Batman (aka Jimmy)
&
Superman (aka Caleb)
Friday, October 31, 2008
We're baaaaack!
We're back from our travels. Actually, we've been back for a while. I just haven't posted... Bad Di! LOL! While we were traveling, we finished Very Last First Time. We found Ungava Bay (the setting of the book) on a map, we talked about the silly "very last first" wording, and we chose colors that reflected various moods (the author colored her pictures with different colors as the character felt different things). Jimmy learned his Bible verse very well but had trouble writing C's. After ending that first week, we put school on hold for a little while. Jimmy was having trouble concentrating and we were bouncing around a lot more during the second week. Then we took another week off after coming home so the boys could get back into their nap & sleeping routines & so I could get the house back in shape.
We started school back up again this week. Tuesday was our first lesson this week. We're reading Mike Mulligan & His Steam Shovel by Virginia Lee Burton. This book was one of Randy's favorites growing up. On Tuesday, we discussed "personification" (Jimmy was nearly able to pronounce it, but you should have heard Caleb try!) - the steam shovel is obviously not alive but Mike named her Mary Anne. We talked about people with names, pets with names (they can think, even though they can't talk), and toys with names (they are not alive b/c they can't think). I told them that people name all sorts of things that are not alive, like boats or cars. Jimmy named the red maple tree in our front yard - Maple Fall. On Wednesday, we talked about stewardship, since Mike takes very good care of Mary Anne. We also got into bragging & taking advantage of someone. In the story, Mike brags that Mary Anne can dig a lot more than he's sure she can dig. He bets that she can dig a whole cellar for a town hall in one day or the town doesn't have to pay him. A townsperson takes him up on the offer, fully believing that Mike & Mary Anne won't be able to do it. We talked about how both of them acted badly. Yesterday, we experimented with steam. Don't worry - I didn't let the boys get too close! =) I boiled some water on the stove with them looking on from a chair at the other end of the counter. They saw the water vapor as the pot boiled on. Then I put a lid on the pot & they saw the steam concentrate in a few streams. Finally, I pushed the lid down so that only 1 steam stream was left. They heard the whistle & saw how powerful the stream was getting. Today, we looked at the trees Burton drew. Her trees have obvious tree branches. There are scenes that have trees with leaves and other scenes with trees with no leaves. The subject today was art, so Jimmy drew tree trucks with branches - some with leaves & some without. We'll put those trees in this week's FIAR lapbook.
In math this week, Jimmy is making pretty good progress in the calendar lessons. He's having trouble with numbers over 29, so we'll make sure to add higher level counting to his lessons. He's doing better with days of the week, mostly because he's trying as hard as possible to not read. Stinker. He's having a lot more fun with it because he knows that he's getting the right answers. I can see a lot of myself in him - we pick things up easily & so get bored easily, but if a tough thing comes up, we get frustrated & tend to give up. I'll have to find ways to keep him motivated in both circumstances. In his other math lessons, we've introduced sorting & storytelling. Jimmy knew all about sorting before these lessons, so I mainly focused on the following directions part of the lesson. He knew what I was going to ask him to do, but I required him to wait until I actually told him to do something. Storytelling came in today. We played with counting bears, making up stories about up to 5 bears playing on a playground (the work mat). Some bears would go to the playground, some would leave the playground. It's an obvious introduction to addition & subtraction. Jimmy really enjoyed it & had fun making up his own story.
Because of our 2 week break, I did a little juggling in our school schedule. I am trying to allow extra time at the end of the year for make-up time if anything happens (last year, I was sick several times, leaving me without a voice). So instead of just pushing back the schedule, I rearranged things to fit in our current schedule. I want to make sure we are reading Cranberry Thanksgiving in the week before Thanksgiving, and I want to keep the Christmas stories & winter stories in their appropriate time frames as well. So I dropped one book (it was a Before FIAR book, so we had already read it last year) & merged two books (also BFIAR) into one week. Math was fine, since we had lots of wiggle room - less lessons than teaching days. Letter of the Week was an interesting challenge. I decided to put D & E in this week and H & I in the week before Thanksgiving. Those 4 letters should be fairly easy for Jimmy to learn to write. I think it worked out very well this week. He was at first reluctant to write his letters (very reminiscent of last year's reading lesson battles), so I eased off. It was a little worrisome since I had a goal of 2 letters for the week. But it paid off - he very happily wrote all of his letters to date yesterday. His A & a's were a little rusty, but he loved the practice. His C's have improved tremendously. I think his frustration was over not being able to make a decent C during the last week of school. Now he feels more confident & is happy about writing again. His D, d, E, and e's have been very good. The Bible verses posed a small challenge, but it only meant that he didn't have them memorized on the first day of the week. All in all, this double letter week has gone very well. Plus, it added enough letters to his repetitiore that we can start writing words as part of the lessons. I am hoping that will encourage his reading.
We started school back up again this week. Tuesday was our first lesson this week. We're reading Mike Mulligan & His Steam Shovel by Virginia Lee Burton. This book was one of Randy's favorites growing up. On Tuesday, we discussed "personification" (Jimmy was nearly able to pronounce it, but you should have heard Caleb try!) - the steam shovel is obviously not alive but Mike named her Mary Anne. We talked about people with names, pets with names (they can think, even though they can't talk), and toys with names (they are not alive b/c they can't think). I told them that people name all sorts of things that are not alive, like boats or cars. Jimmy named the red maple tree in our front yard - Maple Fall. On Wednesday, we talked about stewardship, since Mike takes very good care of Mary Anne. We also got into bragging & taking advantage of someone. In the story, Mike brags that Mary Anne can dig a lot more than he's sure she can dig. He bets that she can dig a whole cellar for a town hall in one day or the town doesn't have to pay him. A townsperson takes him up on the offer, fully believing that Mike & Mary Anne won't be able to do it. We talked about how both of them acted badly. Yesterday, we experimented with steam. Don't worry - I didn't let the boys get too close! =) I boiled some water on the stove with them looking on from a chair at the other end of the counter. They saw the water vapor as the pot boiled on. Then I put a lid on the pot & they saw the steam concentrate in a few streams. Finally, I pushed the lid down so that only 1 steam stream was left. They heard the whistle & saw how powerful the stream was getting. Today, we looked at the trees Burton drew. Her trees have obvious tree branches. There are scenes that have trees with leaves and other scenes with trees with no leaves. The subject today was art, so Jimmy drew tree trucks with branches - some with leaves & some without. We'll put those trees in this week's FIAR lapbook.
In math this week, Jimmy is making pretty good progress in the calendar lessons. He's having trouble with numbers over 29, so we'll make sure to add higher level counting to his lessons. He's doing better with days of the week, mostly because he's trying as hard as possible to not read. Stinker. He's having a lot more fun with it because he knows that he's getting the right answers. I can see a lot of myself in him - we pick things up easily & so get bored easily, but if a tough thing comes up, we get frustrated & tend to give up. I'll have to find ways to keep him motivated in both circumstances. In his other math lessons, we've introduced sorting & storytelling. Jimmy knew all about sorting before these lessons, so I mainly focused on the following directions part of the lesson. He knew what I was going to ask him to do, but I required him to wait until I actually told him to do something. Storytelling came in today. We played with counting bears, making up stories about up to 5 bears playing on a playground (the work mat). Some bears would go to the playground, some would leave the playground. It's an obvious introduction to addition & subtraction. Jimmy really enjoyed it & had fun making up his own story.
Because of our 2 week break, I did a little juggling in our school schedule. I am trying to allow extra time at the end of the year for make-up time if anything happens (last year, I was sick several times, leaving me without a voice). So instead of just pushing back the schedule, I rearranged things to fit in our current schedule. I want to make sure we are reading Cranberry Thanksgiving in the week before Thanksgiving, and I want to keep the Christmas stories & winter stories in their appropriate time frames as well. So I dropped one book (it was a Before FIAR book, so we had already read it last year) & merged two books (also BFIAR) into one week. Math was fine, since we had lots of wiggle room - less lessons than teaching days. Letter of the Week was an interesting challenge. I decided to put D & E in this week and H & I in the week before Thanksgiving. Those 4 letters should be fairly easy for Jimmy to learn to write. I think it worked out very well this week. He was at first reluctant to write his letters (very reminiscent of last year's reading lesson battles), so I eased off. It was a little worrisome since I had a goal of 2 letters for the week. But it paid off - he very happily wrote all of his letters to date yesterday. His A & a's were a little rusty, but he loved the practice. His C's have improved tremendously. I think his frustration was over not being able to make a decent C during the last week of school. Now he feels more confident & is happy about writing again. His D, d, E, and e's have been very good. The Bible verses posed a small challenge, but it only meant that he didn't have them memorized on the first day of the week. All in all, this double letter week has gone very well. Plus, it added enough letters to his repetitiore that we can start writing words as part of the lessons. I am hoping that will encourage his reading.
Monday, October 6, 2008
It's over
That's my report for today. It wasn't the most fabulous of days, if I can be honest. We had fun during the actual learning, but it really felt like we were under attack today. First, we still had lessons from last week to finish, so today's lessons were a little longer than usual. Then, Caleb was extra cranky. And for the finale - my full, 32 oz cup of iced tea got knocked over by my laptop. Thankfully, the laptop & all of our school books were spared, but the water spilled onto the coffee table, on the shelf under the coffee table (where several wooden puzzles & board books are stored), and on the carpet. I managed to run for the paper towels while still teaching, so it seemed fairly harmless at first. Some of the stuff on the shelf did get wet, but I was able to mop up the tea before it caused damage. But then... I found a foamy part of the carpet. I have no idea what was there. I don't remember ever treating that part of the carpet with Resolve or any kind of soap. Oh... now that I think about it, I'll bet that it was car wash soap. While I was pregnant with Caleb, Jimmy drank car wash solution. I had been in the bathroom. Poison control said that it wasn't harmful (besides the possibility of diarrhea - wonderful), but I was freaked out anyway. That happened on the coffee table. I guess some dripped on the carpet. Well, whatever it was, it wasn't coming up. It just kept foaming. I went through an entire roll of papertowels until I simply gave up. The funniest part - I was teaching about crisis thinking. So I had to stop & go over the crisis thinking rules with Jimmy about what I was doing. "Calm down & don't panic." Deep breath for both of us. "Be quiet & think carefully - what am I supposed do to?" Find papertowels & mop up the mess. It actually ended up being a terrific example of today's lesson, since Jimmy isn't likely to find himself trapped under a frozen ocean surface with the tide coming back in (more on that later). But it still got me flustered. My mantra at the moment - "it's almost nap time. It's almost nap time."
Ok, so that aside... we had some pretty cool stuff to do today. We started with last week's book, NotMJ. We read it for the last time. Our activity was coins & their relative worth. Jimmy learned that a nickel is worth 5 pennies, a dime is worth 2 nickels or 10 pennies, and a quarter is worth 2 dimes & a nickel or 5 nickels or 25 pennies. He asked me for a quarter for his piggy bank afterward, but I gave him 3 dimes instead. He learned that 3 dimes are actually more money than 1 quarter. (Plus, it's easier to divide 3 dimes by 3 - his piggy bank has a section for offering, saving, & spending.)
Next was math, since I wanted to double up the second section. We reviewed the calendar. Jimmy is definitely getting better but has a long way still to go. I'm glad he is still challenged by this, since the rest of the math is getting rather boring. I'm considering speeding things up for him. Then we did the manipulative work. First lesson was making a graph. We asked family members, including aunts, uncles, and grandparents, what their favorite color teddy bear counter is. Jimmy lined up the bears according to color on a grid to make a chart. Blue was the obvious winner with 6 bears. Next was purple with 3 bears. Green, yellow, and red each had 1 bear. It made a very nice looking graph. I'm glad I added extended family, tho, because everyone in this house chose blue. =) The next manipulative lesson was more of what we did earlier. We counted 10 bears onto our work mats (aka construction paper). We slid them to one side as we counted, then we put them on pattern block "chairs" and slid them again to count. To clean up, we made a pile of our teddy bears & a pile of our pattern blocks. Jimmy learned how to quickly clean up the toys afterward by putting one pile on the work mat, picking up the mat, and sliding into the appropriate bin. He did the same for the other pile. I sense that I will be witnessing practice sessions of this new skill. =)
We moved onto this week's book - The Very Last First Time by Jan Andrews. It's about an Inuit girl named Eva living in northern Canada. The villagers rely on muscles from under the sea roof for food. The sea roof is formed when the top of the ocean forms, then the tide goes out. The sea floor is exposed, but there is a ceiling of frozen water over it. Eva has always gone with her mother, but she is now old enough to go all by herself. She climbs down, fills her muscle pan, and then, since she is enjoying the experience, does a little exploring. Her candle goes out just as she hears the tide returning. She starts to panic, but then remembers that she has more candles & matches in her pocket. She manages to light another candle, find her muscles, and return to the ice hole safely. Our activity today, as I mentioned earlier, was discussing crisis safety. Eva calmed herself down, thought carefully, and made a plan - find & light another candle. Both boys were mesmorized by the story. Jimmy even noticed, right on the first page before the author explained it... "There aren't any trees!" Good eye, my fellow.
Last by not least, letter of the week. It's C this week. We read the Bible verse & its story explaining what it means. I love this verse for obvious reasons - "Children, obey your parents in all things, for this is well pleasing to the Lord." Colossians 3:20. God, bury this one deep, ok? LOL! Jimmy learned how to write a big C and a little C. This letter is going to be tougher than I thought. How can C be hard? But he keeps trying to close the loop, making them all look like O's. We're going to have to practice this one. I also had him write a few A's and B's, both big & small, as a review. They looked pretty good, although the little a's need some extra attention.
That was it. Whew. We're going to have most of the lessons for the next week & a half on the road. I hope I can post entries for those days, but I might not have an internet connection for part of it. I'm praying that our lessons go smoothly as we travel!
Ok, so that aside... we had some pretty cool stuff to do today. We started with last week's book, NotMJ. We read it for the last time. Our activity was coins & their relative worth. Jimmy learned that a nickel is worth 5 pennies, a dime is worth 2 nickels or 10 pennies, and a quarter is worth 2 dimes & a nickel or 5 nickels or 25 pennies. He asked me for a quarter for his piggy bank afterward, but I gave him 3 dimes instead. He learned that 3 dimes are actually more money than 1 quarter. (Plus, it's easier to divide 3 dimes by 3 - his piggy bank has a section for offering, saving, & spending.)
Next was math, since I wanted to double up the second section. We reviewed the calendar. Jimmy is definitely getting better but has a long way still to go. I'm glad he is still challenged by this, since the rest of the math is getting rather boring. I'm considering speeding things up for him. Then we did the manipulative work. First lesson was making a graph. We asked family members, including aunts, uncles, and grandparents, what their favorite color teddy bear counter is. Jimmy lined up the bears according to color on a grid to make a chart. Blue was the obvious winner with 6 bears. Next was purple with 3 bears. Green, yellow, and red each had 1 bear. It made a very nice looking graph. I'm glad I added extended family, tho, because everyone in this house chose blue. =) The next manipulative lesson was more of what we did earlier. We counted 10 bears onto our work mats (aka construction paper). We slid them to one side as we counted, then we put them on pattern block "chairs" and slid them again to count. To clean up, we made a pile of our teddy bears & a pile of our pattern blocks. Jimmy learned how to quickly clean up the toys afterward by putting one pile on the work mat, picking up the mat, and sliding into the appropriate bin. He did the same for the other pile. I sense that I will be witnessing practice sessions of this new skill. =)
We moved onto this week's book - The Very Last First Time by Jan Andrews. It's about an Inuit girl named Eva living in northern Canada. The villagers rely on muscles from under the sea roof for food. The sea roof is formed when the top of the ocean forms, then the tide goes out. The sea floor is exposed, but there is a ceiling of frozen water over it. Eva has always gone with her mother, but she is now old enough to go all by herself. She climbs down, fills her muscle pan, and then, since she is enjoying the experience, does a little exploring. Her candle goes out just as she hears the tide returning. She starts to panic, but then remembers that she has more candles & matches in her pocket. She manages to light another candle, find her muscles, and return to the ice hole safely. Our activity today, as I mentioned earlier, was discussing crisis safety. Eva calmed herself down, thought carefully, and made a plan - find & light another candle. Both boys were mesmorized by the story. Jimmy even noticed, right on the first page before the author explained it... "There aren't any trees!" Good eye, my fellow.
Last by not least, letter of the week. It's C this week. We read the Bible verse & its story explaining what it means. I love this verse for obvious reasons - "Children, obey your parents in all things, for this is well pleasing to the Lord." Colossians 3:20. God, bury this one deep, ok? LOL! Jimmy learned how to write a big C and a little C. This letter is going to be tougher than I thought. How can C be hard? But he keeps trying to close the loop, making them all look like O's. We're going to have to practice this one. I also had him write a few A's and B's, both big & small, as a review. They looked pretty good, although the little a's need some extra attention.
That was it. Whew. We're going to have most of the lessons for the next week & a half on the road. I hope I can post entries for those days, but I might not have an internet connection for part of it. I'm praying that our lessons go smoothly as we travel!
Friday, October 3, 2008
TGIF
I am soooooo glad we skipped school yesterday. We had a much better day today.
We started with math this morning. Jimmy reviewed the calendar (he's getting good at it, but he's not even close to being bored yet, so we'll keep it up). Then we played with linking cubes, this time with a little more structure. We linked 5 cubes again, compared the stacks again, but then we repeated the color pattern from our calendar. October's color pattern is orange-brown. So we linked a brown cube on an orange cube, added an orange cube, then a brown cube, then an orange cube. This taught counting (using linking cubes) plus pattern repetition. The counting part is definitely beneath Jimmy, but I understand the need to build on the simple counting skills so we can get to the more complex stuff like addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division eventually.
Today was art day, so we read through the book, NotMJ, reviewing italics. We drew with pastels to see how the author/artist created this book. Then we decorated a picture of moon jellyfish by covering it with sparkly ribbon (I couldn't find any glitter in the house, so I improvised). We glued the moonjellies into our lapbook for NotMJ along with the map we colored earlier this week. I also printed out a cover for the front of the lapbook folder.
Then we moved onto the letter of the week - B. Jimmy reviewed his memory verse, which he has completely memorized. He colored pictures of objects that start with B - book, ball, etc. Then he cut them out & we glued them into the LotW lapbook. I wrote captions which Jimmy copied. His little "a" was not so good, so we'll have to keep reviewing handwriting somehow. I think these lapbooks are a good way of doing that, but I might need to add a few other whole-word writing into our handwriting practice during the rest of the week.
Caleb actually sat to hear the book today. He really enjoyed using the scissors during LotW work. And, as always, he loved playing with the linking cubes. We made big improvement when it came time to clean them up. It's usually a lot more challenging to get him to give up those fun math toys.
We started with math this morning. Jimmy reviewed the calendar (he's getting good at it, but he's not even close to being bored yet, so we'll keep it up). Then we played with linking cubes, this time with a little more structure. We linked 5 cubes again, compared the stacks again, but then we repeated the color pattern from our calendar. October's color pattern is orange-brown. So we linked a brown cube on an orange cube, added an orange cube, then a brown cube, then an orange cube. This taught counting (using linking cubes) plus pattern repetition. The counting part is definitely beneath Jimmy, but I understand the need to build on the simple counting skills so we can get to the more complex stuff like addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division eventually.
Today was art day, so we read through the book, NotMJ, reviewing italics. We drew with pastels to see how the author/artist created this book. Then we decorated a picture of moon jellyfish by covering it with sparkly ribbon (I couldn't find any glitter in the house, so I improvised). We glued the moonjellies into our lapbook for NotMJ along with the map we colored earlier this week. I also printed out a cover for the front of the lapbook folder.
Then we moved onto the letter of the week - B. Jimmy reviewed his memory verse, which he has completely memorized. He colored pictures of objects that start with B - book, ball, etc. Then he cut them out & we glued them into the LotW lapbook. I wrote captions which Jimmy copied. His little "a" was not so good, so we'll have to keep reviewing handwriting somehow. I think these lapbooks are a good way of doing that, but I might need to add a few other whole-word writing into our handwriting practice during the rest of the week.
Caleb actually sat to hear the book today. He really enjoyed using the scissors during LotW work. And, as always, he loved playing with the linking cubes. We made big improvement when it came time to clean them up. It's usually a lot more challenging to get him to give up those fun math toys.
Thursday, October 2, 2008
Playing hookey
We skipped school today. We're going to have lessons tomorrow & Saturday instead. All 3 of us were cranky this morning, so I decided it wasn't worth making school feel miserable to "stick to a schedule." This is all about learning & having fun learning.
No regrets!!
At least not now. Ask me again on Saturday. =)
No regrets!!
At least not now. Ask me again on Saturday. =)
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
Light day
Jimmy worked a little with Grandmom this morning. She brought us workbooks with lots of learning games, like "which one is different?" Jimmy had a lot of fun learning with her. So I made our official lessons a little light today so as not to overwhelm him this morning.
We read our book (NotMJ) and discussed the boat's name, Periwinkle. The name is in italics in the book (as it is here) & Jimmy learned that boat names should be printed in italics. We'll be discussing other uses of italics at other times this year when they come up in our other books (Storm in the Night is one).
For math, we started our October calendar. I'm going to have to jump around in the Saxon teaching manual a little - it is set up for 12 lessons per month, but I am doing a lesson every weekday (except for a few breaks during holidays). When he gets better at understanding the calendar, I may perhaps just do 12 calendar lessons a month. We'll see. After the calendar, we introduced a new math tool - linking cubes. This was a big hit with Caleb (I'm sensing a trend... he likes manipulatives), but Jimmy really enjoyed these as well. After they got a chance to play with them on their own, Jimmy & I worked on making a tower of 5 cubes. We counted them as we put them together, we compared two towers of 5 cubes (his tower & my tower) to see that they were the same size & had the same number of cubes, and we counted them as we took them apart.
Jimmy reviewed his Bible verse today. He is definitely improving. He remembers last week's verse perfectly, too. I'm hoping to keep building on these verses, but I'm not sure how to handle it when we have quite a few verses to review. Perhaps we will just review a few past verses at a time instead of the whole lot. After our memory verse, Jimmy wrote 4 more big B's and 4 more little b's. His big B's are still very good and his little b's are showing definite improvement. The breakthrough of the day was him learning which two lines (plus one dotted line) to use as a guide for how tall to make the line & the bump. We tried the sight word flash cards, but he was too mentally tired.
After our official lessons, Jimmy read a few 1st level readers with Grandmom. He was still drained, but Grandmom got him to read a few of the words with her. I think readers & sight word flash cards may be the way to go for Jimmy's reading lessons.
We read our book (NotMJ) and discussed the boat's name, Periwinkle. The name is in italics in the book (as it is here) & Jimmy learned that boat names should be printed in italics. We'll be discussing other uses of italics at other times this year when they come up in our other books (Storm in the Night is one).
For math, we started our October calendar. I'm going to have to jump around in the Saxon teaching manual a little - it is set up for 12 lessons per month, but I am doing a lesson every weekday (except for a few breaks during holidays). When he gets better at understanding the calendar, I may perhaps just do 12 calendar lessons a month. We'll see. After the calendar, we introduced a new math tool - linking cubes. This was a big hit with Caleb (I'm sensing a trend... he likes manipulatives), but Jimmy really enjoyed these as well. After they got a chance to play with them on their own, Jimmy & I worked on making a tower of 5 cubes. We counted them as we put them together, we compared two towers of 5 cubes (his tower & my tower) to see that they were the same size & had the same number of cubes, and we counted them as we took them apart.
Jimmy reviewed his Bible verse today. He is definitely improving. He remembers last week's verse perfectly, too. I'm hoping to keep building on these verses, but I'm not sure how to handle it when we have quite a few verses to review. Perhaps we will just review a few past verses at a time instead of the whole lot. After our memory verse, Jimmy wrote 4 more big B's and 4 more little b's. His big B's are still very good and his little b's are showing definite improvement. The breakthrough of the day was him learning which two lines (plus one dotted line) to use as a guide for how tall to make the line & the bump. We tried the sight word flash cards, but he was too mentally tired.
After our official lessons, Jimmy read a few 1st level readers with Grandmom. He was still drained, but Grandmom got him to read a few of the words with her. I think readers & sight word flash cards may be the way to go for Jimmy's reading lessons.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)