2010 Week 3

Our week won't really be finished until this afternoon, but while Mary and Katie are at their Weather class I figured I could have some time to update for the week.

We've had another busy, productive week and lived up to the name of our blog. The weather has been wet, allowing for a lot of muddy shoes and pants. And, the girls have been particularly interested in art this week.

Our week started off with MLK jr. Holiday, and when our days off are on Mondays it tends to make the rest of the week disjointed and feel longer. This week was no exception. While we got things accomplished I feel like it was a long trudge uphill, through the snow.

Emily

Emily began working through MEP Math Level 1. It is a free program and I thought that it was a nice, concrete introduction to math skills. So far we have done two lessons and she seems to enjoy it. We've also continued working on sight words and reading more books. I am pulling out a few other books, in addition to her beloved "Bob" Books so that we can have a variety. She is doing well with them, but struggles if there is more than one line of text per page.

On her own she has been spending time reading on the Starfall site and playing games at PBS Kids.

Emily also had her ballet class and art class. She is continuing to gain confidence in attending classes on her own and loves being a BIG girl.

Katie

Katie's math moved into telling time to 5 minutes. This, surprisingly has taken a bit more hand-holding than I figured. She has been adding and subtracting time in her head with the digital clock for awhile now that I didn't even realize that she was so lost on an analog clock. I did find the teaching clock in our school supplies and being able to manually move the hands was helpful for her.

We started the WWE program. Katie is using Level 1. Once she gets used to the program I really think that it will be a good fit for her. She hasn't fussed about the copywork component in it and has been trying hard to do her best work. I really like the fact that we have a nice, gentle introduction to narration, especially since Mary still struggles with this.

For reading, she and I are using the next to the highest reading text I own. Flipping through it together I still think it is on the 'easy' side for her, but it gives her some hand-holding while she moves into reading longer chapter books. On her own she has chosen to read one of the Disney Fairy books we have. We are still reading "The Voyages of Dr. Dolittle as our read-aloud.

She continues to listen in on Mary's US History readings and is doing History Pocket projects along with Mary. She finished up "Paddle-to-the-Sea" by watching the short Canadian film that was made for the book. She did find that it skipped some of her favorite parts of the book.

Katie had another drama class this week and continued to work with her flute. The lesson this week was how to correctly hold the flute.

Mary

Math was continued work on double digit multiplication. She is doing fine. Math Mammoth works in such step-by-step progression it seems really slow sometimes, but I know that she is getting a solid grasp on why and how multiplication works.

Mary also started WWE this week, working at level 3. She is probably at a mid-to-late level 2, so I am adapting some of the lessons until she gets used to the process. I was worried about the dictation, but she has done fine with it. For ILL we did another picture study this week and I enjoyed the opportunity to be introduced to an American painter I did not know, John George Brown.

We've stayed on track this week for our History study. This week our focus was the beginning of the American Revolution; causes and early events. The girls have enjoyed working on history pockets again. We started reading "Tolliver's Secret" by Esther Wood Brady, and Mary read "Where Was Patrick Henry on the 29th of May" by Jean Fritz. At the library last night Mary checked our the Illustrated Classic version of "The Three Musketeers" by Alexander Dumas.

In science Mary's focus was learning what weather is and about the atmosphere of Earth. Today, she and Katie are at their Weather class for the morning. They will attend this class for three Friday mornings.

Myself

I have been working on some lesson plans for Emily and Katie to use the rest of this year and through next. Since Katie is not ready to move into Modern History with Mary, and I don't want to start a new history rotation for Katie and Emily, I've decided to pull together materials for a 'Round-the-World Culture and Literature unit. We will be starting next week with China and celebrate the Chinese New Year." I've already gone through my shelves and have a large box of books put aside for the study and have been going through all the bookmarks I've made over the years. Eventually I will pull it all out of my head and off the scribbles on paper, and post my plan.

Peace,

Amy