Week 1

Week 1Introduction to the Animal Kingdom

These books will be used most every week during our animal habitat study this year.

This week we learned about "what is a habitat" and also had an overview on where animals live and why, how they communicate, and some of their defenses.This week we also began reading Animal Defenses (it will be used for the first 6 weeks of our study) and finished reading The Flying Flea, Callie, and Me which we started a week ago as bedtime reading. I wanted to finish up Callie before starting our first Winterpromise read aloud- we'll have to read more than the schedule says next week to catch up, but the kids are always begging for "just one more chapter" anyway.

Language Arts

The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading:

Miriam completed through lesson 128; she is also reading aloud several pages of Teach Us, Amelia Bedelia each day.

Rebekah is working on lesson 31. She can read words ending in 'at', 'an', 'ad', and 'am'! This book is so wonderful for Rebekah. She has really just learned to write her name since she struggles some with fine motor skills. This book gives her such a feeling of accomplishment, she gets to cuddle with me in our rocker for 15 minutes a day and gets lots of praise and encouragement without the frustration she encounters when trying to do written work. Most of the written work she does can be frustrating for her since she knows the answers but cannot always correctly form her letters or numbers well enough to write the answer.

Explode the Code: Miriam completed through lesson 6 in book 4. Rebekah has only one letter left before she finishes book B.

All About Spelling:

This is one of the highlights of the day for both girls. They love working with the letter tiles and writing on the board with the dry erase markers. Miriam is working on step 19 in Level One. I'm not yet working through this book with Rebekah, but she wants to do everything her sister is doing. So, Rebekah builds some of the words she is learning in The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading with the tiles, she reads phrases I write for her on the board and she practices writing letters and short words with the markers.

Growing with Grammar: Miriam is working on Growing with Grammar Grade 1. This week she learned about the difference in a phrase and a sentence and learned about capitalizing the first word and putting a period at the end of each sentence.

Math

Miriam is using Rightstart B for math this year. She also has Singapore 1a, but is taking a break from it until we finish the introductory lessons in Rightstart. Miriam has completed through lesson 6 during our daily math time this week.

Rebekah is using Rightstart A and has completed lessons 1-4 this week. This is another curriculum that is just perfect for Rebekah since she is able to do the math concepts without being forced to use worksheets. She is also doing Singapore's Earlybird Kindergarten Mathematics A (and has completed through lesson 4.3. The concepts are really below her, however it is giving her some practice with those fine motor skills while reinforcing some easier concepts.

Art

This week the girls learned about lines: diagonal, vertical and horizontal. Michael likes art too!

Miriam's work

Rebekah's work

Other activities

Since I am trying to teach a kindergartner and preschooler and also take care of a 2 year old and 4 month old there is some downtime during our schooling. The kids take those opportunities to have some fun while learning. They work on their fine motor skills and/or use manipulatives to practice math concepts (or sometimes just play with the manipulatives, hence the counting bears flying in the helicopter and riding in the dump truck). =)