Homeschool Discoveries

It’s only natural to put our best foot forward when writing a week-in-review.  By the end of the week, hard moments are usually water-under-the-bridge compared to all the fun and learning.  But I’ll be honest — yesterday was one of those really hard days.

Math tends to be a crucible for character development at our house, at least where Miss M (3rd grade) and I are concerned.  We’ve had a pretty easy-going past month since we started Level D of RightStart, but we hit some new material this week.  Miss M easily became frustrated, and had a hard time listening to my explanations of the concepts.  I guess by both she and I had had enough by Friday.  She got highly frustrated and I got highly frustrated in return.  Not good.   By the end of the day all was forgiven and schoolwork finally got done.  But this is one of those weeks I am really happy for the break the weekend brings!

Here are a few learning highlights from this week:

Spelling/Phonics:  Miss M completed lesson 18 in Logic of English Essentials.   To practice the “WOR” phonogram words, she finished writing a story she began a couple weeks ago (you can read here story here).   Mr. E (Kindergarten) started lesson 7 in LOE Essentials, but we weren’t super motivated in the spelling department this week, so we’ll be continuing on with that lesson next week.  🙂  Mr. E also read from I See Sam books every day this week.

Math:  Mr. E enjoyed using the geoboards in RightStart B, as well as getting out the math balance again and learning about vertices and diagonals with hexagons and pentagons.  Mr. E also continued to practice the “9’s trick” and started learning about the “Two fives” trick. All told, we worked on lessons 62-66 — but he still needs more practice on these two adding strategies before we move much further in the lessons.

In RightStart D, Miss M worked on lessons 68-70 covering large numbers in the hundreds of thousands, and 73-74 covering multiplying a larger number by a single digit.  We’ve been skipping around a bit due to many of the lessons being review from Level C.  On one hand, I want to coast for a bit and just do some of the review lessons from now until Christmas given the challenges we had this week and the fact we have ample time to finish D before the end of the year.  On the other hand, I really do believe the issues we are having is less about math and more about the character area of being teachable (like when Miss M says to me, “I just hate it when anyone has to teach me how to do something”…LOL!).

History: We’re really diving in to the period in US History after the Revolutionary war.  Our non-fiction read-alouds at the moment are “A New Nation” by the Maestros and “The Year of the Horseless Carriage 1801” by Genevieve Foster.  Miss M read, “Away Goes Sally”  by Elizabeth Coatsworth for an independent fiction reading assignment this reading.

Science: Miss M continues to work through Sassafras Science Adventures Zoology.  With some prodding I convinced her to write on the notebook pages on her own (with the promise that I wouldn’t correct her spelling unless she asked me to!).  The kids also enjoyed watching a couple episodes of “Sci Girls” this week.   We’ll be picking up more science study as family after the Christmas break.

And now for the FUN we had this week:

Top Row: Baking and decorating sugar cookies with Grandma Karen

Middle Row:  Miss M’s friend Miss J spent the afternoon with us on Wednesday.  The kids made pretzel/kiss/m&m treats and had a tea party.

Bottom row:  Mr. E’s Lego Angry Birds Level,  A trip to Ikea (yea for “kids eat free Tuesdays”!), and a few of the 16 Christmas books we hauled home from the library.

Have a wonderful weekend!

I’m linking up with Collage Friday and the Weekly Wrap-Up!