Homeschool Discoveries

I couldn’t really think of one unifying theme for the week, so the title reflects the potpourri of things I’m thinking about as I write a post to wrap up our week.

Remember last week, when the neighbor kids helped our kids build a little fort in the snow? The next day, Tony helped our kids mound up a whole bunch of snow, which the kids dug out in to a really cool fort (or a “hut” as they insist upon calling it!).  The hut and surrounding paths and small forts were the site of much play this week (and neighbor friends joining in for the outside play again today):

Here are a few of our learning highlights this week:

1. Mr. E (Kindergarten) and I played a game of Subtraction Corners early in the week, then Miss M (3rd grade) joined Mr. E and I as well for a game of adding corners today.  We’ve never played corners with more than two players but it works just fine!

2.  Mr. E continued to practice subtraction with Right Start B, and wanted “more worksheets”, so here he is doing some subtraction in a Singapore 1-A workbook I keep on hand for just such occasions. :-).  We also did a bit of work in RS B on making change and reading thermometers and scales.  Mr. E is just about done with B…maybe another week and we’ll be on to Level C.   Miss M continued with division practice with Math Mammoth 3-B this week.  I didn’t really “push” too hard on the math front this week, so we’ll still be working on division next week for at least part of the week.

3.  All three of the older kids tried out the new Logic of English phonogram practice app that was released this week.  I think it hits Mr. E’s interests and abilities most closely.  Even though Miss M still needs practice on some of her phonograms, she thought the game play of the app was a bit boring.  Mr E really liked it and found it helpful, while it seemed a bit tricky for Mr. K (age 4, preschool), who is just starting to learn all his lower case letters and their phonogram sounds.

4.  It was a co-op week for us…I taught a lesson on magnets for my class of 1st and 2nd graders, so that meant my kids got a bit of a review on magnets as well.  Though I had great intentions of also starting a lesson from BFSU Volume 2 with my kids, preparing my lesson for co-op (plus helping Miss M put a few finishing touches on her Rocks and Minerals labpook) seemed to take all the science-related energy I had this week.

5.  We finished reading Life Of Fred: Apples today.  Life of Fred is like “math dessert”…everyone loves it so much!  We’ll start Butterflies, the second book, next week.  Miss M started expressing interest in doing a bit more writing so I bought Write On! and we got a start with two lessons from that book this week (I’m sure I’ll have more to say about it once we’ve tried out a few more lessons).

6.  Mr. E drawing a comic strip (inspired by the “Your turn to play” questions in the last chapter of Life of Fred: Apples).

7. Sketch/Scribble art and a sentence by Miss M..The start of Write On! project #4.

Have a great weekend!

 
I’m linking up with Collage Friday, The Weekly Wrap-Up, and It’s a Wrap!