Week 2

 Week 2 went pretty well.  We made progress in all of our subjects and added in another subject for Josh and started another subject for the big kids.  I'm unsure how we are going to fit everything in since my days are pack from the time I wake up to the time I go to bed now that I've added schooling the littles to the mix.

LITTLES:

Phonics:  Last week, we covered the short vowel sounds for a, e, i, o, and u for phonic using Phonics Pathways.  This week, we reinforced them with little jingles.  Sam did these with his special ed class way back when.  I don't have the list of jingles his preschool teacher used, so I'm making up my own.  Each day, we colored two things that started with the vowel of the day and added them to sheets I made up with the jingle.

Josh and Maddie are showing you their Ii pages.  The jingle I came up with is "Ii says i...Inchworm in an igloo...i, i, i."  I used the breve to show the short vowel sounds so they get used to seeing the.

Literature: This week we learned Little Miss Muffet.

As part of the unit, we made these.  The top parts have the words of the nursery rhyme and the bottom parts have an illustration showing a vocabulary word from the rhyme.  We also made little dangling paper spiders and a little folded book about spiders.

Handwriting: Josh is really liking Handwriting Without Tears so far.  Of course, we haven't used pencil and paper yet.  This week, we started working on numbers using their chalkboard method.  We don't have one of their chalkboards, but we have one that is good enough (probably bigger than theirs since ours doesn't have a frame).  I write the number and then Josh erases it with a tiny piece of moist sponge.  Then he wets his finger and does the number again.  Then he uses a tiny piece of wadded up paper towel to dry the number.  Finally, he writes the number with a small piece of chalk.  He really likes this and goes through all ten digits.  I can see that it will really help with his grip and hand/finger strength.

Math: Science for the bigs is all about chocolate so we had chocolate math this week.

 

I have each of them roughly 1/4 cup of M&Ms to count and graph.  Josh did a great job doing his on his own.  Maddie did the counting and scribbled a line up the graph inside the area I outlined.

We also had our good friend come over for chocolate math.  She helped Josh and Maddie with patterns while the big kids practiced their percentages and making circle graphs.

Here's Mika's graph.  While the percentages were pretty easy, I also made them figure out how many degrees of the circle represented each percentage and properly measure them out with a protractor.

PE: We also took our friend for our favorite walk around the lake.

Maddie walked across the logs with her sister's help.  With the last two crossings, Mika carried Maddie across on her back.

BIGS:

Literature: The big kids read chapters 4-12 of Oliver Twist.  We didn't get to discussing them yet.

Math: Sam and I finished up subtraction of negative numbers, negation, and reciprocals.  We really didn't get to much math this week.  Mika did the second lesson in her Math-U-See and covered subtracting negative numbers.

Science:  Chocolate is the subject of our current unit.  Mika and Sam read Chocolate: Riches from the Rainforest, The Biography on Chocolate, Milton Hershey: Hershey's Chocolate Creator, and The Mars Family: M&M Mars Candy Makers.  They also started reading Business Builders in Sweets and Treats and will write an essay on one of the candy makers using the book as their main resource.  We'll continue with chocolate next week and go to the Northwest Chocolate Festival next week.  I'm hoping to find time to fit in a tour of a candy factory.

We also started making our hand-bound nature journals.

Sam is working on sewing his together.  Mika is done sewing but made enough mistakes that I'm going to have to help her do some created sewing to tighten up the spine. I'm hoping they'll learn some patience and perseverance with this project.

Pacific Northwest History:  We're wrapping up volcanoes and glaciers.  They learned a bunch of new glacial terms with a vocabulary matching page and crossword puzzle, and we went on a field trip to Johnston Ridge Observatory on Mount Saint Helens.

The wildfires made the view a little hazy, but it wasn't too bad.  We stopped at three other places on the way up there, explored the exhibits at the observatory, watched the movie, and completed two little packets I found making observations from the little paved trail.

Art: We managed to get just the beginnings of an art project started.  Pictures next week.


I'm not expecting to get much school work done next week.  Mika is getting braces put on Tuesday, and we're going to Great Wolf Lodge Wednesday and Thursday.  (I hope the discomfort of new braces isn't too bad for her to enjoy Great Wolf Lodge.)  That leaves only two and a half days for school.