Happy New Year! (Almost!)

Our last lesson of 2010! Well, yesterday was. I decided to cancel today’s lessons. This week was also originally planned as a school break. I am glad that we had lessons, though. It helped keep everything running smoothly. We all work better with a routine around here!

We had some difficult news this week, however. A dear friend passed away early on Tuesday morning, his birthday. He was away from home on business (he was a pilot). Paul Kerr was the heart of our church & he will be sorely missed. Enjoy heaven, Paul!

Merry Christmas!

We trooped through this week! I originally had scheduled this week as a break from school lessons, but I decided to catch up on some lessons from those 4 days weeks in the beginning of this school year. I am also hoping to be able to take a week or so off during our move, if THAT ever happens. If we don’t end up moving, hey, at least we’ll end school early!

We used this week to review our memory cards so far. We’re up to week 7! There are a total of 12 weeks in this year’s memory set. I’m hoping to get all the way through them, then start over at the beginning. The plan is to get through the 12 weeks twice this school year. Jimmy really loves working on the US Presidents with flash cards and the US states with flash cards & our big US map. He is getting good at reading the flash cards’ mini maps to help him find the state on the big map.

Happy birthday to Bella! And Caleb’s first math test

The highlight of this week was my niece’s 1^st birthday. The boys adore Miss Bella! (A little too much, sometimes. We often have to ask them to stop kissing the baby! Poor smothered Bella!)

The big school event this week was Caleb’s very first math test! He, um, [mutters unintelligibly]. What? He, um, didn’t pass. Poor kid. I asked him to count how many blue linking cubes I lined up, which he passed. Then I gave him several yellow linking cubes & asked him to make a row like my blue one. He got so caught up in making the row look as neat as mine that he forgot to make it the same length! Somehow, it was harder for me to keep from giving him hints as it was for Jimmy at the same age. Ah, my first experience with treating my children differently in school lessons! (I did succeed, by the way, which is why he ended up not passing this test. Guess it was testing both of us!)

Awkward Adventures in Arithmetic

We have entered the Carrying Zone. Yup, Jimmy is learning how to carry the one. I was NOT happy about how Abeka explained it. Even I was confused at their explanation! There were straws in groups of tens & individual straws… but the story that went with them didn’t quite seem to add up to the answer they gave. I think it was all there, but it wasn’t very clearly laid out for the poor teachers! So I gave up on the manual’s lesson & made up my own. I used pennies & dimes, since Jimmy is getting very familiar with coins. He & I worked out several math problems with the coins – some that required carrying and some that didn’t. He counted the pennies, then the dimes. Whenever we worked a carry-the-one problem, he traded in 10 pennies for 1 dime. That dime was the carried one. I thought this was working really well until Jimmy said, “But Mom, I thought we always counted the higher value coins first.” Well, yeah… but… um… not this time… Sigh.

Caleb was NOT helpful during this mess. After behaving really well all week, he decided that today was the day to act out. Sigh. I had to send him downstairs to play. He cried instead. More sighs. Some days, it all goes well; somedays, nothing seems to go well.

It was finally time to turn to the classwork sheet. Ok, now I’m annoyed – THIS is a MUCH better explanation!!! Why in the world didn’t we LEARN IT this way??? Grrr. When Jimmy first learned to add two-digit numbers together, the worksheets had a line to divide the ones’ & tens’ columns. The lines went away once he got comfortable with the process (add the ones’ first, then add the tens’). For a carry-the-one problem, they put the line back & added a box above the tens’ column for the carried one. It took working through one of these problems for Jimmy to figure it out completely. And was just making sure he knew the process. So what was up with the bundles of straws? Really!!

Ok, got that out of my system. Besides the Awkward Adventures in Arithmetic (ooo, good post title… be right back… ok, changed it), we had an awesome week with Psalms & spelling. Jimmy practiced his newest spelling list on Monday & Wednesday with a quiz today. The list included “two,” “four,” “six,” “eight,” a few “ight” words, a few “uck” words, and a few “ay” words (like “way” & “stay”). On his quiz today, he got them all correct except “four” (which he spelled “fuor”) and “stay” (which he spelled with a a/g hybrid, making us both giggle). Awesome job, dude!! When I told him that we were having that quiz today, he threw a fit because he didn’t think he was ready to spell “eight”. Whoop whoop!

I was very impressed this week with our discussions after reading one of the Psalms each day. Jimmy has been picking out words & phrases that he doesn’t understand. I explain the definitions, and then we discuss what they might mean from a poetic standpoint. I saw a lot of progress in his ability to look at phrases from a poetic standpoint versus a matter-of-fact one. Today’s big topic was “my wounds fester” – we discussed what infected wounds would literally be, and then talked about how someone’s guilt might feel like an infected wound without actually being an infected wound. Even Caleb hopped into the discussion, asking about another phrase that he didn’t understand, “treacherous deeds.”

All in all, it was a good week. Shame that it ended on a difficult note with the carry-the-one issue, but it was a good reminder that *I* am the teacher, that I shouldn’t rely on the teacher’s manuals alone. I am responsible for setting a pace for each of my children that meets their skill levels, challenging them without overwhelming them.

Beginning of Advent

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving! Now jumping right into the Advent season. Christmas is right around the corner! After a busy Thanksgiving weekend, complete with a house showing (yay!) and a frantic Sunday afternoon decorating-fest, we are all set for the start of the Christmas countdown. The lights have been hung, the tree is up & decorated, the Advent calendar has been lovely attended to since Wednesday (Dec 1), my mom’s beautiful nativity set has been borrowed & displayed, and the house is feeling festive. With all of that surrounding us, we jumped back into school!

I admit, I was concerned that the flashing pretty stuff would be too big a distraction, especially coming off of a long holiday weekend. We have school in the living room… right next to the Christmas tree! It’s difficult enough for me not to get distracted by the baubles! But the boys were fantastic. On Monday morning, they ooh’ed & aah’ed over the tree (it was decorated after they went to bed). But then, when it was time for school to start, they were all business. Well, as all business as a partially bored 4 year old & a hyper 6 year old can be!

The big school news of the week, besides the amazing ability to block out Christmas decorations, was Jimmy’s completion of the DISTAR reading program. I think I mentioned before that we had sort of dropped the formal stuff; he has just been reading the stories from the later lessons. He read the last DISTAR lesson story on Tuesday. For Thursday’s reading time, I let him pick out a book to read aloud, with the caveat that I would have veto power. (And yes, I used the term “veto power” with him. And yes, he had to ask what it meant. I wonder when I’ll hear that used back to me. “Mom, what’s for dinner? I want veto power over it!”) Anyway, he surprised me with his choice – Where Is God When I’m Sc-c-c-ared? by Veggie Tales. I had expected him to bring one of those one-word-a-page books that usually come in board book form. He had been grumbling about not wanting to read, so I assumed that he would choose a super easy one. I had almost convinced myself to let him have that choice, just to help him see that reading isn’t a chore. But he chose a book that wasn’t particularly easy! It was in his range, but it has some words that I knew he would struggle with. It was a fantastic choice, however. He didn’t get too frustrated – he really wanted to read it! I might have to let him make the choice for most of our reading times. My goal is to create a joyful reader, not a reluctant one. Choosing what to read may help him get there.

Caleb is improving in his ability to quietly sit still during read-aloud times & while I’m working one-on-one with Jimmy. He enjoys his cutting projects (some simple printouts of squiggly lines or geometric shapes to cut out). He has been giving his cutouts to Jimmy & me as presents. So sweet!

Thanksgiving

I had originally planned to take the week off from school. It’s a short week with lots to do to prepare for the Thanksgiving holiday. But we were getting on a roll! Maybe it’s a good time to catch up from all of those 4 day weeks… So we had school on Monday, Tuesday, & Wednesday. I think I made the right call.

We finished our gratitude notebooks this week. They were a big hit! I’m definitely going to look into what we’ll do next. The biggest challenge for the boys was thinking of things to write/draw about each day. Continuing something like this may help spark some extra creativity. I’m especially interested in giving Jimmy some writing/spelling practice without it being a stuffy copywork exercise. Nothing wrong with copywork, but it is, well, work. Writing your own stuff is a little more fun.

This week was a bit of a review week. We continued on with new math lessons, History chapters, Psalms, and DISTAR reading assignments, but we didn’t add any new memory work weeks or catechism questions. I also kept Jimmy working on the same spelling list (number words one to twelve).

I might just do this kind of review week for the Christmas & New Year’s holidays, too. Everyone is enjoying school these days. Let’s keep up the momentum!

Gratitude

I'm getting school into a routine finally. I changed my lesson plan write-up so it is easier to see what we all do together versus what each kid does separately. I hope that helps!

The highlight of the week has been the new gratitude notebooks. So far, we've been thankful for an imaginary friend, apples, Caleb's painted pumpkin, flowers, watching TV, and Mommy. Glad they found a place for me in there somewhere, lol!

Jimmy's math fast facts (aka speed drills in addition & subtraction) are getting tons better. He has been finishing his 1 minute drills with time left over to check his work, although he still gets intensely frustrated when he doesn't finish. My little nerd really loves story problems (aka word problems). He enjoys listening to the stories from our History book, but I never know how much he is retaining until he pulls some random fact out of the air during another discussion. "Oh, a nickname, just like Egypt renamed Nubia to Kush!" Jimmy still struggles a bit with reading; he gets too impatient to slowly sound out unfamiliar words. Just like Mommy, he wants to quickly finish the story to find out what happens next!

Caleb is doing very well in all of his subjects. Poor kid is having trouble sitting still during group listening (History & Psalms), but he's getting better. He loves memorizing the children's catechism (he's up to question #8), learning phonics sounds through our flash cards, and playing with all of the cool "toys" during math. He's having a blast with cut & paste work while I focus on Jimmy. It makes Jimmy jealous sometimes!

We skipped school on Wednesday to run some errands, which, ironically enough, included a trip to the teacher supply store. (I bought a demonstration thermometer, play money for math lessons, packs of red & green construction paper for Christmas art projects, and a new lesson plan book.)