Homeschool 2010 Week 2

Week two of my attempt at year round schooling.  Things went a little smoother but we aren’t at the pace or level of organization I desire just yet.  Mostly my fault, some of it the boys just not getting into the back to school groove yet.

Ds3 is enjoying Mathletics.  It’s not a thorough as I thought it would be or as I would like it to be, but it’s working.  The lessons are just challenging enough and he is motivated to collect reward points for buying items to personalize his avatar thingy.

In SOTW we covered nomads and early settlements.  The boys loved setting up the hall closet as a cave and making cave drawings.

Ds3 is loving the experiments in McWiz Kid.  This week was all about matter.  In the pic above he is setting out some ice cubes to illustrate the three states of matter.  I was happily surprised to see that he remembered about our previous discussions of evaporation (when learning about the water cycle I think) so he easily grasped the “water into gas” concept.  In our nice sunny porch it took 32 minutes for the ice to completely melt and a day for it to evaporate (because of the high humidity around here.)

We wrapped up our Antarctic study by replicating Shakelton’s lifeboat on our sidewalk.  A nice demonstration about the crew’s survival skills and a lesson on drawing things to scale as well.

We started reading Stone Fox this week (did this one in 4th grade with ds1 and ds2 as well!)  Ds does well with comprehension questions.  As with my older boys, I will ease him into reading his assigned books on his own…for now I do most of the reading and will gradually have him read more on his own and out loud to me and ds4.  Here he is making a get well card for the sick grandfather in the story.

Ds4 has been working on alphabetical order and enjoyed this $1 puzzle I found at Wal-Mart.  He has asked to do it on his own often.

He is also learning the word names for numbers and worked on this cute matching wheel as well (number names on circle of cardboard, numbers on clothes pins.)

Ds4’s book this week was A Kiss For Little Bear.  We are approaching his reading/literature with a kind of Five In A Row feel.  I pick a classic book to read to him all week and give him some kind of related assignment each day.  He did a worksheet that showed the course Grandmother Bear’s kiss took to get to Little Bear, a wheel that showed the life cycle of frogs, and above you see him working on a monster drawing similar to what Little Bear gave Grandmother.  Maybe when everyone is home this evening we can reenact the kiss sending scenes lol.

I really need to work on lesson plans and general organization for the next week.  I have a problem with having all the materials I need for a lesson on hand and available and waste too much of the school day being unprepared.  After 11 years of this you would think I’d have it just a little more together lol.  Obstacles in my way?  A weekend filled with a family reunion, plans to see Toy Story 3 and Father’s Day.  Oh, and dh leaving for a business trip on Monday and ds3 having allergy testing on Wednesday.  Sigh.  I will persevere and be back here next week with a great weekly wrapup.  Yes, I will!