Science and Math with Rabbit

Okay, so after posting over at the MFW board with my troubles (meaning the amount of time Math was taking), some people recommended just reading the math text and doing it with her. That works much better. It also allows us to skip problems I know she can do. Sometimes I just have her tell me how she would solve them without going into the actual solving of the problem. Yeah, I know, being able to do the actual math is part of the battle, but this is taking us 50 minutes to an hour, which feels much better than 1.5 hours. Yesterday, for example, we just did all the problems on the white board. Today, we did them in the notebook.

We've started on Apologia's General Science, too - we're on lesson 3. Today a friend over at the MFW board let me know about a notebook it looks like Apologia will sell to go with General Science. It looks pricey ($33), but if it helps Rabbit take notes and such, I think it would be worth it. They have the first module as a sample, so I printed that out and we used that today, except for the science experiment. 

 

After we boiled the water, I saved the left over in an ice cube tray. I read about that on Donna Young's web site - to save time in the future.

I made a video of today's science experiment - at least the results:

It was certainly fun.

Rabbit is having dance camp in the mornings this week, so I've been doing handwriting and math with the boys. I'm doing it together, and so far that is working well. It is like a mini-class. It is a little difficult when one finishes before the other, but it usually doesn't take too long.

The difference of a day!

Oh, Rabbit did so much better today on the timed Test A: she completed all but 4 problems in the 5 minutes, and only missed 2! And the two she missed: one was a number reversal (wrote 65 instead of 56), and the other she added instead of multiplied. This second lesson was long, and then the DIVE video didn't explain about using a formula to find the terms in a sequence, so we had to go back to the book and look at the example, and then I had to explain it to her using a couple of other examples. We finished up the practice set and will do the Mixed Problem set tomorrow. I do like that the DIVE video uses different words and explains things in a little bit different way than the book, but he doesn't always go over everything that the book covers, and we have to go back and look for how to solve at least one of the practice set or mixed problem set. I hope that isn't a regular  occurrence. I mean, right now I'm sitting with her through the whole lesson, giving her hints of when to pause and write and such, hoping that eventually she'll only need me for the warm up. But, if he regularly skips something, then I'm going to need to be more familiar with the lessons.


Things went opposite for Pooh. He struggled with Math today. He kept rocking in the chair instead of doing math. Ended up in tears twice! But, I brought the Math-U-See blocks to piano lessons and sat on the floor with him to do the Singapore lesson, and it went better. Like Rabbit at this age, he needs me to sit with him and walk him through each problem. He loved doing cursive with Tigger, and I even taught them an extra letter so they could write a real word: cat. They thought that was very cool.


Tigger just plows through stuff. If he misses a problem, he goes back and fixes it. He gets a little frustrated, but he wants to get it done so he can be off. 

Gradually starting

So yesterday I started with Rabbit on Saxon 8/7. The first few lessons are quite long, so after we finished the practice set, I let her stop for the day. Then today we finished up the first lesson. She did pretty well with it, but it is basic review right now. Today she also did the first page of the pre-test in All-in-One English.

For Pooh and Tigger, today we started our Handwriting Without Tears Cursive book and Singapore 2A. That went well. I taught them together, but for math, I had them do their math pages separately. 


I think I've got 98% of my lesson plans entered into Homeschool Tracker Plus. I haven't put in dance, P.E., AWANA, or Writing Strands. And I haven't figured out how I'm going to do the Progeny Press stuff with Rabbit, either. I'm still stressing a little bit about how to schedule it all. I have a lesson plan for Rabbit, and then another for the boys since there is quite a bit of difference. For the Apologia Science, Saxon, and Singapore I just have "Lesson x" and then the notes say to refer to the lesson plan book from MFW. The nice thing is I have my Primary Language Lesson plans from back when Rabbit was in 3rd grade to use with the boys.