rules there really were until I opened this book. She has been reading a few pages of Green Eggs and Ham by herself everyday and the sounding out is getting less and less. With Spelling Workout A we finished lesson 16 which still has easy enough words to spell that she hasn't had any wrong on her spelling test/review yet. I get immense satisfaction from seeing the growth like the words she struggled with last month are now offering no issues.

In an earlier post I decided that we were going to stop with the Saxon Math. I picked up workbooks last week and decided we will use those over the summer until the next year begins and we stat Singapore. It wasn't worth the fight or tears anymore and it was frustrating for both of us.

This was week two for L'art de Dire for us and it is enjoyable and short. At the beginning of the week we go over a new concept and then we repeat and practice is everyday. It usually takes about 5 minutes and there is a review of last weeks stuff as well. This week were learned introductions and the use of he and she. Il s'appelle, Elle s'appelle, Comment s'appelle-t-il and Comment s'appelle-t-elle. The book comes with flash cards to use and as I held each one up, she then had to tell me if it was Il s'appelle or Elle s'appelle and then say the name of the person on the card. It was fun.

In front of the library posing with the first fully bloomed flowers I have seen this season.

In art class this week she made a wooden spoon person that had a bottle body and various things for decoration. She chose to give it clown features (cut from a magazine), feather wings and a halo (which she lost). I think she called it a fairy clown. I call it a little bit creepy:)




I just got a call to say my book I ordered from inter library loans came in and I am excited to read it to Roo. It is book one of a three books series on evolution. This one is called Born with a Bang by Jennifer Morgan.



Book two is on order because who knows how long it will take for it to arrive.

Weekly Report

This week started off with an early morning dentist appointment for Roo. A passport photo redo after the dentist, followed by a trip to the library. Roo has her first loose tooth. It is so loose the dentist said it is hanging in the breeze. I can see the adult tooth breaking the skin behind it, but she won't let me try to get it out. So I guess we have to wait.

For phonics this week I decided to try a different approach to change things up a bit. We do our daily lesson from The Ordinary Parents Guide to Teaching Reading, do review by using Blend Phonics lessons and we do readings from McGuffey's First Eclectic Reader . The variety lessens the monotony and it feels like we are doing less but learning more although we are spending more time on phonics than we did in a single sitting before. We are on lesson 110 in the OPGTR and lesson 12 in the Spelling Workout A. Next week I will start doing a weekly spelling tests with the list words because we have now reached words that are harder for her to spell. This first bit seemed more of a review of words we have been working with and reading often (aside from a few new words).

In math this week we finished 4 lessons and one review using Saxon 1. She learned about dividing objects in half, subtracting half of a number, and graphing the pieces used to cover a design. She caught onto subtracting half of a number quickly and could apply the graphing lesson to the worksheet easily. She really likes the math fact sheets where she gets to be the teacher. They are already completed with a mixture of correct and incorrect answers and she has to mark the sheet and write the correct answer beside the wrong ones. She even asks to do these when it is not school time for some reason.

The sheets she uses and pretends she is a teacher.

Today she fell and hurt herself. She declared today would be school in bed day because she couldn't walk.

The books we used for school in bed day.

In geography this week we did a small overview of South America, it's location, the oceans surrounding it and what types of foresty and animals are located there. We fell off the science/history wagon a bit so I decided before I continue with our pre history studies we would learn about evolution. We read a short picture book called What Mr. Darwin Saw. It was a brief story of how Charles Darwin came to his thoughts of evolution. It was cute, short and easy to read/understand. Next week we are starting a book called Evolving Planet which will allow us to delve deeper into the subject. After we complete this book I will continue with the pre history studies, it should make more sense by that point.

It was our last art class for this semester and she was sad. It starts again in the middle of April though. We were debating putting her in the next age group because her teacher said she would be fine for it.  She is enjoying this class though, so I think what we will do is one more semester with this age group and then we will put her in the next level in September. It is a longer class and at a better time, so it doesn't have any effect on the school day.

Early morning chocolate cookie before art class.

After art class, thinking and waiting for the bus.

Finally we have gotten the MusIQ Homeschool piano lessons working. We have officially begun them and she seems to really enjoy it. The lessons are broken down in to 5 sections. First you go through the actual lesson with a cartoon version of Beethoven (I think the composer changes over the different lessons). They explain and walk you through it. Next you go to the practice room Mrs. Melody to go over what was learned, then off to play the reinforcing games. After that you go to the improvisation room where you can try to make your own songs/music using a variety of instrument sounds or you can try to play along with several pieces of music ranging in difficulty. The last portion is going through the written lessons which involve colouring pages, activities and worksheets. This was a easier and cheaper way to do piano lesson for us since she can do this program any time of the day and whenever she wants to.

MusIQ Homeschool lesson one with Beethoven.

All in all the week went well. I try to incorporate about an hour of DS playing time daily with her eye patched in order to exercise the weaker eye. I just need to find some educational games (for younger kids), so if any of you have an recommendations I would appreciate it.

DS eye exercises. No complaints from her:)

Weekly Report

What a long day. I almost feel too tired to do this, but I am determined. First off, we didn't do any schooling today because we had to drive to Toronto for Roo's opthamologist appointment. The opthamologist suggested getting her a Nintendo DS to play while patching her eye. As you can guess, she wasn't too upset by that suggestion;)  Then we spent a few hours with a friend up there and left to come home, hoping to miss the traffic. No such luck, we hit the traffic so it was stop and start for a large part of the way and it made me car sick. On the way home we were passing the city where my husband likes to "visit" the music/instrument store there and he asked if he could stop in for a quick minute. We ended up sitting in the car for an hour while he did "business". I didn't want to bring Roo in the store because she has the constant need to try all the instruments and I really wasn't in the mood to chase her around the store the whole time. On the way home, I thought I had reached a point where my head was going to burst. My husband was belting out TNT along with the radio, while Roo thought she needed to talk extra loud over the top of dads singing so she could share her informative lecture on hibernation.......you can imagine the relief I felt when I saw the city limits sign.

This week we focused a lot on phonics review. We went back through a lot of older lessons in The Ordinary Parents Guide to Teaching Reading as well as we started reading the McGuffey Reader 1 as a change.  I also pulled out the big magnetic letters to do review as well, going over the rules and then getting her to spell them out seems to reinforce them better. I don't have a spot to put the letters up on aside form the fridge which isn't convenient for lessons. So I brought in a cookie sheet, propped it against the white board and we used that. We finished spelling lesson 10 which focused on filling in the blanks and rhyming words. She kept picking words that rhymed, but were not in the list words, so I had to keep explaining that the answer was in the list of words that was in the margin.

Cookie sheet letter board.

In math we completed 3 lessons and some fact review yesterday. We learned about dividing objects in half, skip counting by twos and we played store with money (dime and pennies). I find that sometimes she gets so into building things with her manipulatives that she loses track of what she is actually supposed to be doing, but I think that adding 2 to facts clicked this week. When we were going through them she looked at me and said "oh, it's like skipping one" and from then on she figured out the plus 2 facts without using any counters.









Geography is still her favorite subject, although we only do it twice a week. We went over the continents this week,  but focused on North America, what animals live there, and what oceans surround it. Art class was super fun. The kids made super hero costumes and then ran around playing bat tag, and hide and go bat. The capes were made from pillow cases that they drew on with fabric markers, then they made a mask and a necklace/breast plate that had their super hero symbol on it. Roo was Bat Girl as seen below.










Art class day was the first morning that you could actually feel the spring in the air. although it was still cold, the sun had that little bit of warmth to it that lets you know winter is almost done.

Spring is in the air!

I finally received my Song School Latin book this week as well. It took awhile, but I am so excited. I almost don't want to wait until next year, but I'm going to. Another book that I can input the lessons into My Year at a Glance schedule I am working on. It's immensely satisfying to see it coming together slowly but surely. I have not completed my About Us page yet like I said I would, but I did begin my books page. On this page I plan on keeping a running list of our read alouds. We just started James and the Giant Peach a few days ago. She seems to be really enjoying this one so far. All in all it was a good but long week. It's supposed to be warm and sunny this weekend, so I hope we can do something fun.

Weekly Report

I've been trying to work on my blog for the last week. Putting in more pages that can be accessed by the links across the top. They are not ready yet, but are  under construction. I need to set aside a certain time each day to work on them, that way I can't give myself the "I didn't have time" excuse. Which I seem to have no problems convincing myself of. Earlier this month I stated how this winter has been great weather wise. Hardly any snow, not too many cold days and just plain easier than last winter. I should have waited because it is definitely making up for it now. At least it's not too cold at -1 degrees celsius, it just a pain though because it takes forever for the city to plow our street. Thank goodness for snow tires.

You could see the grass back here two days ago.

We started the week with being sick. A high fever that turned into a cold on the weekend. Other than the sniffles, she doesn't seem to feel too bad now though.
In Spelling Workout A we finished lesson 9 and started lesson 10. So far I find it a quick and easy way to reinforce what we have been learning in phonics. We only do one page a day 3-4 days a week and it should take us into the summer. In The Ordinary Parents Guide to Teaching Reading we were able to finish up long o vowel sounds and begin long u, on lesson 103. One of the lessons this week was to copy the 20 word/phrases onto index cards and lay out 5 of them. I was to choose one of them in my head and draw it while she tried to figure out which one it was. It was fun and after she reversed rolls and drew for me. I got a kick out of the flag she drew. It is the blue one with her name in the center in the picture below.

Notice the chocolate residue on the face.

We have reached the halfway point for Saxon Math 1. We are on lesson 65 out of 130, which came as a nice surprise today. The adding 2 equations are making more sense and I can see her mentally counting instead of using her manipulatives. I am only making her do one side of the fact sheets right now. Two is too much and that way I can use them in the summer to ensure she doesn't forget everything. I don't plan on stopping school in the summer, just lightening it. I think I will be doing both her and I a disservice to stop and I don't really want to have to spend the first 2 months of the next year reviewing everything she forgot.

We started the Evan-Moor Beginning Geography book of Continents and Oceans this week. She made the connection that North America is called North because it is at the top of the map. We are going to go through this 2 days a week until finished and then move onto the next in the Apple Press series.
Art class was fun this week although their was a snow storm. We drive into town with my husband in the morning and then bus it home. Which for some reason she really likes. Roo painted her clay mask that she made a few weeks back as well as made and ocean scene on a big block of wood whcih I had the pleasure of carrying on the bus home plus a bag full of library books.

On the bus coming home from art class.

She said it is an African mask, I think it looks more like a clown:)

 

She pawned off the colouring of the turtle to me while she played.

We are having frustrations with the passport agency. I had to get a new passport for myself as well as Roo because they expired recently. I had no problems with mine, but hers they sent back the application this week. They stated that you could not fully see her eyes in the picture. She wears glasses, not much can be done about that. If we take the glasses off for the picture, her eye turns in and I am sure they would reject that photo saying she isn't looking at the camera of something of the sort. It's maddening and now I have to go pay for a new photo, mail it again and wait and see if they reject this one. I'm glad we don't have a trip planned or anything because could cause problems.
I so want to get my schedule done for next year. I think my hidden obsessive compulsive side is coming out and really wants something organized and detailed on paper. I just wish it came out more with housework.
I was flipping through my new Elemental Science Biology and figuring out how I am going to combine it into 2 days instead of 5. It will probably be easier if I actually sit with it and input info into an excel spreadsheet. Hmmmm maybe that will be my plan this weekend. That and my About Us page on this blog. What exciting plans;) The sad part is, that I actually am excited about the excel thing.

It just stopped snowing and the sun broke through (right in time for it to set), what bizarre weather.

Artist Extraordinaire

I have this little ceramic dogs head that my mother made me when I was a child. It was used to place my glasses on when I went to bed at night. Last year when my dd was told she needed glasses I passed it down to her which pleases her immensely. Late last night as I was trying to get her to bed she told me she was "creating". So I let her be for awhile. When she was done she handed me the little sculpture she made from play doh. She told me it was for me to put my glasses on at night to replace the one I gave her. It is a multi colour rabbit, with two plastic utensils for ears and it's beautiful. We have to let it dry out a bit to get harder but when it is done it will sit beside my old holder on the sink vanity.

My old holder and the new rabbit glasses holder.

A close up

  I was going to get Roo to do some school work this morning that was not completed yesterday. She looked at me with sad eyes and declared, "but mom, it's the weekend". That's what I get for going over weekends and week days with her last week. I'm going to try again later though. Dh went into work a little while ago to finish some stuff up. I may be able to use the fact that dh had to work today too, to get her to agree.