Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Wednesday, February 6, 2008
Monday, February 4, 2008
I've been tagged :)
So I'm checking my StatCounter to see if anyone has read my blog lately, where they linked from, yadda, yadda, yadda...and I click on a unfamiliar link to find out that I'VE BEEN TAGGED! Ack! Normally I never get around to filling these kinds of things out, but this one looks relatively simple. By the way, go & check out the culprit--Amy at Allen Academy--she's got one nifty blog! :)
I located my nearest stack of books, and chose the one from the top. It was a dud. Page 123 contained only a list, no full sentences. On to book #2, it only had 120 pages. I had a little more luck with this one--A Charlotte Mason Companion by Karen Andreola. From page 123:
But she will bear in mind that the child of six [or seven] has begun the serious business of his education, it does not matter much whether he understands this word or that, but it matters a great deal that he should learn to deal directly with books. Whatever a child or grown-up person can tell, that we may be sure he knows, and what he cannot tell, he does not know. Let us give our children a variety books to narrate.
Now...my challenge to find 5 more previously untagged people to tag. Instead of posting names, I challenge the next 5 people to read this post to leave your book meme answers in the comments. That means YOU!!!
Book Meme
Rules:
Pick up the nearest book (of at least 123 pages).
Open the book to page 123.
Find the fifth sentence.
Post the next three sentences.
Tag five people.
I located my nearest stack of books, and chose the one from the top. It was a dud. Page 123 contained only a list, no full sentences. On to book #2, it only had 120 pages. I had a little more luck with this one--A Charlotte Mason Companion by Karen Andreola. From page 123:
But she will bear in mind that the child of six [or seven] has begun the serious business of his education, it does not matter much whether he understands this word or that, but it matters a great deal that he should learn to deal directly with books. Whatever a child or grown-up person can tell, that we may be sure he knows, and what he cannot tell, he does not know. Let us give our children a variety books to narrate.
Now...my challenge to find 5 more previously untagged people to tag. Instead of posting names, I challenge the next 5 people to read this post to leave your book meme answers in the comments. That means YOU!!!
Sunday, February 3, 2008
Bi-Weekly Update – Weeks #19 & 20
Here's a brief summary of our last two weeks:
LANGUAGE ARTS: The combination of SWO with SWR markings & rules is really working well. The "Warm-Up Test" from the SWO lesson helps identify particular spelling rules that we need to spend some extra time reviewing. Then we'll mark the words & I'll dictate sentences for any words that Grace missed. In FLL, we're slowly making progress. Some days it's easy to combine lessons, and Grace has finished copying & illustrating "The Months" by Sara Coleridge...it's all ready to be bound into a book.
READING: I highly recommend the Elson Readers. Well, at least Book 2 in the series, since that's all we've used so far. Grace reads about 8-10 pages aloud to me each day from it, and then 2-3 times a week I'll have her do one of the McCall-Crabbs readings. This combination has really bolstered her fluency and--most importantly--her reading confidence! She continues to read independently at bedtime and has finished her second Nancy Drew & the Clue Crew book. We finished our read-aloud of Mary Poppins and have started reading Nancy Drew Mysteries #2: The Hidden Staircase. Grace even read the first chapter in the book aloud to me one afternoon, because she wanted to read "something even harder" than her Elson Reader material. It took some extra time...and lots of sounding out words...but she read that entire chapter to me in one sitting!
MATH: Math continues to be one of the high points in our day. And really...shouldn't math be a high point in everyone's day?!?!? Subtraction is getting easier & easier for Grace with more practice, and she's been pretty quick to catch on to multiplication (by 0, 1, 5, & 10 so far). Last week she started adding three 2-digit numbers without even batting one of her long lashes.
HISTORY & SCIENCE: Two more chapters down in SOTW1. Then a brief pause while awaiting the arrival of my Sonlight order. Tomorrow we will pick up at week 17 in SL Core 1, using SOTW as our "spine" instead of CHOW. Although I reserve the right to change my mind on that one. :) In science, we've learned about hair, skin & nails, and Grace has started working on her "Five Senses" lapbook from HOAC. Grace & Emma each filled in the face to add to their body outlines:
OTHER: We're working on Unit 2 from the Elementary Spanish series which, coincidentally, is about mi cuerpo. It'll be nice to label the girlies' body outlines in both English & Español. Also, we've worked through the first 6 units from the Spanish for Children cd & workbook, watched a couple of TOPS! episodes (kind of a game show format), and Grace has almost finished her first letter to her Spanish penpal. I'm really enjoying learning Spanish alongside the girls. It was an especially thrilling moment for me at a restaurant restroom this weekend when I could read the Spanish part of the handwashing poster. Not quite as exciting as math, I know, but still...
AND IN CLOSING: {brag alert} The other morning Emma was busily working with her Fridge Phonics letters and...quite proudly...spelled these gems on her own. These are the little moments that make your heart melt.
LANGUAGE ARTS: The combination of SWO with SWR markings & rules is really working well. The "Warm-Up Test" from the SWO lesson helps identify particular spelling rules that we need to spend some extra time reviewing. Then we'll mark the words & I'll dictate sentences for any words that Grace missed. In FLL, we're slowly making progress. Some days it's easy to combine lessons, and Grace has finished copying & illustrating "The Months" by Sara Coleridge...it's all ready to be bound into a book.
READING: I highly recommend the Elson Readers. Well, at least Book 2 in the series, since that's all we've used so far. Grace reads about 8-10 pages aloud to me each day from it, and then 2-3 times a week I'll have her do one of the McCall-Crabbs readings. This combination has really bolstered her fluency and--most importantly--her reading confidence! She continues to read independently at bedtime and has finished her second Nancy Drew & the Clue Crew book. We finished our read-aloud of Mary Poppins and have started reading Nancy Drew Mysteries #2: The Hidden Staircase. Grace even read the first chapter in the book aloud to me one afternoon, because she wanted to read "something even harder" than her Elson Reader material. It took some extra time...and lots of sounding out words...but she read that entire chapter to me in one sitting!
MATH: Math continues to be one of the high points in our day. And really...shouldn't math be a high point in everyone's day?!?!? Subtraction is getting easier & easier for Grace with more practice, and she's been pretty quick to catch on to multiplication (by 0, 1, 5, & 10 so far). Last week she started adding three 2-digit numbers without even batting one of her long lashes.
HISTORY & SCIENCE: Two more chapters down in SOTW1. Then a brief pause while awaiting the arrival of my Sonlight order. Tomorrow we will pick up at week 17 in SL Core 1, using SOTW as our "spine" instead of CHOW. Although I reserve the right to change my mind on that one. :) In science, we've learned about hair, skin & nails, and Grace has started working on her "Five Senses" lapbook from HOAC. Grace & Emma each filled in the face to add to their body outlines:
OTHER: We're working on Unit 2 from the Elementary Spanish series which, coincidentally, is about mi cuerpo. It'll be nice to label the girlies' body outlines in both English & Español. Also, we've worked through the first 6 units from the Spanish for Children cd & workbook, watched a couple of TOPS! episodes (kind of a game show format), and Grace has almost finished her first letter to her Spanish penpal. I'm really enjoying learning Spanish alongside the girls. It was an especially thrilling moment for me at a restaurant restroom this weekend when I could read the Spanish part of the handwashing poster. Not quite as exciting as math, I know, but still...
AND IN CLOSING: {brag alert} The other morning Emma was busily working with her Fridge Phonics letters and...quite proudly...spelled these gems on her own. These are the little moments that make your heart melt.
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Friday, January 18, 2008
We now resume our regularly scheduled programming...
So, it's been a while since I've posted. Thankfully not due to any unforeseen emergencies or illnesses, but rather due to my own laziness. Once Thanksgiving hits, I usually go into full panic mode over Christmas shopping, creating that *perfect* holiday card, and trying not to consume all of the yummy treats & goodies in sight. This year I managed to meet 2 of those 3 goals. So on January 2nd, I joined Weight Watchers...but that's another story altogether.
I'm sure that you, my one or two faithful readers, are more interested in what we've been up to at EEA over the past few weeks. For simplicity's sake--and since we've just completed week #18--we'll jump into Mr. Peabody's Wayback Machine to the time of the dinosaurs when I attended elementary school. Back then, we got our report cards every six weeks. So I'll just call this EEA's Six-Week Report.
LANGUAGE ARTS: Grace just completed Lesson 11 in SWO-B. I've incorporated a bit here & there from SWR (mainly markings & spelling rules) as we've gone along to reinforce the lessons. In FLL, we gone through Lesson 124, occasionally supplementing with the FlashKids Language Arts workbook for additional practice. This past week we've also been ramping up from all copywork to more dictation.
READING: Once again, it seems that Grace's reading is taking off! Both fluency & comprehension. For her read-aloud-to-me time, we've started using Elson Readers-Book 2. Great stories that have prompted some interesting discussions. I've also started adding in selections from McCall-Crabbs Standard Test Lessons in Reading on a regular basis. And this week I had Grace take the DIBELS assessment. All of the testing materials, as well as instructions on giving & scoring the test are available for FREE (my favorite price) on the Official DIBELS Home Page. For independent reading, Grace has been choosing her own books. This week she started Nancy Drew & the Clue Crew : The Cinderella Ballet Mystery. We finished our read-aloud of Mr. Popper's Penguins many moons ago and have since gone through a variety of holiday & winter selections. We are now about 3/4 of the way finished with Mary Poppins. It's not quite the same as the movie, but very, very interesting.
MATH: Still groovin' right along in Horizons 2. Grace just finished Lesson 66, and--I'm soooooo excited--we've started multiplication. (You're not the first to think my math-induced elation is strange.) And...great math moment...I know some of you have heard this story before--a few times. We were at the park sometime last month. Grace & Emma were on the playground with another 7-year-old kid. He was doing some math problems out loud. The usual garden variety 10+10=20, 20+20=40, etc. Then he decided to get tricky and said, "100+23+123=223." I looked at Grace--who had this *that-don't-sound-quite-right* look on her face. Then, without missing a beat, she said (somewhat politely), "No it's not. It's 246." Mental math--on the playground. I'm so proud...
HISTORY & SCIENCE: The whole month of December was quite light on these subjects. But we've started the year with renewed vigor. We've made it through Ch. 13 in SOTW, and we've starting the "Human Body" portion of our life science studies this year. We've read a slew of library books on various topics. So far, Grace's favorite has been germs. And, today I purchased "The Five Senses" & "The Human Body" lapbook e-books from Hands of a Child. They are having an awesome sale this weekend. I've had my eye on their project packs for quite a while, so 45% off was a great incentive for me to try some.
OTHER: Spanish also seemed to suffer during the holiday season. We're just starting up again with Elementary Spanish Unit 2. Co-op is still going well...although we had an unplanned break this week due to snow. Now I just need to get those snow pics from camera to computer. I've also started researching curriculum options for next year. I'm thinking of something a little more formal for Emma next year...maybe Horizon's new Preschool???
And that brings our recap to a close. Sorry there are no pictures this time, but I did change the blog banner from the pumpkin patch photo...
I'm sure that you, my one or two faithful readers, are more interested in what we've been up to at EEA over the past few weeks. For simplicity's sake--and since we've just completed week #18--we'll jump into Mr. Peabody's Wayback Machine to the time of the dinosaurs when I attended elementary school. Back then, we got our report cards every six weeks. So I'll just call this EEA's Six-Week Report.
LANGUAGE ARTS: Grace just completed Lesson 11 in SWO-B. I've incorporated a bit here & there from SWR (mainly markings & spelling rules) as we've gone along to reinforce the lessons. In FLL, we gone through Lesson 124, occasionally supplementing with the FlashKids Language Arts workbook for additional practice. This past week we've also been ramping up from all copywork to more dictation.
READING: Once again, it seems that Grace's reading is taking off! Both fluency & comprehension. For her read-aloud-to-me time, we've started using Elson Readers-Book 2. Great stories that have prompted some interesting discussions. I've also started adding in selections from McCall-Crabbs Standard Test Lessons in Reading on a regular basis. And this week I had Grace take the DIBELS assessment. All of the testing materials, as well as instructions on giving & scoring the test are available for FREE (my favorite price) on the Official DIBELS Home Page. For independent reading, Grace has been choosing her own books. This week she started Nancy Drew & the Clue Crew : The Cinderella Ballet Mystery. We finished our read-aloud of Mr. Popper's Penguins many moons ago and have since gone through a variety of holiday & winter selections. We are now about 3/4 of the way finished with Mary Poppins. It's not quite the same as the movie, but very, very interesting.
MATH: Still groovin' right along in Horizons 2. Grace just finished Lesson 66, and--I'm soooooo excited--we've started multiplication. (You're not the first to think my math-induced elation is strange.) And...great math moment...I know some of you have heard this story before--a few times. We were at the park sometime last month. Grace & Emma were on the playground with another 7-year-old kid. He was doing some math problems out loud. The usual garden variety 10+10=20, 20+20=40, etc. Then he decided to get tricky and said, "100+23+123=223." I looked at Grace--who had this *that-don't-sound-quite-right* look on her face. Then, without missing a beat, she said (somewhat politely), "No it's not. It's 246." Mental math--on the playground. I'm so proud...
HISTORY & SCIENCE: The whole month of December was quite light on these subjects. But we've started the year with renewed vigor. We've made it through Ch. 13 in SOTW, and we've starting the "Human Body" portion of our life science studies this year. We've read a slew of library books on various topics. So far, Grace's favorite has been germs. And, today I purchased "The Five Senses" & "The Human Body" lapbook e-books from Hands of a Child. They are having an awesome sale this weekend. I've had my eye on their project packs for quite a while, so 45% off was a great incentive for me to try some.
OTHER: Spanish also seemed to suffer during the holiday season. We're just starting up again with Elementary Spanish Unit 2. Co-op is still going well...although we had an unplanned break this week due to snow. Now I just need to get those snow pics from camera to computer. I've also started researching curriculum options for next year. I'm thinking of something a little more formal for Emma next year...maybe Horizon's new Preschool???
And that brings our recap to a close. Sorry there are no pictures this time, but I did change the blog banner from the pumpkin patch photo...
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