Nallenart Arrived! Weekly Reports 4/9/10

What started off as a glorious easter weekend became a cold, dark and drizzly week. I actually love rain, but not when the temperature drops to the point of almost freezing rain/snow warnings. We got to bust out our rain boots though, which Roo interprets as a free pass to jump in puddles and mud.


A beautiful, warm day at the zoo on Easter weekend.

The rain begins!

This week I finished my Composer Study Guide that I have been working on. I posted it to my blog this week. It can be found here. It's all ready to go for next year, and we are getting excited to put it into use.

We plowed through this week and managed to get to lesson 120 in The Ordinary Parents Guide to Teaching Reading. Some concepts she grasps quickly and others she seems to forget 20 seconds after explaining it. I guess that is the joys of a 5 year old that feels the need to constantly be moving, playing, singing, or dancing.....you get the picture:)  In Spelling Workout A we have reached lesson 16. This is good reinforcement for her phonics because these lessons are a nice review of what we have learned over the last couple of months. It is helping to improve her handwriting as well, because it is hard to get her to do her Handwriting Without Tears pages. Sometimes there are tears, so we don't do them as much as I would like.




Oh Saxon. I wish I could love you, but there just seems to be no future for us. At least I can look at it as a lesson learned though. Not the right program for us be we are getting through. We finished lesson 83 today and played around on the Geo boards to make congruent shapes. She enjoyed that the best and wrote her name with elastics on the Geo board just to put off doing her fact sheet a little longer. Her ability to count by 2's, 5's and list odd numbers to 19 has gotten really good. She even counted by 5's to 130 by herself before she got stuck, which is neat because she hasn't even count by 1's to 130 yet.

Our cat Iza. I think that she enticed the c at to sit on her math book to get out of doing the work:)

Geography was skipped this week in favour of watching Mary Poppins. She got it for Easter and was absolutely thrilled. I received the book Children Just Like Me in the mail this week. I plan on using it as a geography supplement over the next few years, just to show her how children in different areas of the world live. It is a really well put together book and I have noticed her flipping through it frequently over the last couple of days.




The last of the main books I will need for next years plans showed up this week including to my surprise, the Nallenart French.



More books arrived! We love getting new books in the mail.

Our Nallenart French books. She was so excited, that we decided to start them on Monday. 

I have been waiting for its arrival for awhile now (slow shipping), and now I have everything I need to finish my Year at a Glance spreadsheet. I will post it as soon as it is finished. I ordered both the L'art de Dire (K and up) and L'art de Lire 1 from Nallenart because I didn't know how fast she would go through the lessons. I am glad I did though because when we were looking at the books, she said she wanted to start her french lessons on Monday. So what I may do is go through L'art de Dire from now through summer and then redo it again as a review and to solidify the information. I plan on learning along with her because I did terrible in French when I was in school. I am still trying to figure out if it was because I was actually bad at it or because I didn't care to learn. I still kick myself over that wasted opportunity.

Composer Study

I have been working on a composer study to use next year, but it took me longer than anticipated. I uploaded the final copy to Scribd and it is located below. Please let me know what you think.

Composer Study 2010-2011

March 29-April 2 Weekly Report and the Piconator

It was a 4 day week for us, but an overall productive one. One noticeable step this week was that when Roo is reading her Bob books, she is not sounding out nearly as much. I also find that she seems sound out some of the words in her head instead of out loud. This is a big step for us and I love being able to witness the growth first hand. This week I received some of my language arts books for next year. New curriculum is so exciting and I can't wait to update my year at a glance spreadsheet with these subjects. I feel a little geeky about how excited I actually am....
This week in Phonics we worked on the short-oo sound as well as the words could, should and would. We also worked on aw and finished the week with a scavenger hunt (lesson 115 in OPGTR) with many of these words used in small sentences.  In the Spelling Workout we completed lesson 14 short vowel a words. We will start out next week with a spelling test to see if she retained these over the long weekend.

Carrying her "Pinconator" which she swears can find pine cones.

On our Nature walk/coffee shop run;) this week Roo decided that a stick she found on the way made a perfect Piconator. She told me this with a serious face before she turned on her heel and went where "the Piconator was taking her". A slight detour, and a purse full of pine cones later  I finally got my coffee.
In math this week we went through 3 lessons that were all focused on doubled +1 facts. Flashcards, fact sheets and problems on the white board were all part of trying to learn these. I read an interesting post on the Well Trained Mind boards this week about a mom wondering if if she should switch from using Saxon.  She got many great responses, most of which agreed in consensus that she should stick with Saxon because it is a great program. I totally agree that it is a great program too, but for us it doesn't fit right. One of the posters said:

     "The most glaring difference between Singapore and Saxon is that Singapore requires the student to *think* whereas Saxon is actively trying to train the student to complete large numbers of problems to the level of automaticity--that is *without* thinking." 

That statement pegged my concerns perfectly. I can see Roo learning her facts, getting the right answers consistently and grasping new concepts, but I feel she is memorizing these. I don't necessarily mind memorization for math facts, but what I would prefer out of our math program is to have the why. This is a big reason why we are changing our math program after we finish Saxon 1. I'm even scared to take off to long a break from school just in case she forgets all she has "memorized". If she understood the why behind the math, then I wouldn't have to worry. I apologize for the rant. Now for the rest of our week.

Relaxing break with a little serenade.

We watched Eyewitness: Prehistoric life which is a DVD by BBC Scienceworld. It was fairly short and kept her attention span for the duration. She has been using the word DNA for the last several days from these movies but never remembers what it is. She will write DNA on some paper and then say, "what's DNA again Mom?". I think she has done that about 7 times now over the last two days. In geography we learned about New Zealand and Australia and she now has a fascination with Dingoes and Bush Babies (although Bush Babies are from Africa, that particular fascination came from our new Kingfisher Animal Encyclopedia).

Both Roo and I are really enjoying the MusIQ Homeschool piano lessons. This week her lessons were about rhythm and rhythm patterns which she totally didn't get at first. What I love about this program is that you can do the lessons over and over until you get it which is much more convenient to us than out of home piano lessons would be. So on Monday she did her lesson, Tuesday and Wednesday were practice days and on Thursday she redid the lesson. At the end of the lesson she had a complete understanding of the concept and was able to apply it.

An example of the rhythm lesson.

I have been slowly working on making a composer study for next year. It is gradual, but I hope the end result is what I intended. I will post it when it is complete.

Today the weather was ridiculously warm for this time of year, so we all went out for a long walk and then to the park.  I thought we would enjoy this warm weekend while we could because starting Sunday it is suppose to rain for most of the week (I personally love rain, but have learned over the years that I am a minority with this feeling) with a gradual decrease of temperature and a chance of snow on Friday. So tomorrow we are off to the zoo!




On the way to the store for icecreamEnjoying the ice-cream in the sunSliding down the pole at the park with dad. I had to put a star in front of the guy on the bench, because I didn't realize he was in the shot.

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

This week was successful and we seemed to get into a better groove to be able to accomplish things in a shorter period of time. I am sure it was just a fluke though and we will be back to the regular drawn out lessons by next week:) I finally figured out how to make my blog page bigger and how to get larger photos on here. It took some html changing but in the end I got it around how I wanted it, so I am happier with the look.
I think I have found a way to lesson the pain of math time. I don't want Roo to hate math so I am trying to find ways to make the lessons less painless for us both until we get a program that is a better fit. I left her book open to the fact sheet yesterday and picked up a book and began to read out loud. It wasn't an intentional plan of mine to leave the book open, I just thought it was a good time to break for a few minutes before proceeding. As I was reading she picked up her pencil and did her fact sheet without a word. It was so easy, I am shocked I never thought of it before. We will see if it works tomorrow too. This week in math we worked on plus two facts, measuring and recording items using linking cubes as well as the different ways that shapes can be used to cover the same picture. She likes the hands on activities for math and also pages with colour or pictures keep her interest. So my goal is to find a program more suited in this sense than Saxon is. Any suggestions?

Her pretending to drink while I was explaining a lesson.

Language arts this week consisted of solid phonics OPGTR review and the different ways to get the long o vowel sound. We are now on lesson 100 and I plan on slowing down a bit now to spend more time with review before a new lesson. Spelling is working on the beginning and ending sounds of basic words. She seems to get through this quickly and I noticed today how her printing has improved since last week. It is funny how even a few days can cause a noticeable change in things.

In geography we are almost done her Apple Press My First Mapbook and I plan on using the Evan-Moor Continents book before moving on to the next in the Apple Press series. The last few activities have been reinforcing North, South, East and West and how to use these directions on a grid map. This week we travelled across Australia using clues and math equations.  These along with a grid and the compass allowed us to determine what city our characters destination was.

For art class this week the kids made paper plate masks and maracas which I must admit has been driving me nuts.  I think I have muscle pain from shaking it while she was doing work. She said she needed the maracas as background music;)

The frog mask.

I have been using The Story of the Orchestra to slowly introduce Roo to classical music. I plan on building more in depth onto it next year. I looked into The Beautiful Feet History of Classical Music book, but heard it was more for older kids. So I purchased the Beautiful Feet History of Classical Music Timeline to use that as my guide for reading biographies and listening to music about these composers. This timeline comes with two medium length pieces of cardstock to use on the wall. Then you colour and cut out the composers and paste them onto the cardstock. It's good because it will giver her the visual timeline and will help to keep me on track with what composers and when.


 The Beautiful Feet Classical Music Timeline

I received some of my next year school books this week. It is always so exciting going through new curriculum trying to visualize what the lessons are going to be like. I can't wait until I have most of my core books so I can sit and plan out how I want the year to look. Not that I will necessarily stick to it, but it always makes me feel more organized if I give myself a game plan. I need to find the perfect organizational book/program for myself. I do well with paper based but computer based always seems more professional so I am open to suggestions.
Roo termed today "lazy day", which means we get dressed in our cozy stuff to do school work. She is done for the day and is in the next room. As I type this I can hear a rather high pitched rendition of "A Spoon Full of Sugar" while she is watching Mary Poppins and vegging in her nest (a pile of pillows and blankets on the couch).