Nov. 13, 2009 - School Update October & November
It seems I am updating about twice a "semester", even though we don't do semesters around here. I'd love to update more, but this type of post takes a while, and I just don't have the time :( Here's a quick update on what we've done over the past couple of months.
Reading:
Both boys have finally made it through that blasted Level 4!!! It took us, I don't know, nine or ten months. I'm not absolutely sure without looking it up. It is considered the whopper of the system and we're SO glad we're past it! Both boys are early in Level 5 and concentrating on Suffixes & Prefixes. Their reading is going very well. Now we just need to get their speed up, and we'll be feeling fine!
Math:
Big Man (9): Still doing well in the Delta book of Math U See (division) He's also learned things like finding the average of a list of numbers, and how to find the area of any number of shapes. Some of them I don't ever remember learning. Maybe I did.....but it sure seemed new to me!
Little Monkey (7): Cruising right along in his 3rd grade Abeka book. Abeka drops multiplication and drills division for a good long time. They come back to the more advanced multiplication later this year. Why they set it up like that, I don't know, but Little Monkey is still doing well so we're not going to rock the boat!!
Grammar:
Both boys are still doing alright. Big Man still has a lot of diagramming to do *yuk*, but it's all stuff he had last year so far. So far, so good. Also, he seems more solid this year on the definitions of the parts of speech. Check that, some definitions. He still struggles to remember a few of them, but he is doing better than a few months ago. Little Monkey says he likes grammar..........."because it's the shortest thing I do all day." Gotta love him.
Handwriting:
Big Man: Has finished all of the lower case cursive alphabet, and seems to be doing pretty well with it. He's now started learning upper case. He really likes cursive, and I like that there aren't any reversals 
Typing is also going well, he's up to a whopping 7 words a minute. I probably should make him do this every day, but I don't.
Little Monkey: Well, after a little more than 3 years, I think he has the print alphabet down as well as he can do it. Stinkin' dysgraphia. Anyway, to his utter delight, I've moved Little Monkey on to cursive. He has learned lower case "a" and "b' so far. It's cute how he's always leaning over trying to peek at Big Mans paper to see how to form an upper case letter. We'll see how this goes. He could be on cursive for a very, very long time!
History:
Um, we've done a ton of history things since my last update. I'll just hit the highlights:
- Learned about Helen Keller. Watched The Miracle Worker, learned some sign language, & tried doing an obstacle course blindfolded & no auditory help.
- Learned about the invention of the car & airplane: Henry Ford & the Wright Brothers. They had a great time building paper airplanes with Daddy & seeing which folds would make the plane fly farther.
- Had a "Great Disasters" week: the 1906 San Francisco earthquake & the Titanic. Our trip to Tennessee came in handy here. I knew the Titanic was coming up, so I made sure we spent some time at the Titanic exhibit at the Wonderworks museum. "How long can you keep your hand in freezing water" was the exhibit. The water was the same temp. as the water the Titanic was in when it sank. Big Man made it the longest, keeping his hand in for a mammoth 19 seconds. For the earthquake, we watched a great documentary then built different types of homes: graham cracker, lincoln log, & lego. Then we made an earthquake and saw which ones withstood the shaking the best.
- World War I. Mostly they enjoyed looking through the different books with pictures of items/daily life. We learned about trench warfare, and daily life of the soldiers. War Game was our favorite book from this week.
- The Roaring Twenties, Charles Lindberg, Walt Disney, 20's & 30's entertainment, the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl. This was not all in one week, of course, but over a few weeks. They seemed to really enjoy this time period, and we did a bunch with it. They especially liked learning about what people did for entertainment during this period. I've listed some of it in the Art update below, but besides that we also listed to the original broadcast of The War of the Worlds. They were just about as fascinated as I was watching the documentary: American Experience: Surviving the Dust Bowl. This is an outstanding show, highly recommend it if you don't know much about this time. The Great Depression also sparked quite a bit of interest. I spent way too much time on this, but I created a file folder game called How Depressing! They seemed to love it, and it really sneaked in a number of skills like cementing depression-era facts, math, and budgeting. I set it up kind of like PayDay, but with Depression twists, like You're Fired! spots, Winter Comes: do you have money for winter coats?, and such. Here's a picture:
I will change this when we play it again. They had no idea how much food to buy to last their family a week, so I think I'll make pre-made grocery cards and they'll choose from that. It was funny while we were playing to see how they were thinking, seeing as they were the husbands during the game. Big Man bought everyone in his family a coat except himself "because you have to take care of your kids and your wife", while Little Monkey didn't buy anyone a coat "because it would cost too much of my money"! The little miser.
Science:
We're plugging right along with science. We've learned about potential vs. kinetic energy, Newton's 3 laws of motion, and the energy of atoms and molecules. We've done experiments along the way with each thing. Now that we've moved into learning about electricity, they have more interst and can see the applications of these things they've been learning. The next few weeks will be fun as we begin to do some things to show how to move the electricity, make solar machines, etc.
Art:
I've fallen off the wagon when it comes to studying certain artists every month. We made it through Degas and Cezzane with a little Monet thrown in ;) I'll get back to it eventually, I've been sidetracked working them through a little of Drawing With Children. I know tons of homeschoolers love this book, but I'm not its biggest fan. I do like how it shows you the 5 elements of shapes, and what you can do with that information once you've practiced it a bit. What I don't like is the lack of any type of schedule or guidance through the chapters. Would it kill them to give me a few examples of warm up exercises I could make copies of? About how long am I supposed to stay on one concept as opposed to another? I don't know and I'm not proficient enough in the art department to feel like I can wing it. This is why I decided this summer I would combine Drawing With Children with the Artistic Pursuits book we already owned. I have liked the variety of learning about Artists Using Shapes (Artistic Pursuits), then working with the 5 elements of shape (Drawing With Children). It's just been more work for me than I'm used to doing for art thus far. I'm getting the hang of it a little bit at a time, and the kids seem to be enjoying it. Also, we were able to apply it to some history lessons:
Combining art and history. 
We've been learning about the twenties & thirties. One week we focused on the entertainment of the decade with Walt Disney and the first cartoons with sound. We made little flip books of a ball bouncing, then we took the skills we've been learning during our art time and used the elements of shape to create Mickey Mouse. Big Man's (9) mouse is on the left, Little Monkey's (7) is in the middle, and mommys mouse is on the right :) We were quite pleased with ourselves. Peanut (4) was beside himself with excitement because Mickey Mouse rates right up there with Blues Clues. They had a much bigger respect for the amount of work that went into Steamboat Willie (which we watched on You Tube, along with some other very early Disney cartoons) after doing our projects.
P.E.:
A little P.E. time before we begin our day It looks like they are just standing there, but they are all mid-bounce.
There's enough P.E. going on around here I thought I should give a recap on that too! Both Big Man and Little Monkey continue to take Karate, although not seriously enough to test for a belt. Big Man has joined a swim team which he loves very much! He has practice three evenings a week, and one swim meet a month.
This is how he did at his first big competition:
Not the best picture, I know. He did really well, especially for a first-timer. Both ribbons were for team relays he was in. He placed 4th in both of the individual races he had. His coach says he has the best freestyle form on the team. Big Man was very, very proud of that. We're just glad he has found a sport he loves so much AND is good at!
One more week before our Thanksgiving break. Woo Hoo!! Boy am I ready for a "break". We're going to be outrageously busy cleaning (and cleaning out), filing, and planning for our holiday season. We are all looking forward to it SO much!
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