October 14th - 18th weekly review

I'm behind again. A week behind. . . . . 

BUT.............I do have a lot of pictures to share from last week.

So much as gone on since last week I dont remember in enough detail what all we worked on. I'll have to let the pictures do the talking.

Thomas working on his cursive writing.

Here's the product of his hard work. {yes, I see the word spelled wrong at the bottom}.

Thomas seeing if the desk is longer or shorter than a meter.

Thomas circled the perpendicular lines on Fred's face.

In All About Spelling, we went over when to use the letter {c} and {k}.

 

Nathaniel taking his math test.

This is a typical day's work for Nathaniel. He has a worksheet, and his reading book.

Sarah worked on the letter O this week.  She helped the otter find his home in this activity.

Sarah working on her poke page.

Sarah colored a page with her "special" markers.

Working on the O puzzle.

Sarah enjoyed this number game. I put different numbers in the box and Sarah had to fill the space with the number of "babies" in the box.

Sarah filled the O with O stickers. This always keeps my kids busy for a while.

More sticker art for Sarah.

Sarah is serious when it comes to cutting. She holds the scissors wrong, and will not hold them the right way.

Sarah loves the magnet page!!

I printed 2 of these and Sarah chose to paint this letter O.

Sarah's do a dot 3 page.

Sarah sorted and glued the pieces all by herself. She's very independent and loves work that she can do alone.

Hattie LOVES blocks, any and all blocks.

Hattie was proud of her sticker art, too!

October 7th-11th Weekly Review

Another week has ended, the days are going by slowly but the weeks are going by too fast! How is that even possible?

This week we finally got around to doing to last two projects for the sun in our Apologia Astronomy. The first project was to make a solar eclipse. This was an awesome visual project for the kids.

The dark circle and the fuzzy circle around the dark circle is where you would be able to see the eclipse.

The 2nd project was to make a sun viewing box. They wanted their daddy to help with this and I'm glad he did, because I was a little bit confused on how it all went together.

Thomas found the sun in the box!!

Thomas finished his Dolphin Adventure book, and is now reading Stone Fox. This book is an adventure book, but its more of a mystery to us. We are anxious to keep reading to find out why the Grandpa is so sad.
He is skipping around in his Singapore Math book since he is still reviewing. And he still LOVES Life of Fred. I have to admit, its better than I had imagined.
In language arts, he's learned all the capitalization rules, and now moving to period rules. He's also learning about different types of nouns.


Nathaniel is moving along in his phonics/reading. He's on his 3rd reading book and is reading more quickly. He's almost ready for his test in Math U See on the color blocks.

Nathaniel coloring in the astronomy book while I read.

We STILL didn't get Sarah's work printed so she's been playing with Hattie and listening to what I read the boys.

Sarah lying on the bean bag in the floor with her peanut butter spoon.

September 16-20 Weekly Review

I told the kids at the beginning of this week that we were having a catch up week. The reaction on their faces was priceless. They thought I was saying "ketchup". We weren't really behind on anything except for the Prairie Primer work. We did, thankfully, get it all finished by Thursday. However, now we are behind on our Apologia Astronomy projects.

Before I even begin on posting about 

our week....it's gonna be short and sweet

 because we are leaving in the morning for 

the beach and I only have about 1/2 of our 

things packed!! I wanted to get this written 

before finishing up the packing.

The only time they sit at the table together is to eat, and do their daily notebooking journals.

Thomas:
We are working on Level 1 in All About Spelling, not because he cant spell the words {that part is easy}, but learning every sound of every letter has taken 4 weeks. I think now that he has the phonograms down pat, we'll fly through the rest of  level 1.

Here are a few pictures from his spelling lessons this week:

Phonograms mastered!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thomas and Sarah listening to me say the sounds of letters and they would write the letter I was sounding out.

{ks = x}

Our  neighbor came over to play and helped sort the letters of the alphabet.

Thomas had some birthday money and spent it on this bracelet making loom.

Nathaniel:
Nathaniel finished lesson 2 of Math U See Alpha. He was proud that his test was "easy", and that he got $5 of school money for doing so good on the test.

In his reading, he's still moving pretty fast. We are still doing double lessons on most days. He has started adding a reader to his lessons, and is not complaining  about the work being hard.  

I noticed the boys accidentally matched their clothes one day and wanted to take a picture. Of course, Sarah wanted in too.

Nathanael {our friend}, Nathaniel, and Thomas

 Sarah:
 Sarah didn't work on a letter this week. She played with blocks, shaving cream, colored, and played on her leap pad. 
She loves butterflies and I found her a butterfly picture to color. She usually picks markers to color with, but we won these crayon rocks and she was anxious to try them out. She enjoyed coloring with these cool "rocks". The boys really enjoyed them too.    

I picked up this dry erase board and she's had a lot of fun drawing on it

Sarah's turn to pick a name from the prayer pail

Hattie:
Hattie is really enjoying the Leap Pad letter factory movie. She tells me every day that she wants to watch the "E Room". It amazes me at how fast little ones learn and catch on. She played with blocks and shaving cream this week too.

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We are excited about out vacation next week and I hope to get lots of pictures to share!! 

September 9-13 Weekly Review

I got my planner in the mail on Monday of this week and was very excited and anxious to try it out. So far I really like it. There are two things I would change and that would be:

1. have a better way to open right up to the week I need instead of having to keep the planner open at all times
2. have a place to write little reminders of things I need for each day

Other than those.....its a really cool planner!! I love the design, and that it's spiral bound. I love how its designed just for homeschoolers too.


Here's what my 1st planned week looked like. I highlighted after completion, and circled when we didn't get a task completed for that day.

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 Together:

Like the weeks before: we pray, read from the Bible, do a little devotional, and read a Bible based story every day. Then we work on the calendar, and the daily learning notebooks together. The kids have really enjoyed these so far.

Other things we work on together:

Prairie Primer week 3:

We looked a little bit every day at the Laura Ingalls Wilder Country book. The kids enjoyed seeing pictures of what it was like to live back then and to see examples of things like the cabins and flowers talked about in the book. 

We learned about wasps stings and how to treat them. Once again I learned something too.......I learned not to pull a stinger out with tweezers but to scrape it with a card or knife because pulling the stinger out will release the venom into the body~my poor kids.

 Apologia Astronomy:

This week we started lesson 2 on the sun. We've learned a few interesting things about the sun:

1. if you stare into the sun, you can go blind and not even feel it because you dont have pain sensors in your eyes.  
2. if you were standing on Pluto it would still be dangerous to look into the sun 
3. the sun is like a big ball of fire that God put in the perfect place so that the earth would get just what it needs from the sun. 

We practiced doing these 2 things {revolving, and  rotating} and we all got a little dizzy. 

And for the fun part of this week, we melted chocolate with the sun, and a magnifying glass. All the kids enjoyed this!!

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This week went by really fast! We doubled up our work on Tuesday so that on Wednesday we could have mostly a free day~we still had to do just a little work.

I put tabs on the pages that we need to do and here's what the shelf looked like after lunch on Tuesday from doing double the work.

Thomas:

Thomas had a birthday this week!  He turned 9 years old. He did get to have a break on his big day, but he still worked the rest of the week.

 

• Thomas worked on his Life of Fred Math Apples book and is almost finished. This is usually the very first thing he wants to do from his workbox. He thinks Fred is funny and silly. He also worked on his Singapore math and is still reviewing what he learned last year. 
• He's learning capitalization rules and correct punctuation marks in his language lessons. 
• He's still working on learning the phonograms in All About Spelling, but almost has them all learned. The vowels are tricky! 
• In his reading program he's still on the biography genre, and is reading about Amelia Earheart. He likes that she's a little tom boy and is very brave. He is almost finished with this book and is excited to move on to the adventure books next.
•  In his cursive writing book, he's learning/learned the letters: r, i, t, u, and p {I think that's all so far~just going by memory}. 

 Nathaniel:
 Nathaniel insisted that since it was Thomas's birthday this week that he should get to have a day off too, so he decided to double up his work as well. 
We are focusing on his math and reading and he's in lesson 2 of Math U See Alpha. He watched the video that went with the lesson and said it was easy and went right to work writing the numbers 1-20. In his reading/phonics he's working on blends and reading 3 letter words. He's enjoying this program and feels confident in what he is assigned. To see him happy, makes me overly happy! He has different activities every day with his phonics...some days its reading, some days a game and even some cutting/pasting action!


Sarah: 
Sarah worked on the letter I this week. She had a lot of fun working and building. She has a few papers each day that I get ready for her to work on, some days 1 is enough and other days its 5 or 6.
 I put Sarah's papers in this shelf on these trays and she pulls them as she wants to do them.

 Then once she's finished I hang them up on display.

She takes her work seriously!

Extras:

This is what the school room looks like after we've been working all day.

Sarah and Hattie playing in the floor.

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 We started a homeschool co-op this week also, and the kids had a lot of fun! Thomas is taking a spanish cooking class and a science class;Nathaniel has a writing/art class and a science/math class. Sarah is in the preschool class,and Hattie is in the nursery. After lunch, they have PE and the kids had a lot of fun with that too!