Books to read for this week

Here are some books line up for us this week.

For my kindergartener, we are reading this:




I read a couple of pages today and he loved it. He was actually asking me to show him some real picture of George Washinton.

*** Jhoshua's reader for this week:



This is our chosen literature read aloud.



Hopefully, both my kids will love the books I have chosen for them.

Weekly Report ( March 15 - 19 )

Here is what we did this week.

Jhosh:

Math - We did a review getting areas in geometrical figures (circle, square, triangle).
Language Arts - I listened to Susan Wise Bauer's Writing lectures and I have learned so much. So this week, as Susan said, for middle schooler, 2 outline, 2 narrative summaries and 1 half page literary anaysis. I thought that was the greatest help in making sure we spend quality time in our school. I dropped our writing curriculum and just do what she advised doing. I feel that idea is a lot better, incorporating writing across other subjects.

Science - We studied compound this week. We did one experiment that worked out pretty well. In our Zoology 1, he did one level outline for 6 pages of Apologia that was assigned today. We are on social insects this week.

History - We spent time reading about the Constitution. I made him memorize the Preamble to the Constitution. And he did 2 written narrations.

Latin - He is studied the imperfect tense this week. As usual, he did the exercises and did some practice conjugating some verbs.

Reading: We finished reading The Legend of the Sleepy Hollow and we are on chapter 6 of Johnny Tremain.

Alden (Kindergartener)

Reading : Reading everday for 30 mins .
Math : We did some review of reading time by hour and half hour. We also spent time this week with fraction manipulatives (one half and one fourth). Plus, everyday addition drills.
Writing: We did 3 times a week doing copy work. We are finishing HWOT and almost done with Explode the Code primer.
Memory work: He memorized " The Caterpillar" in the FLL which we just started this week.

Our week is pretty much the same. I am glad we were able to read more and do more things. Until next week.

Here are some pictures of what they did this week.



P.E. day on Wednesday



A sample of Jhosh's outline this week



Alden's practice sheet on math

AWANA Grand Prix Pics

For those of you whose children go to AWANA, you are probably familiar with their Annual AWANA Grand Prix. Here are some of my favorite cars that I saw last Sunday. This is Jhoshua's first year at this event and I am sure he will be participating again next year. We had so much fun watching the cars made by the kids and it nice to see how excited they all are.




Here is Jhosh, his first race :)



literally the couch car...



This is my favorite. I thought it was very creative design.



a pink, shoe car...how cute!



More cars...

Weekly Report ( March 8 -12 )

Jhoshua (Grade 5)

This week we have been reading a lot. We are on Week 22 of Biblioplan and we are studying about American Revolution and the Constitution. My son had so many questions about how the government works and how it all came to place. I didn't really think he would be interested about government studies and politics but I was wrong. He sure did read the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and told me how interesting it is. He loved all the books by Jean Fritz. He sure is reading on his own now and all I have to do is give some questions. I miss reading aloud to him but he likes to read on his own now.
I also started letting him do some subjects on his own. Grammar and his writing are done independently. We divide our science lectures and experiments. I do lectures with him an hour every week and he does outlining and experiments on his own. We sit down every Friday for an hour talking about the books he is reading for his history and literature. We do Math first thing in the morning, split the excercises into 2 parts. He does the practice sets with me and he does the first 15 items in the morning and the last 15 in the afternoon. We do this now because I found out that the longer he sits at the table doing all that math problems the quicker he loses focus, there by making silly mistakes. This way we eliminate dawdling and wasting time.
We are on lesson 21 of Latin course, studying imperfect tense. Our lesson went well this week. I ask him to conjugate more Latin verbs.
For our extra curricular this week. I am starting to teach my eldest how to cook. He has been interested watching me cook and it's only now that I am comfortable enough to actually let him cook. We did simple things. We started doing pancakes, eggs and bacon. And I taught him how to bake a cake using the prepared cake mix. He had so much fun this week doing all that cooking and baking.

Alden, my kindergartner

> I am so happy this week with the way our Math has been going. He has shown so much interest in practicing his addition facts. He would pull out his counters on his own and would ask me to add with him. He finally able to understand calendar, how days and months works. He has mastered his counting by 2, 5 and 10. So far, I have no problem with math with this kid and that is a blessing.
> His reading had improved so much, too. He started reading better and showing less difficulty in blending.
> He also has been practicing his handwriting a lot lately, doing his copywork. He has been enjoying writing short sentences .

Some Changes

I am always figuring out how to teach my son, Jhoshua to write more effectively. We were doing IEW for 3 years now and we used the theme based books they have. The result was good. He is now able to write better paragraphs on his own. He is able to use the dress ups and sentence openers pretty well without trouble. But I think that the books are moving fast and jumping to different Units each time. So I have decided to begin again and try to concentrate on 1 or 2 dress ups at a time and one sentence opener. We are also incorporating Writing Strand 3 in his writing class. I see it as a wonderful tool in teaching a child to write more complicated sentences. And knowing how to use dress ups will aid him in writing a much better sentence. We will also focus on free writing for now. That means we will choose topics that are common to him and into his liking. I think it gives him more words in his head, or more ideas, if he like what he writes about. For a grade 5 student, he writes pretty well, but he gets bored sometimes, thus prolonging our school hours. I hope this changes will benefit him.

Wordless Wednesday

Here is a picture of my very first homemade apple turnover puff pastry. It's a little bit of work making the pastry but worth the taste. :)