Monday, August 31, 2009

Week 3 in CTG

This week we learned about Noah and the Flood, Noah's Descendants, and the Tower of Babel in our Bible time, and began memorizing the books of the Old Testament. Rabbit has already memorized these for Sunday School (thanks for that!), AWANA and Keeper's, so it is just review for her. The boys are starting to learn them, but there has been some resistance. I love how there are key verses from each book to look up.

The Greek vocabulary words are going fine so far. I'm still helping her with sentences and looking up words in the dictionary. Neither dictionary we have is really good about showing the original Greek or Latin. Some words have it, some don't, so that has made it trickier.

We've been continuing on in Writing Strands and that goes pretty well. I ended up having her dictate to me, and then write on the white board, and she is copying it back into her notebook. We finished up our Handwriting Review this week. She is excited to start in the Handwriting without Tears workbook.

For math, we finished up Beta, lesson 29. I looked at what lesson 30 is, and decided we're done - it was just more multiplying large numbers. We're going to switch over to Singapore 3A and see how it goes. I think it may be more at her "level." I'm going to crack open my Delta teacher's manual and see how they teach division so I can work with Rabbit on her that when we hit it in 3A.

We keep going through the Intermediate Language Lesson book lessons. The picture study was a little different this week. Rabbit is really struggling with her imagination and these pictures. Maybe we just didn't do enough of this before.

I keep forgetting to do Spelling with Rabbit. We only got to it two days this week. We finished one lesson, but the other, I could tell she was struggling (step 12, All About Spelling Book 2). It was hard to guess whether it was attitude or food sensitivity kicking in, so I stopped the lesson.

History is still tied in with the Bible a lot right now. So, we've been doing the Bible and then History readings all together, since the History is covering what's in the Bible. Makes Bible time last a little longer, and means we don't have a separate History time. Rabbit is still working on her notebook pages. She has trouble copying her writing, though. Oh, and the cuneiform project - that was a bomb! I used "canned" sugar cookie dough from the grocery store, and the tablets expanded to much when they were baking, and the writing disappeared. Next time we'll use clay.

Science was interesting and fun this week. The burn-things-up-with-the-magnifying-glass experiment didn't work. I've done it lots as a kid, but the magnifying glasses we had wouldn't work, or it was too early in the day. The other experiments, with the winter green candies and the penny did work! It did take a while to find a glass that would work with the penny, but we did find it. The little guys really thought it was cool to make the penny appear.

Reading is still the Pathway Readers. The stories are just so good. Sometimes we work in the workbook, but most days, I do not.

I think Rabbit is liking The Easy Spanish. I'm still helping out a lot. I like that it is gentle.

Rabbit is enjoying both Art and Music. I think the Art will help her, even though she is a little on the young side.

I'm loving The Tanglewoods' Secret. I read ahead to myself to see where the story went and balled my eyes out. My kids just rolled their eyes. How I wish there were many more stories like this one.

The boys finished learning all their vowels this week. They're still having trouble hearing the vowel sound in the middle of words, but we'll keep working on it. Pooh is going to really struggle with writing, being a lefty. He really doesn't have the fine motor control. I'll keep doing things on the slates and stuff with him to help. Tigger has incredible fine motor control for a 5 year old boy, but has trouble "touching the lines." Oh well. The Primer math book is perfect for the boys.

School is going well. I'm totally pleased.

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