Third Month. 2nd Week.

This week was kind of a rough week and not a lot was accomplished. But here goes anyway.

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Math:
This week, again, was all about subtraction. By the end of the week, I made a decision that Babe wasn't ready for the Chapter 10 test. She just wasn't confident enough in her knowledge of using subtraction to solve word problems, so I'm going to give her another week until she's solid in it.

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Reading:
Reading is pretty much the only thing we advanced in this week, and she's doing pretty good with it. Babe is starting to fully understand plural vs. possessive nouns, and the differences in verb tenses. Calvert doesn't quite go into the reason for verb tenses yet, but they introduce the idea that all verbs have different endings.

During this week's lessons, I had her write verbs down, then write each tense with them. She's good at it! I also had her use each tense in a sentence. Without going into why the sentences were different, she easily recognized that she couldn't use the same tense with different subjects. It's weird how she just..."knows"...that it doesn't sound right. For example, she knew "I jumped." was correct, but when she had to use "jumps", she knew she couldn't say "I".

She is also reading her chapter books fairly well, finishing up Junie B. and starting Mary-Kate and Ashley's Mysteries series. I have noticed, however, that when she realizes she's at the end of the story, she rushes through reading to finish the book. So we talked about how the end of the book is the resolution of the whole story, and how it's important not to miss! But she is able to fill out Story Maps well and it's so encouraging to see her love reading so much. It's awesome.

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Social Studies:
N/A

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Science:
We were able to finish up Chapter 2, learning about plants and how different plants can live in different climates. But again, the plan for the Chapter Test at the end of the week was out of the question. She will try again this coming week.

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Bubs has been blossoming this past week in all work I have given her. This week we started "There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed Some Leaves" by Lucille Colandro. When I showed her the book, she immediately recognized the Old Lady and her jaw dropped.

The book was paired with various work from 3 Dinosaurs. Bubs worked on patterns, color-by-number, and the order of each item the main character swallowed.

 

I've also been reinforcing her color mixing lesson of the month, red and yellow make orange. Last week we mixed paint, this week we mixed ketchup and mustard and dyed pudding!

Bubs helped me make some vanilla pudding and I dyed half yellow and half red. Then I stacked the colors in a cup after it formed.

 

I told both Babe and Bubs that they couldn't eat the pudding until it was only one color! They both got to stirring. :)

 

Yum!

Another activity we did was based on Nadine Brun-Cosme's book "Big Wolf and Little Wolf, The Little Leaf that Wouldn't Fall". Seriously, another beyond adorable book that I just can't get enough of. I saw a Fall craft on Pinterest that I knew The Girls would enjoy, and this book from the library was the perfect companion for it. It was such a coincidence.

For the craft, I had Bubs collect a whole box of Fall leaves, and the next day I had the girls crush them all. Who doesn't like cracking dry Fall leaves in between their fingers!? Both girls had a blast, and while they were crushing leaves, I traced a Fall leaf template onto various Fall colored construction paper. When the leaves were crushed, I gave both girls a bottle of liquid glue and had them outline the leaf I traced. Then...they got to sprinkling their leaf dust onto the glue.

 

 

THESE TURNED OUT BEAUTIFUL. Both girls loved this so much that I just kept tracing the leaf because they kept asking for more! It was awesome and we all spent the whole afternoon making Fall leaves. Perfect to go into the office-classroom.

And with that (and a surprise trip to see Finding Nemo 3D), the week was over. 

PHEW! Onward into Fall!

June - Week 1: Beach

Wednesday, May 30th - Friday, June 1st


Last week went great. Bubs and Z are really enjoying their new bins and Bubs is doing great with the "harder" work. Z gets bummed when I tell him he can't do the harder bins, but I've been working with him and his number 1-5, recognition and counting, and he's doing great! He loves searching through the bucket of shells to pick out the perfect ones. 

Last week we concentrated on the letter T - practicing its sound and practicing writing it. Thursday we did a bunch of turtle activities.


They started by doing a T is for Turtle worksheet, where Bubs practiced writing her capital and lowercase Ts. 

 


















 

Then for the rest of the morning we created our own awesome foam turtles (an awesome $1 grab in the craft department at WalMart)!!!

As for Babe, we are continuing to keep track of her grandparents as they travel cross-country! 

I also grabbed all Calvert-provided picture books that she read throughout Kindergarten and piled them up in front of her. She was proud of the fact she read them all!!! 

 

After reminding herself of them all, I had her choose her favorite one. She did. 

Then I had her write a letter to the author (or in this case, adapter) of the story.

 

I forgot to take a picture of the letter, but while Babe was writing it, Bubs practiced her lowercase Ts on manuscript paper, just like her big sis. 

Babe is keeping up her reading beautifully. She read six books last week, as per the two book a day deal. Amazing!!!

We ended the week with a trip to one of the local beaches, duh!!!

This week we are continuing with the same bins, and concentrating on the letter F. Read more about it at the end of the week!

June - Beach Day 01

Doing something a little different for the month of June, I think. I've been working nonstop at getting some beach-themed bins done for Bubs and Z to work on while Babe takes a break from curriculum and concentrates on her education in other ways.


So today was a run-through of all the new bins. No Z today, so Babe and Bubs were willing participants in showing you how the new bins work.

 

I set them all up before having the girls come in and work. The left side of the desk is strictly Bubs' work - Z is a little too young to work on this stuff. The top shelf is pre-reading material (recognizing letters and their lowercase matches, figuring out which words begin with which letters, etc.). The middle shelf is strictly counting and number recognition. The yellow bucket is full of shells we collected from the beach last summer, along with beach-themed number flashcards. The bottom shelf is for pre-writing. It has a container of dry sand with beach-themed letter flashcards for Bubs to see how to draw each letters.


The right shelves have work for Bubs and Z to do. Five bins include: sorting beach themed foam shapes, pre-writing tracing sheets, sticking cocktails umbrellas into styrofoam, using beads to color match on magnet sheets, and finding beach shapes in sand to match them to shapes on paper.


That all might have sounded vague, but the following pictures will clear things right up. :)


Bin 1:
Finding beach critters (glow in the dark pieces from Dollar Tree) in a bucket of sand, placing them on correct traced picture.

  

 

Bin 2:
Unfolding cocktail umbrellas, poking them into styrofoam block.

  

 

I totally adore Bubs' use of space. :)

Bin 3:
Pre-writing tracing sheets (all printouts for this week's beach theme came from Homeschool Creations)

Bin 4:

Using magnet sheets to match colored beads (two of these sheets came from MakingLearningFun.com and the other two came from Confessions Of a Homeschooler).

 

Bin 5:
Sorting beach-themed foam shapes (from Wal-Mart)

 

After they both finished working with those and feeling them out, we moved on to the left shelves that contain work for only Bubs. She first picked the pre-reading shelves (she was enticed by the shovels and pails). 

What I did here was tape the capital letters W, F, S, and T, to the pails and their corresponding lowercase letters to the shovels. I first had her place the shovels into the correct pails (WHICH SHE DID ON FIRST TRY!!!)

I then gathered a bunch of beach-themed items, mostly toys and critters, along with flashcards featuring beach terms that begin with those specific letters (cards from Homeschool Creations). I placed them in a bin and went over the phonetics of each word, having her repeat the word and emphasize the beginning sound. When she figured out the beginning sound, I had her place that item into the correct pail.

Throughout this exercise, she challenged me a bit, placing the whale (for example) over the wrong pail. To show Bubs that different letters have different sounds, when she had it over the F pail, I'd say "Fhale?" And she'd laugh. Then she'd put the whale over the S bucket.

"Sale??"

"NOO! WHALE!"

And then she'd place it into the W pail. 

Fun! 

She hit a rough patch in the middle of this exercise, but after giving her time to relax and calm down, she continued until she was ALL DONE! I mean, she really went through every toy and critter until she placed them all into the correct buckets! Amazing!

When the pails were put away, she then picked the pre-writing shelf. Pretty self-explanatory here, writing in the sand. She did great with this, too. These letter cards (again, from Homeschool Creations) feature the same letters as above - F, T, W, S.

She only had one last shelf left that I wanted to show her, and I know I was pushing her to the max, but she completed it with little resistance. We counted the number cards out together and placed them in order.

She then grabbed a handful of shells and placed the correct number of shells over the cards.

Then she was done. Done done. Note exhausted-face. haha

But I gave her a million high fives and scooped her up for the biggest hug ever. She will not be doing all bins everyday. I think my limit is four on any given day, and we will be working with a new bin schedule where she will get to pick, then I will get to pick what she works on. 

Here's to June!!!

And as far as Babe goes, this month isn't a complete break from school. Her summer reading schedule will include at least two books per day, with a mini report at the end of the week about her favorite one.

Today she started with just that, reading "Hooray for Summer!" by Kazuo Iwamura and then "My Loose Tooth" by Stephen Krensky.

Yeah, her reading skills are going to sky-rocket. :)

Again, here's to June!!!

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