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Well it's been a real long while since an update, in fact the month is almost done. What have we been up to: Mondays have been our days for book work and assigning of the weekly writing. That has gone really well and have gotten into a rhythm of what is expected each day as far as writing goes. Josh's rock climbing classes on Tuesdays are going well and Noah and I had the opportunity to watch him as our regular ride had gone to Disneyland. Noah was excited that rock climbing exsists and now of course wants to take lessons. Luckily I already have him registered for swimming so sorry bud not this year. Noah's music classes are going well also. He enjoys his special time with just us and his music teacher. Practicing some days is a challenge, we just have to be more consistent in our time of when we practice and it will become easier. Also the new motivation the teacher has given him is working towards some magnets. He's all about stickers, magnets anything that's charted - I should probably learn from this.... Homeschool hockey is as busy as ever, as you can see with the number of participants!
We had a couple of friends birthday parties to attend too on the weekend which included swimming and pizza always good combinations. Noah and I have been working on his Animals projects. We made a list of animals from A-Z and then we worked on classifying them into verterbrates and invererbrates and then in the verterbrate category further classified them into Mammals, Fish, Birds, Amphibians and Reptiles. We still need to do the invertebrate category and we have already started different habitats such as the rainforest. We are also watching lots of National Geographic animals videos. He is enjoying this thematic way of learning much better. Josh has been working on his Antartica unit - after the mapping he did he's been reading lots of books and watching a lot of different movies about the topic. Now is the time to write down all that he has learned and then we will close this unit and move onto another continent. Josh has also been busy working with some power tools that Dad has set up in the garage for him. He's been designing and then making some weapons. (I'll do a seperate blog post on this, just to do it justice). He has been really creative in this area! As busy as we have been I've still had time to get in some knitting as well as attending Fiddler on the Roof with my Mom, sister, aunt and friend. It was a wonderful show and I'm so glad I saw it! Great story and very funny! Now my niece Amanda and great niece Isabella (3 months tommorow) are visiting. I'm really enjoying having them here all to myself. Next month we'll be adding in swimming lessons for Noah at the same time as Josh's climbing class. So until then stay tuned..... |
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Well the first week went better than I had anticipated. Writing out a week's worth of writing assignments for Josh worked really well. I was quite impressed with the writing that he put this week so we will continue with that plan. Climbing was fun and having a friend pick up Josh for the event was awesome as Noah and I got to have some special one on one time. We started our A-Z list of animals we want to study, the list is almost complete and we'll start "classifying" them this week. Noah was SO happy to get back to Music although we haven't got the practice routine back yet. Will need to work on that this week. And Hockey is going to be lots of fun this year! Although Noah isn't participating there are 30 kids on the ice this year so they had to break up the group into 5 groups (thankfully there are enough helpers for each group). Josh had twisted his ankle on Tuesday at climbing and it was still a little sore so he wasn't sure how much skating he would be able to do. But he was having so much fun he made it the whole hour. Friday I had a dr.'s appointment so left Josh in charge of doing his work independently AND babysitting Noah. When I got home Josh had done all his work AND he had done Math with Noah - WOW! I'm loving all this independence stuff ha ha. Oh I also assigned Josh a Geography assignment he is doing Antartica - of course he choose what he thought would be the simpliest continent but I have plans bwahahaha! I also got Noah registered for swim lessons in February - it will happen at the same time as climbing and hockey so I'll need to really be on top of my game next month! So this week's plan is much the same but we'll up the game a bit, and get in that music practice. Until next week! |
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Well after a great Christmas and New Years break we are getting back at it tomorrow! I don't feel as near as ready or as organized as I had hoped to be but it's here anyways so I guess I'll do like I usually do and wing it! This session will prove to be busy with outside activities: Josh is going to rock climbing with his friend on Tuesdays. Noah will resume Music classes on Wednesday and then Josh will be doing Homeschool Hockey on Thursdays. Noah was supposed to do hockey as well but his skating isn't quite there yet but Dad did make a rink in the back yard and his enthusiasm for skating is great so I think we'll just stick with that. That and the fact that we have an opportunity in February to stick in swimming lessons for him on Tuesdays and Thursdays - I just have to figure out how logistically I can get everyone where they need to be. In addition to the outside activities Joshua and I will have a greater focus on writing. I'm going to try and have a week of writing assignments lined up on Monday and give them to him all at once to be completed by Friday - it will help in his organization and independence goals and hopefully keep us on track through out the week and get more writing accomplished. The week will look something like this: Monday: focused time working on the writing process - that is taking one of the Friday Freewrites through the revision process to a finished piece of writing. Tuesdays: copywork - I've purchased Spelling Wisdom to use for copywork and dictation to give a little more structure to our copywork schedule. Wednesdays: study skills - taking notes - Wed's will remain our TV/DVD day but I'll increase the note taking requirements. Thursdays: dictation - again we'll use Spelling Wisdom for this. Fridays: Freewrite - I'll use topics from the Bravewriter website for this - again we'll take one of the freewrites each month to use for a revision process piece. In addition to writing Josh will continue on with Math and Science with Dad. Although I'm pushing for more substance in Science than just reading. Speaking of reading Josh is in desperate need of some new reading material - he's gone through everything in the house! He's really struggling at finding titles that he enjoys that he hasn't read yet. I also need to assign Josh a Geography assignment. Well that's what the second semester is going to look like for Josh now onto Noah. I'm changing things up for Noah as I've decided to go with a year long schedule with him. For a couple of reasons - one he gets bored like me and needs lots of "interaction" - our new word for Noah. Second I think he benefits more from a thematic type topic and having a new thing to do each day. So I've bought these small shoe box size bins, 5, one for each day of the week - that I'll put an activity that we will do together that has to do with our theme. Our theme for January (and part of February) is Animals. So far we are going to a list of Animals from A-Z, we are going to make a binder for the classification system so as we do each animal we can "classify" it. We are going to do a Habitat study in which I'm going to work in Geography as well. Then we'll do Farm Animals, Ocean Animals, Zoo Animals etc., I think he's really going to enjoy having a topic to focus on like we did with the History Project. I'm off course going to continue with the Sonlight Read Alouds but just as a list not as a schedule which doesn't seem "natural" to us. I'm also going to continue his Letterland Phonics and his Readers. I'm going to try and incorporate more manipulative math into the thematic unit and use more living math and manipulatives using the Horizons book as a spine - I find Noah has no problems doing the worksheets but I don't feel he has a "living" grasp of the concepts. For Geography we'll complete his Canadian map and then we'll use his thematic topic to incorporate more geography that way. Science same thing. Well that's the plan for now the only other thing on my list of to-do's is to incorporate more life skills into the mix. Specifically I need to get Noah a focused list of chores (he's getting off a little too lightly there) and I would like to incorporate more cooking skills for both kids - Noah is not a problem his enthusiasm is there I just need to take the time with him to teach him some concepts. With Josh it's just a matter of upping his game so to speak. If I think of anything else I'll be sure to post - I will try to be better in 2010 in updating more often (you've heard that before haven't you?).
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