The Book Worms: Good week!

We had a great week, back in routine! I finally feel like we're making some progress. Even Rylan is starting to unwind from being out of routine so much. I was so in the mode of school this week, I kept thinking we had school the next day... and it was Friday! We are really enjoying our studies together. I did some reorganization this week of some school things and I'm pleased. Not huge things, just some little things I've been wanting to get under control.

So... maybe I'll update by kid this week. I still don't know what's easiest... subject or child????

Jayden:

We finished Beowulf this week! We both really enjoyed the story and were almost sad it was over. Jayden also found a new series he likes... The Squire's Tales. He's read one of them and now he's going to read another this week. He finished up Homer Price and Centerburg Tales this week. He seems to like just about everything he reads.

Writing is going very well. One of the dictations was hard this week just because he wasn't focusing well, but other than that he did well. We studied a couple poems this week which is new for both of us. I'm not much for poetry so I'm glad it's in WWE! Jayden is almost finished learning cursive letters so pretty soon I will have him do some of his work in cursive.

We are speeding through some lessons in math. I figured out things were moving too slow for Jay, so we upped our speed this week. I probably should have done it sooner, but oh well. He's making his way to long division. He's working on remainders right now.

Latin continues to go well. It's pretty easy for him...

I'm really pleased with the new level of spelling he's in. It's really starting to pick up with more complicated rules. He's learning a lot! He still enjoys it a lot. Really great since a year ago, before we found this curriculum I had two children in tears every Friday after their spelling tests if they didn't get a "perfect".

Kylie

Kylie finished up the Borrowers and is now reading Winnie the Pooh. She's enjoying the stories. With me she continues to read Heidi Grows Up. The copy we have used to be my mom's! It has something like a 1938 copyright! We have to be very careful as the binding is not good. It's fun to have my daughter reading it!

Writing/Grammar is going well with Kylie. She continues to do well on her narrations in history and science as well.

Multiplication is a hit so far. It's started out easy with 2's and this week will be 10's. Good to build her confidence. I'm finding online drill to still be key in all of the kids' memorization of their facts. So nice not to have to sit and flip flashcards. The online drill is a huge time saver for me.

Rylan

I had to reinstate the sticker chart this week for behavior for Rylan. He had a pretty rough week again up until Thursday when I started up the chart again. Friday was a piece of cake, so I'm hoping that is the key to getting him back on track behavior wise. It's funny that something as simple as putting a sticker up motivates him.

Rylan asked me at the end of this week if he could start doing more of his school work independently again. I had stopped most of the independent work (except his 'alone' reading) because of his attitude. He struggles with fine motor and if his attitude is poor I can't read anything he writes. I told him I'd give him a chance again this week, but his work better be his best. He agreed he'd try.... so, I'm going to let him once again do his math, solo reading and handwriting independently. We'll see how it goes this week.

Copy work was not a hit with Rylan. We tried a couple weeks and for one thing, he can't handle more than a line at a time so it's really broken up (we started with nursery rhymes). And, he just doesn't like handwriting. So, thankfully I found a handwriting book that I didn't know I had so we'll go back to the book. He asked for another book and I thought it would be conference time before I could get another one, but low and behold... there was one hiding!

Math is going well. We had a little hiccup this week in that Rylan forgot with adding larger numbers he can recall a double fact and either add or subtract to solve the problem at hand. He gave me a lot of trouble doing his online drill so we stopped that so I could figure out what's going on. He knows his doubles, he just forgot to use them! So... we went over that on Friday and I'm hoping tomorrow is better on that front. I think math is moving too slowly for him, so I'm going to speed him up a bit and see how it goes.

Reading with Rylan is always fun. Even with a bad attitude, he usually comes around while we're reading. He is loving the beginning reading books from the library. He goes through several a week. There are very few words in those books he needs help with. He's a "look at the next page" type reader. Suspense kills him, so he's always looking ahead to see what's coming next. He's that way in the rest of his life too! Always wants to know the plan or the next step! Funny to see that start to come through in his style of reading too.

Bryson

Bryson had a good week this week. The highlight of his morning is playing Jumpstart. Each of the kids get a turn. We got them the online membership for Christmas and all of them love it. It's something he can actually do on the computer so that's fun for him.

Reading is going very well for Bryson. He is starting to not have to sound out every word. He's also starting to learn some sight words. He's cruising along at Level 2 in Bob Books. We pulled out all the books he can read a week or so ago and he was very excited at how many there are. He wanted to read them ALL to Daddy! :-) I continue to use letter tiles with him during his actual reading instruction and he likes those.

Math is chugging along. Bryson started adding with the blocks. At first he really wanted to count to find the answer instead of pushing the blocks together and finding one the same length and just naming it. Just in the last few days though he's getting the hang of it without counting. It's neat to see him progress.

Bryson loves his Cubbies class at Awana and does a really good job memorizing his verses. I thought it would be hard for him to memorize the "address" of the verses, but he's really doing well. The Awana teacher is always impressed that Bryson knows his Bible stories so well. Comes from being the last of 4 kiddos I guess!

History

The last couple weeks we've studied Masada, the finding of the Dead Sea Scrolls, Pompeii, Bar-Kokhba (a Jewish leader), the Apostle's Creed and St. Valentine. Lots of death!! The kids are starting to wonder if there are any happy endings in history!

Science

We are all really enjoying our human body unit. Last week we studied cells, skin and hair. We put our fingerprints on paper and examined them. I traced the bodies of the younger two boys and they will be putting the body systems on themselves as we study them. The older two made a model of skin this week.

Here are some picts for fun....