Year 2010-2011 Finshed

Well, we finished a while ago, actually. I've not been very good about keeping up my blog this year. Too much going on. Let's see if I can give a good summary. (Perhaps later this summer I can go through and find some fun pictures to post.)

The boys finished MFW 1st grade. They are reading pretty well. Tigger has really taken off. He loves Calvin and Hobbes right now. Pooh is a little slower. We've found a couple of good motivators for him: a Lego comic story book (I found it at Sam's Club) and fortune cookies. He's actually starting to read signs on the road, too. We're still working through the Abeka 1st grader readers, and will continue to do so this summer and into next year. I basically just have them read 10 minutes a day to me. Tigger gets through 10-12 pages each time, but Pooh only gets through about 6 (he just reads a bit slower). So, Tigger is now a book-and-a-half ahead of Pooh.

We enjoyed doing the MFW 1st grade science. We just moved it all to our "light" day. The only thing I wish I had done for the science was go to Home Depot or Lowes and get some clear, flexible tubing to do some of the water experiments - there were several that needed it and we never did them. The boys also joined in on Exploring Creation through Astronomy that big sister was doing in RTR. We even made notebook pages. I did duty as scribe for them, but they drew and colored pictures.

The boys weren't always big on drawing pictures in their Bible notebooks. We always did double dictation for those, too, so as not to reinforce bad spelling. They really liked their Bible readers. One thing I started doing was going through the story before they read it and picking out any words they might have trouble with. I would write them on the whiteboard and we would work on sounding them out before reading them in the Bible reader.

At the end of the year, we already had our 172 days in but I still had 2 weeks of curriculum left in RTR. So, we condensed the History and Science portions and fit them into one week. So we dropped all other subjects and just finished those off. I don't think I required any notebook pages for History, but I think we did a couple of science things. The "Is Pluto a Planet" debate was hard for Rabbit. She really tried, but after she tried to convince herself that it is still a planet she was more convinced it wasn't!

NASA has lots of pages on the planets that went perfectly with studying Astronomy. And their Sun page is awesome! I still go and look at that about once a week. The spacecraft MESSENGER got to Mercury either just before or just after we studied Mercury, so that was a great coincidence (or Providence, as the case probably is). It seems like there were some interesting events on Saturn, too, when we studied Saturn. So, I highly recommend keeping up with NASA's site.

A couple of weeks later Rabbit finished Singapore 4B! Hooray, she is caught up and on track to finish 5A/5B by the end of next year. Perfect! We didn't quite finish Writing Strands 4. We only have to do half of 5 next year, so I think we'll just continue where we left off in 4. She did finish her Latin Roots and English for the year. She's about halfway through Level 5 of All About Spelling. There were lots of weeks where we only got in 3 days of spelling.

In the second half of the year we added Piano lessons. That added quite a bit of work to my day, as I need to at least sit with the boys as they do their lessons. I usually only need to sit with Rabbit once, but the boys need a lot more assistance. I really like our piano teacher. She really tries to tailor the lessons to their interests. For example, Pooh is pretty good at memorizing the lessons, so she has him memorize them and then has him add rhythm to it. For Tigger, he is really into contemporary Christian music, so she has him work a little in the book, but also lets him pick a song to work on chords. And Rabbit is just flying through the music books.

The year went amazingly well doing the two programs. I'm pleased with how it turned out. I need to be more disciplined on somethings (like staying off the computer (meaning the Internet) until we're done with our day), but I think we did well. We've had to work on attitudes some days.

We just recently added a dog to the family, so we'll see how that affects our school days next year.

Up to Week 23 in RTR

Sigh. Five weeks since my last update. Let's see if I can get caught up.

In RTR, Rabbit and I have been cruising along just fine. We got up to about 1400 or so in Europe, and the curriculum backtracks a bit to cover the same time period in China, Japan and Australia (I think we hit Russia next week). It has been interesting to note how a feudal system developed in both China and Japan, without having any contact with the West.

One of our fun projects was to build the model of a medieval castle (it comes with the curriculum). It's a lot of work, and I did most of it, but once I got into a rhythm, it wasn't bad. I bought a 1/4 inch thick poster board and we built it on that. We tried some different craft glues and Elmer's. Different glues worked better in different situations. Rabbit did a presentation at our homeschool group on castles after we made it (she cut out and glued on all the figures):

In science we finished up the Human Body and began Astronomy 2 weeks ago. The last unit in the Human Body was the reproductive system. Don't miss The Wonderful Way Babies are Made. I didn't read it to my 6 year olds, but it was perfect for Rabbit. Now that we've switched to Astronomy, we had another great "line-up." We're studying Mercury this week, and Mercury is visible in the sky just after sunset, along with Jupiter. We hope to get out tonight to be able to see it. (This website has details.) I've been trying to do all the experiments and projects. It's tough, because our days go longer, but the kids really enjoy them. Here is our model of the solar system:

We used a bead for Mars because it was so small. We should have used a bead for Mercury too. But it looks great and the kids really got a feel for how things compared in size.

We finished up memorizing 1 Corinthians 13 and are now on to Philippians 2. These are great verses for a family to "rememberize" to remind us how to love and how to treat each other. In Luke we're up to Passion Week, which I think is perfect as we approach Easter.

We haven't been doing as many of the Art lessons from God and the History of Art these days, but we are reading the History. And, if there is a lesson that she finds interesting, we do that. We have been listening to the music and really enjoying Mozart. We recognize lots of the movements.

We are now in Singapore 4B in math. I really like the way they've been teaching fraction to decimal (and back) conversions, and wish I would have learned it that way when I was in school. I will say that the reviews, in both the workbook and textbook seem WAY longer than in 4A.

English and Writing Strands continue to step up, but Rabbit is usually up to the challenge. Our latest Writing Strands assignment was to write a description of our home. I don't think we did as great a job as he implied we should do in the lesson. But, we have a rather large house, and it would have taken us many more days to complete the lesson. I told Rabbit I'd like for us to try again with it this summer, now that we have more of a feel for the lesson.

We're still in Level 5 in All About Spelling. I'm not sure if she is going to finish it this year. More of the tricky words ("If the sound is /long-e/ then it's i before e except after c") are in this level, and they are giving her trouble. She is recognizing more and more when she misspells, but still can't always figure out the correct spelling.

School has been going pretty well. We added in piano last week, so that is also adding to our days. Rabbit has taken right to it, and practiced every day.

RTR Week 17 - Lefse

Well, we tried making "Lefse" today, since we were studying the Vikings. We followed the recipe in the TM, except we only had 6 potatoes to use. This still made 10 "Lefse." I'm not sure I made them thick enough, but if I made them any thinner, they would stick to the counter, even after flouring the counter and my rolling pin.

We topped ours with cinnamon, sugar, and honey. Warning: they are VERY filling. These would be better for breakfast or lunch, not for desert!

School has been going well. Rabbit doesn't like the stuff about wars, so she had a really hard time with drawing the Bayeux Tapestry this week. (Follow that link, and you can see the whole tapestry with a description. Someone posted it on the MFW boards.)

Rabbit is about to finish Singapore 4A. These Review pages are taking a long time. We spent an hour on the first review, and still didn't finish.

Tigger and Pooh are progressing through 1st. I was really proud of Pooh this last week. He had dictated me a summary, I wrote it and he said, "I can copy it by myself, Mom." So I let him, and he did a pretty good job! He did misspell 3 words even though he was copying. But, he remember to put a space between each word and worked very hard at writing neatly for him. And, when we went to the grocery store he actually read "Jet-Puffed" off the marshmallow bag by himself.

Tigger plows along. We got fortune cookies from the grocery store, and he even tries to read his fortune to himself.

They LOVE exploration day and insist I start with the science reading and do the experiments. We're on the water book, and those are fun experiments. If you can, make sure you go to the hardware store and get some clear, flexible rubber tubing for some of the water experiments. We haven't been able to do a couple of experiments because we haven't any.

Back to School

Well, it has obviously been too long since I updated my blog. We started week 15 today (so I'm going to skip filling in the weeks we've done since my last posting).

I think it was fortuitous (or perhaps Providence) that there was a recent discussion on the MFW message boards about Story of the World and how it introduced Islam. Thanks to that discussion, I was able to preface that reading with, "Now, this is what Muslims believe happened, and what they pass down to their children." The kids totally got it and compared some of what we believe as Christians as compared to the little bit discussed in the passage we read today. The Muslim Fact Cards were also helpful. Be sure to read the verses that compare Muslim beliefs to Christianity.

The rest of the day went quite well. Since we had done the lung experiment last year, we didn't repeat it today. But, I did read through the description again. Everything else went smoothly, even math (fractions!). Again, Providence played out in English. A few weeks ago in Writing Strands we had worked on point of view - telling a story from 1st person and then retelling the story in 3rd person. Today's English assignment from Intermediate Language Lessons was similar - write a story in 3rd person, and then rewrite it in "autobiographical" form, meaning 1st person. Since we had done the Writing Strands lesson before, it was pretty straight forward. We outlined what we were suppose to talk about, and did most of the assignment orally. Rabbit even asked if, "Later, can I rewrite the story differently."

The boys surprised me in that they didn't forget much over our long (for us) Christmas break. I didn't do MFW 1st today, but instead did All About Spelling, had them read to me, and had them do worksheets with math fact problems. Tigger even did a couple of math pages from a Lightning McQueen math workbook I picked up sometime in the past. I told the boys if they could read the last story in the second 1st grade reader from Abeka, we could go onto the third book. They both did well, so I'm going to go on to the third book in the series. They sat in on the Bible, History and Science of RTR, so I figured that it was good.

I love it when we have a good day of school, and God's hand showed up in the details with the discussion on the MFW message board and the fact that we had already done a similar lesson in Writing Strands before coming to it in English.

RTR Weeks 6 - 9

Man, have I been bad about keeping this up. We've been pretty busy. There was some sickness, so for two weeks, I was a helper at Awana while my husband recovered, so I didn't get a chance to keep this updated.

My last post was about our Roman Arch - which was done in week 6. You can see the picture from that post. I would encourage anyone to not give up on that project. We didn't sand the pudding boxes or anything. We built it several different times (like for Dad, when he got home), and it worked every time.

Another great thing you do in week 6 is study the Old Testament Prophesies of Jesus, and how he fullfilled them. I think that was a great thing to study.

Rabbit was excited in Week 7 that we're beginning to focus more on Jesus. She really doesn't like August Caesar's World all that much (to many false gods, murders and too much intrigue). This week we worked on the ear in science. The art lessons were good - drawing cubes books - getting your depth right. Rabbit thoroughly enjoys The Bronze Bow, but the boys aren't so keen on it. I'm sure they'll enjoy it when they're older, though.

We're breezing through Jesus's life pretty quickly through weeks 8 and 9. That's to keep up with our history studies. We covered the skin and the eye in science. We reading about the political changes and such going on in the Roman empire. We finished The Bronze Bow - loved the ending. The idea that you can't repay love with vengance is such a good theme in the book. It even got me to thinking about things.

Rabbit finished up her Singapore 3B book sometime during this stretch and we've begun Singapore 4A. It is a review of place value and rounding right now. She tells me it doesn't always make sense to her, but I don't know how else to explain some of those things.

Spelling has been Rabbit's hardest subject. We've really slowed down now at Level 5. Here's an example of her spelling thinking. The word is "actress." I very carefully pronounced "/ac/-/tress/." She spells it "acteress." And when it happens is when she is sounding out letter by letter, she say, "/a/, /c/, /t/, /er/, /e/, /s/, /s/." I posted on the Chatter Bee board for some help and got some ideas. One idea was to have her count syllables before she writes it to give her an idea of how many vowels or vowel teams there should be in the word. I want to try to get her to more spelling syllable by syllable than sound by sound. Sigh.

Our days run pretty long most days. That can be discouraging. But, we keep making progress.

Here's a beautiful creation she made just this last week with the Pattern Blocks. The kids just love playing free-style with them.

From School 4 Us

Our Roman Arch Worked!

Okay, this is from week 6 in RTR. I was skeptical, but... Whoo-hooo! Now, I didn't have cereal boxes, so we used those corrugated cardboard bricks for our "base." And, by the time we were finished, the bricks were only 5 3/4 inches apart, rather than 6 1/2, but it is staying all by itself!

I have more to post about our last couple of weeks, but I was just too excited about this!

RTR Week 3

The first day had a little bit of stuff from How the Bible Came to Us, so we did that the evening before, but the rest of it has been basically memorizing the books of the New Testament and just looking up a few verses from those books, so we've been doing those in the morning. It's great getting a brief summary of each book and who (possibly) wrote it.

We're continuing in August Caesar's World for history, along with tidbits from The Roman Empire. I've had to reword a few things from the former to soften them for Rabbit. Yesterday we did the mosaic project. We used construction paper and foam squares (I had some from many moons ago), and it ended up looking like this:

Cutting up construction paper into little squares just didn't appeal to me, so I felt like this was a good substitute. I need to print out the picture for Rabbit to add to her history notebook.

We've continued learning more about the Brain this week. It is so neat how God designed our bodies.

For our Latin Roots test, I made up addition and subtraction problems in Latin and had her write her answers in Latin. I figured that was better than a matching test. We're still on numbers at this point.

Over all, a pretty good week, except Rabbit hates Math again. But, I think we're just going to keep at it.

RTR Week 2

Whew, I need to get caught up.

We've been doing most of the Bible the night before so Dad can join in. It's been interesting learning how books got started, and even writing. You do have to wonder how much if it is "right," though. I mean, no one we know personally was there.

This week we started August Caesar's World. Not sure what to make of the book. I enjoy it, and the writing is good. Rabbit is having a hard time with it because of all the mentioning of other "gods." I'm really having to filter for her. One day we had the opportunity to play "Odd or Even" and even the boys enjoyed that.

In science we've been learning about nerves and how the brain works. There have been some good experiments or demonstrations to try to show how it works. It's pretty cool.

The drawing lessons in God and the History of Art have been good - we've been learning about perspective. I think this will help Rabbit's drawing.

So far, in English from the Roots Up we're just covering numbers in Latin. It's pretty easy, because it lines up with Spanish pretty well, and we've been studying Spanish since 1st grade.

Otherwise, not a bad week. I'm learning bunches.

RTR Day 5, MFW 1st, Day 14

Let's just say "light and independent" Friday for Rabbit was a big help in the grand scheme of things.

We still didn't get started until 9:00 today. Sigh. Can my children eat breakfast any slo-w-e--r? (If I could stretch out that word and then make it bend down like a drooping flower, I would!)

We started with the boys new verse (since this would be a "Monday" in MFW 1st). They said it a couple of times and we discussed it as directed in the T.M. Then we read another Miller's story. I'm always surprised how much they like these. Today's chapter was called, "Play the Man" and was about common courtesies men can show women - like opening doors and where to stand on the sidewalk and such. (As you'll see, this will come into play later in the day.)

I gave Rabbit her seatwork - it was simply a test for her Latin roots and a math review page. I used EasyTestMaker to make Rabbit's test. I had her define each root, and then I also had her use two derivative words correctly in a sentence. It was all "short answer" style, as there are only two roots at this point. When we get more, I'll change it over to multiple choice. She didn't miss any, and only missed one math problem. Way to go Rabbit! I told her she could practice sewing or work on her latch hook when she was done.

The boys did okay with reading today. Tigger had one word he stumbled over. Pooh, on the other hand, had more trouble. He's also a little too hard on himself about this. He has no problem marking the vowel and saying the vowel sound. It's the saying the rest of the sounds in the correct order that seems to get him. He'll do fine for a few words and then get all flustered. Then he'll do fine again and get flustered. But, he did fine with the cutting out the sentences and gluing them under the correct picture. I never know what to think about this kind of problem.

Next we took a snack break, and then did Math. I've stopped having them bring me the number of the day items. It just takes too much time for them to hunt them down. One thing I have been doing differently is not only drawing a line the number-of-the-day inches long, but also drawing it in centimeters. One thing I've struggled with is how large something is. I think drawing the lines in centimeters allows them to compare inches to centimeters. Plus, you can go up to 30 centimeters instead of just 12 inches. The next two weeks in Math is suppose to cover counting. That's fine, but they're pretty good at it. I forgot to reserve books from the library on it, though. But, we did do the first page in the workbook - it was easy and quick. Oh, I had Rabbit play some math games with one boy while I was working with the other. It was kind of good, except they got a little noisy and silly sometimes.

We read the Science pages next. They were pretty excited with the idea of watering some beans and watching them grow, so we'll probably do that. I do have a few books reserved for that topic at least.

The last thing we did before lunch was go on a Nature Walk. We did our usual path. We saw a very large grasshopper sitting on a weed, lots of bees, and other signs of summer. We could see just a very few yellow leaves on a few trees, telling us that fall is just around the corner. We talked about the different things we saw. Now the funny part was Rabbit kept insisting that the boys walk on the outside when we walked along the sidewalk so they could "Play the Men" as talked about in the story this morning. Yet, when they did, this made me nervous because of the occasional car going by and them being smaller than we are.

After lunch, we finished up the boys by listening to our Spanish program. It was basically learning common phrases (hello, good day, etc.).

Then I worked with Toni. We went over her math and had her fix her one mistake. She surprised me by wanting to do Writing Strands first. She made up a story about a hamster's first day in a new home (she wants us to get one for her to have as a pet). I captured her main points for her and then helped her come up with her long sentence. It always works best if we use her ideas. Not sure if I should make her come up with a real thing to tell about (which is kind of what seems to be suggested in the book), or just go with what we have done.

We've been reading from the Abeka 5th grade level "novel" Message of the Mountain - just a chapter a day, which doesn't take that long, but I know she is also reading from her Bible every day and other books she gets from the library (or her Nature Friend magazine - which came in the mail today).

The last thing on Rabbit's list for the day was the dreaded Spelling. Poor kid. She finally spelled all the words we were reviewing right (the green cards), but is really struggling with the two-letter sounds (ai, oa, ph, etc.) when we do the phonics and sound review time (the yellow and red cards). I'm not wanting to continue on with the rest of Step 1 until I feel she has at least got them each right once. She got frustrated with it today.

RTR Day 4, MFW 1st Day 13

Our day started off with Rabbit having a bloody nose. It took me an hour to get it to stop. So, we didn't start our school time until 9:10. That was a bit of a set back. Then, because we had a Keepers of the Faith meeting the night before, we didn't do today's Bible last night. So, we had to start with that. It was good, though, to read about the lives of many of the New Testament authors.

Then we did History. We read about the Conquest of Greece and the Fall of the Roman Republic. We also started Augustus Caesar's World. That should be an interesting book. I'm going to have to be careful, though, with Rabbit and the mention of other gods. She tends to take that to heart too much.

Next up was Science. We read the lesson, and then did the demonstration on how and why things can get through a cell membrane. I almost didn't do it, but it really made the concepts sink in for Rabbit.

I got Rabbit going on her seatwork, and did the boys reading time. This was the first day of reading words. Both of them did great. They each had one word they tripped over, but overall they did fine with it. Even reading the little sentences and cutting them out and pasting them under the correct picture went well. And, they were really excited to be able to use their special red pencils. The amazing thing was, each of them finished in less than 20 minutes!

By the time we finished with Reading time, it was 11:00. I finally remember that I wanted to do a fun sorting activity with the kids. On Monday I had bought their favorite candies. Today it was time to sort them. So, I printed out a blank chart for each of them. Then I gave each of them about 1/4 cup of their candy. Pooh said, "Mom, I think the only way to sort these is by color." So, that's what they did. Then I showed them how to fill in their chart. We used a crayon the color of each candy, and marked the graph with that. They loved this activity, especially since they got to eat the candies afterward. Even Rabbit did this.

After that, Rabbit went back to seatwork, and it was time for the Daily Math Activities. That was more of a challenge, because today's number of the day was 10 and we needed to glue the beans onto the craft stick. I said, "You know, there is a rule that we can't have more than 9 things in a cup. But, if we glue the 10 beans onto the stick, the stick will be one thing and then that can move into the tens cup." They really liked that little story. I didn't really want to wait forever for white glue to dry, so I got out my hot glue gun (my favorite crafting tool), and we used that to glue the beans to the stick.

It was 12:30 before we took our lunch break, and didn't get going again until 2:00. First we worked on the boys scrolls. Each day they've practiced writing their letters on a sheet. Today we glued them together side-by-side and then used masking tape to tape them to the wooden dowels. Here is Pooh with his scroll:

He thought it was cool that he was about as tall as his scroll. Here is Tigger with his:

One thing I did was to take a sheet of 8.5 x 11 paper and cut it in half, and then add it to the left of the sheet that has Aa-Ff on it. That way there would be more room to see the letters and they wouldn't get covered up by the dowel. here is the final product:

So, the boys were done, and it was time to finish up with Rabbit. We did Math, Reading, Spelling, English, and Writing Strands to finish up her day. Then it was time to make the Wax Writing Tablets. For Rabbits, I followed the instructions in the book. Except, I used my hot glue gun and I think you need to put the little 1/2 inch side walls on the TOP of the edge of the bottom 5x7 piece, not the side like I did hers:

Then, of course, the boys each wanted one. I decided to do theirs a little smaller - about 4x6. For theirs, I made sure the side pieces sat on top of the base piece. I think theirs worked better. Here's Pooh's tablet:

And finally, Tiggers:

They loved these and played with them all evening. Rabbit practiced her Roman numerals. Pooh practiced writing addition problems. And Tigger drew pictures. So, in spite of it being 4:30 before we finally finished for the day, I'm glad we did this activity.

RTR Week 1, Day 3

We did the Bible the night before. It was about the writers of the Old Testament and the variety of writers, and yet we can still trust the Scripturess.

In History we read about The Punic Wars. Imagine taking elephants across the Alps!

In Science we learned more about cells and made a Jello model:

My only recommendation would be to not fill the bag ALL the way up to the top. It makes it easier to squeeze it and play with it later.

Not to bad of a day. I moved Writing Strands to Thursdays and Fridays to make it easier on us. So far, not to bad. I did have to tell Rabbit that Keepers was optional if she didn't get her work done quickly.

RTR Day 2, MFW 1st Day 10

Okay, getting started earlier has got to be a priority. My husband let Rabbit sleep in because she had been sick, but we didn't get started until 9:00. Still, we didn't do too bad in getting everything done.

Again, we started with the 1st grade Bible lesson, which was just going over the verse, and then we added a Miller's story. I'm thinking about moving this to breakfast, but Rabbit has to be there for that to work.

Next, we read the History lesson. It was about how Rome became a Republic. That was interesting and didn't take too long. After that, we did the Science lesson, which was just reading about cells. The boys loved looking at the book because it had great pictures of different kinds of cells you can find in the human body.

Rabbit had some seatwork: sentences for her vocabulary word, handwriting, math drill, math (it was a "review" page), and a map. It was Exploration Day for 1st grade, so we read a couple of books for science, did some pattern block pages, did a page in the red Come Look with Me book, did a Spanish lesson, and of course, I read to them at bedtime.

Rabbit and I managed to get in an English lesson, and then I helped her with her math page before lunch.

After lunch we did Spelling and put up our timeline piece. We also went over her work and corrected any mistakes.

Overall, not too bad of a day.

I've printed out assignment sheets from Homeschool Tracker Plus for this next week, and marked the things she can do on her own. I put any papers she needs (map outlines, handwriting sheets, etc.) in manila folders for each day of the week, so she'll know where to find them and where to put them when she's done. I'm hoping this will give her a little more ownership of her work and help her get it done.

RTR Day 1, MFW 1st Day 9

Our first day where we actually combined both curricula. Whew!

Rabbit said she was feeling up to school this morning, so I decided to go ahead and start. Of course, since Rabbit was back, the boys wanted a story from Prudence and the Millers, so we did that, and then went over the boys' verse from Proverbs. I emphasized that working hard was a wise choice.

After that, we did the Rome to the Reformation (RTR) history portion for the day. It was the discussion of the legend of the founding of Rome. It was interesting that each book we read had a slightly different version of the story. One just said there were twin infant boys who were left in the woods and a wolf raised them until a shepherd rescued them. Another said the twin boys were the sons of the god Mars. And the other said that an evil uncle threw them in the river, and a wolf rescued them. One of the sources didn't even mention how they fought and how Romulus killed Remus, but the other two did. But even between the remaining sources, only one of them mentioned they were fighting over what to name Rome.

Rabbit had to do a notebook page on the "Founding of Rome" so I put the picture of the statue of the boys nursing from the wolf in a document and put some lines underneath for her to write on. I got the picture from the internet links recommended in the Usborne book. Her summary was funny. It said, "The Romans think that this happened..." and she kept emphasizing the think part, because she was trying to point out that it was just a legend.

While Rabbit was off doing her notebook pages, I worked with the boys. It went pretty smoothly with each of them. Pooh is working so hard on his blending. He's really starting to get it, but every now and then it's like his brain says, "I'm going to say this backwards." I showed him that we are almost done with reviewing the letters and were going to start reading words soon. I printed out a dot-to-dot and a maze from abcteach.com for the boys to do during reading time. During math, I gave the one I wasn't working with some muffin tins and the Lauri Fit-a-Shape toy and told him to sort them in as many different ways as possible. The Daily Math Activities have started going a little smoother, so that's been good. I had one more math literature book called A Collection for Kate that I read to the boys after that.

After lunch Rabbit and I went back to work. She worked on her Latin root "unus." I am doing the same thing as last year. I'm writing the definition and words on the back of the 4x6 cards, and then using a sheet I made in Word she writes the definition, draws a picture, and writes at least one other derived word and it's definition. Tomorrow she'll use something I bought from currclick.com to write her sentences on.

Next we did the Roman Numerals for math. I still have my Math-U-See Delta stuff from last year, so we watched the DVD and did one of the workbook pages on Roman Numerals. I'm not sure that she really got it yet, so I'm going to make a small sheet that tells the values of the symbols and the 3 rules for using the symbols and put that up in the school room for her to refer to. Then, once a week for the next few weeks, have her do a page from the old Delta workbook. I just want to make sure she gets how they work, and I'm not sure if we'll cover them again in math.

When we were done with that, I remembered that the boys had a Drawing with Children lesson (which Rabbit joins in on). Tigger was kind of frustrated with just scribbling and experimenting with the markers. He wanted to draw something, so I said he could. Pooh thought learning the different elements of shape was cool, and he enjoyed trying to find them around the room.

This evening we did tomorrow's Bible lesson. My husband has offered to help by doing the Bible from RTR the evening before. However, tonight he was doing the dishes since he got home late, so I read the lesson during snack time so he was able to hear what we were studying. The boys joined in asking questions and making comments about what we learned. I'm sure they'll want to do the project tomorrow.

One other thing we didn't get to in 1st grade was Spanish. I'm not sure how I'm going to work that in yet. We'll have to see how long things take tomorrow with adding science in, too.

First day for Rabbit

I'm trying to ease into school for Rabbit, so we didn't really do any "RTR" today. We had a bit of a crazy morning. Tigger didn't sleep well, and then his throat was still sore and still sniffing, so I knew the boys weren't going to do school today. Then, Tigger accidentally dropped his cereal bowl and it broke all over the tile floor. So, there was 20 minutes sweeping and vacuuming added to the morning. The boys watched PBS this morning while Rabbit and I started.

Rabbit and I went over the boys verse for the week. I thought it was a good verse and she will probably join in the boy's Bible time.

Then we did her math. It was really the second half of a lesson she started before she went to visit the grandparents. I basically had to remind her how to do all the problems. Once we got going, she finally started to click again.

After that we had a short snack, and then I helped her write a letter to her pen pal. She had received a letter while she was gone. That took Rabbit quite a while. She dictated to me, I wrote on the white board, and then she copied it.

By the time she was finished, it was time for me to make lunch. So, I did that. After lunch I had her spend some time on the iTouch doing math division drills. Then we listened to the Spanish lessons from The Easy Spanish that we never finished last year. I thought it would be good to at least finish those off. Finally, we started Book 5, Step 1 in All-About-Spelling. The first lesson is a lot of review, so I set the timer for 5 minutes for each section. We did 5 minutes of the yellow cards, then 5 minutes of the red cards, then 5 minutes of the blue cards, and finally 5 minutes of green cards. I figure we'll just do that every day until we've finished most of the review. The yellow cards are the hardest for her. The blue cards she did great - only missing 4 in the review.

One new thing I'm going to do this year is print out a list of assignments from Homeschool Tracker Plus for her. I've entered almost all the things from the RTR T.M. So, I'll print it out and highlight the ones she can do by herself while I work with the boys. This way she can see what is expected overall for each day, and by herself each day. I'm hoping it will start giving her some responsibility and independence.

On your mark...

I've been spending much of the last weeks getting ready. I have got my Rome to the Reformation (RTR) and 1st grade plans into Homeschool Tracker Plus. It was a lot of work, but worth it to be able to add math drill and AWANA verses to RTR and Spanish and AWANA verses to 1st grade. Also, with the first grade manual, it didn't remind you do do Art Appreciation or Music, so I was able to schedule those every week, and pick what pages to do and all that.

The prep work for 1st grade is quite a bit. I'm using my boys MegaBlocks for the colored blocks to use for exploring math facts. I made one egg-tray holder as described in the manual, and I'm waiting for another dozen eggs to be used up to make another. I'm using some pretty polished stones for "buttons" (I got them from Michael's for some project when we did ECC). I cut out the circles and glued them together and found some spare cloth to cut up for that.

My latest creation is a cup set for the daily counting and money activities. Knowing that each boy would want their own set, I needed to come up with a way to keep them together and keep the right set belonging to each boy. First I cut off the end flaps on a narrow box. Then I used a hot glue gun to glue 3 plastic cups onto the cardboard. I used a personal labeler to put a label in front of each cup. The cup on the left is for the money, and the middle cup is for tens sticks, and the right cup is for ones. Here's a picture of one:

Right now, with nothing in them, I can stack both up (though I doubt I'll be able to stack them once we start making tens sticks):

Another thing I've done is I made a script for doing Calendar Time. There is a short paragraph in the teacher's manual about what to do, but if I don't have it in front of me, I'm likely to forget. So, I typed up Calendar Activities:

1. Review the months of the year. Ask what month comes before [some month] and after [some month].
2. Review the days of the week. Ask what day comes before [some day] and after [some day].
3. Look at the calendar, and mark off the day. Teach how to read and write the date.
4. Ask, "What is tomorrow's date?" and "What was yesterday's date?"
   
5. Review address and phone number.
6. Review their birthday date.

Then I took the "Number of the Day and 100 Chart" page that came in the student materials and printed it up on the back side of that and laminated it. Now I have everything on one sheet that should last the whole year.

I've colored their timeline pieces and laminated those. I'm thinking of getting 2 of the tri-fold science boards for them to put their timeline pieces on. I also colored the reading chart (the little pictures) and laminated those.

I took the number of the day pages, and copied it onto the back of itself (easy when you have 2 copies), and then made 50 copies (25 for each boy, 4 number of the day's per page). I've hole punched those and filled in the numbers already and put them in a notebook. I think having them in one place will make it easier to do.

Now, doing all this has made the boys want to "start the new school" everyday. Which, I'm glad. I've already let them play with the Pattern Blocks. They know some of the fun Rabbit has with school, so they're really looking forward to it. Right now, however, we're just continuing through Abeka's 1st grade reading program (we're at about day 23), since I haven't been able to sell it yet. And we're also continuing through the Math-U-See Primer.

I found a 1st grade supply list over at the MFW message boards. However, it doesn't have the craft sticks (that you need for the number of the day activities), beans or cups listed. The only thing I haven't found yet is 3/4" dowels for the scroll project. I think I'll have to hit Lowe's or Home Depot for those.

For RTR, I let Rabbit color the timeline pieces, and I've laminated them. I've pre-read most of the lessons for the first two weeks. We still have our timeline up from last year, so we'll just keep adding to that. I've printed all the Latin roots onto the front of the 4x6 cards, and made a page for her to write the definition on, draw a picture and write extra words. I'm using the Latin and Greek Roots notebook pages thing I bought online from currclick (I think, or The Old Schoolhouse) for the pages to use to write sentences. She likes "fancy" things to do. I've also typed up all the verses into Photoshop Elements to hang on the wall. I still have a few copies from Augustus Ceasar's World to make.

One thing I'm still trying to decide is whether to copy the images from The Body Book onto cardstock or not. I've already copied some of the pages onto regular paper, but I'm thinking it will be sturdier to do it on cardstock. I don't know if the boys are going to want to join in on that activity or not. I really don't want to have to cut out all those body parts. Plus, I'll probably have to go buy another pack of cardstock if I use it.

I'm planning on starting the first week of August. So, I've got plenty of time to finish up and get everything together. The hard part is figuring out what day to start so our light days land on Wednesday for when P.E. class and dance classes start. We've got a camping weekend coming up and Labor Day, that will mess with my schedule.

I'm looking forward to a new school year.