Weekly Review 1/23-1/27

What’s New-This week we got an opportunity to participate in our first Nerf War.  The boys had a great time.  Sorry I left the camera and did not get pictures but imagine little boys running everywhere and Nerf bullets whizzing by in every direction.

Today our co-op started back again.  Our first day back was fun.  Every time I think I can pull away from the co-op they just keep reeling me back in.  More on this later.

Math-

• Learned to regroup using tens and ones.  If only I learned math the way Saxon explains it. 
• Began telling time to the half hour.
• Continue with our daily drills, counting by 1, 2, 5, 10 forward and backward. 
• Completed lessons 85-87 and we had some fun with a few computer math programs this week to change up the pace.

Reading-

• Completed Light Unit 109.  Christopher made a 100 on his unit exam.
• Started LU 110 the final learning to read portion of his curriculum.  Once he finishes this he will be on to Reading 1.  This is a big milestone.  I am so proud of my little man. 

History-

• Learned about Carter G. Woodson the founder of National Negro week which would later expand to  Black History Month.
• Read Ashanti to Zulu and learned about customs of several tribes in Africa.  The purpose of reading this book was to establish  a positive image of the tribes in Africa and their traditions.
• Read The History of Slavery which discusses slavery from around the world, not just slavery as it happened here in America.

Originally, I was going to go more in depth about how slaves were brought to America.  After this week I see that the content of my original plan is to heavy for my son at this time.  For example you can see listed under my homework that I am reading a book The Kidnapped Prince.  My plan was to finish Ashanti to Zulu straight into this book.  We would discuss how slaves came from all over Africa. Europeans were not going into villages snatching slaves.  On the contrary Africans were very involved in the slave trade.  But while reading several chapters from the History of Slavery Christopher made several comments that let me know he was not ready for the original plan.  The beauty of homeschooling means that I can adjust my plans.  So instead we will spend a good portion of February reading biographies of notable African Americans. 

Science- No science this week we will pick it up next week.

Spanish-

• Moving on with numbers, greetings,  simple questions and answers and identifying body parts.

Grammar-

• We continue our work with First Language Lessons but once we introduced the Growing With Grammar workbook, it has helped him tremendously to see examples of the rules.  We are slowing progressing through GWG workbook one lesson a day. 
• Identified complete sentences vs. fragments.
• Created complete sentences from fragments.

Bible-

For some reason I always neglect to post what we are learning in our bible studies.

• This week our morning devotionals covered the following topics; Who Is Satan, How God Made Adam and Eve and How Sin Came Into The World.

Books  We Read

• Carter G. Woodson The Man Who Put “Black” In American History by Jim Haskins and Kathleen Benson
• Ashanti to Zulu: African Tradition Margaret Musgrove

Independent Reads Completed

• Should I Share My Ice Cream? by Mo Willems
• Owl At Home by Arnold Lobel
• Happy Pig Day! Mo Willems
• Pearl and Wagner Two Good Friends by Kate McMullan

Preschool

Letter of the Week- L

Phonics-

• We continue with our Hooked on Phonics

Science-

• Learned about lions. 

Books We Read

• Eli by Bill Peet
• The Grouchy Ladybug by Eric Carle
• The Little Red Lighthouse and The Great Gray Bridge by Hildegarde H. Swift and Lynd Ward
• Ladybug Ladybug by Ruth Brown
• Lion by Caroline Arnold

Toddler

Books We Read

• Spot Bakes a Cake by Eric Hill
• Colors by Sara Anderson
• The Daddy Book by Todd Parr
• I Love You All Year Long by Steve Metzger

Other Updates

This past Saturday Emmanuel had his fourth birthday at Chuck E Cheese.  It was fun.  Emmanuel and I got a chance to go in the Ticket Booth.  This is a machine that has tickets on the floor and when they turn the machine on all the tickets blow up in the air and you have to catch as many as you can before the machine is turned off. The only catch is you can not pick tickets up off the floor.  In we went and I was hoping to grab a few specific tickets.  There is one ticket that is worth 1,000 tickets and several that are worth 5o, 100, and 200.  Thankfully I nabbed the grand prize of 1,000 tickets and several others. 

We had a great week! I am looking forward to another great week of learning. How about you?

Tiffany

Building Our Library

Recently, while at the bookstore with my husband. He casually said to me, You know all these stores will be out of business soon with the advent of e-readers. No way! I replied.  While the future of actual books may be on the way out I am one who believes that there is nothing better than a physical book.  I have an e-reader and I love it for a multitude of reasons.  Chiefly, the e-reader gives me access to tons of books instantly.  This is icing on the cake for a impatient person like me.  On the flip side there is nothing like a good old fashion book.  There are several books that I purchased on my e-reader and I wish I had the hard copy.  And e-books are not cheap. 

Some will argue that instead of fighting against technological advances we should embrace the change.  Though some of us would like to we can’t slow down progress, but my children and I will benefit from a well stocked library at home.  While I have not worked out storage solutions for this library its important for me to continue adding to our collection.  Every book shelf in our house is currently over capacity. (smile)

Our classroom is getting a face lift later on this year which will include more bookshelves.  Planning a renovation is challenging and exiting.  Hopefully, the renovation will give us lots of shelf space to house our expanding library and fresh space for our expanding minds. 

Weekly Review 1/16-1/20

 

What’s New:  This week was an interesting week.  Monday we took off in celebration of MLK day.  And Wednesday I had to go to the doctor so we were off then as well.

Next week we resume our weekly co-op.  Truth be told I’m  really not looking forward to losing my Friday’s.  Oh the things I could do with my Fridays.  So I have been contemplating leaving the co-op.  In fact toward the end of last year I was sure that if we participated in the co-op at all next school it would only be for one semester.  In place of co-op we could enjoy more park days, which all little boys need. Then I attended our semester opening meeting and felt  oh how can I leave co-op my boys will be so sad.  The verdict is still out more to come in a later post.  

Math- Completed lessons 83-84.  Only two lesson this week shameful I know but we will pick it up again next week. One of our assignments used various manipulative to count by 10.  Christopher enjoyed this immensely.  Saxon has been an all around good fit for us but I wish the assignments did not take so long to complete. A large portion of our day is devoted to reading, math and language arts.  I suppose that’s how it should be.

LA- More blends, root words and suffixes. 

Reading-He is finishing up Light Unit 109 will begin LU 110 next week.  Once this light unit is complete we will continue with CLE’s Reading 100.

History- We read about the birth of Moses and the Exodus.  We also read about the Phoenicians and how they set up colonies along the Mediterranean Sea.  Tyre and Carthage were two of their better known colonies.  

Spelling-Pulled out the letter tiles and asked Christopher to spell several words.  The tiles were a way to change up our normal routine.

 

Grammar- In addition to First Language Lessons we sprinkled in a few lessons from Growing with Grammar. 

Memory Work- We continue to work on our new poem Work by Anonymous. Christopher has this one down for the most part.  He really surprised me, I was sure he would need more time.

Preschool

Letter K

Social Studies- Korea was our destination this week. Our film followed two children one who lived in the village and one who lived in the city.  The film was very interesting.  We had some great discussion comparing our lives with the lives of students in Korea.  We checked out the film from the library but you can find study guides and information at www.familiesoftheworld.com  Hopefully we can find a good Korean restaurant this week and sample some great food.  I have always been fascinated by other cultures.  Interestingly, when I asked my oldest if he would prefer living in the village or the city he said he would like to live in the village.  Apparently our time in the village in Nigeria really made a lasting impact on him. 

Science- We learned about Kangaroo’s. We read the story Joey. It’s a story all about a baby kangaroo and his adventures in his mother’s pouch. 

Joshua was our flag bearer this week. 

Update- Last week Christopher has his first archery lesson with his dad.  I was happy that they were able to get some father son time in while participating in a manly activity.

Tomorrow is Emmanuel’s fourth birthday.  He is having a birthday bash at Chuck E Cheese.   Pictures will be posted soon.

That’s our week, how was yours?

Tiffany

Martin Luther King Day and Black History Month

There is no school today (technically) since we are observing MLK day.  But we did read books about MLK and we completed some LA work from last week.  Today I introduced our new grammar workbook which is Growing With Grammar. 

Next month is Black History Month and I have been researching and collecting resources for our month. We will be taking a detour from our usual Ancient History to study African Americans and their contributions to America.  Not only that, this will be the first time we will discuss some heavier issues, like slavery, etc. I am eager to share this tender moments with my children. Our talks will be about slavery and how slavery was around long before Africans were enslaved here in America and a host of other topics. 

Of course, it is black history month every month in our house but I figured this would be a good time to start using some of the information and resources I have collected along the way.  Needles to say I am exited.  This is one of the reasons I am very passionate about homeschooling.  I get the opportunity to explore in depth certain topics that are interesting to us.  Our month will be filled with lots of literature of course, several films and even a few field trips.  Stay tuned for updates.

Are you doing anything special for black history month or is it business as usual?