School Week 6 2012/2013

This week A10 finished the book The Twenty One Balloons, and started her next Co op book, Surviving the Applewhites.  

I added a couple of things to her schedule, grammar and paragraph writing. She will be doing language lessons 1 day a week, grammar another day and paragraph writing on the third day. On the fourth day she'll be working on Editor in Chief.  I'm using Remedia Publications' Writing Paragraphs and Understanding Paragraphs ebooks.   She is really enjoying this and it is already helping her with her writing skills!!  I also purchased the Outlining ebooks from Remedia and we'll be working on them as soon as she is done with the paragraph book.

Now that she is in 5th grade, I need to start working on her writing skills.  I have 4 years to get her ready for high school writing.  This is where it starts! I downloaded a lecture from The Well Trained Mind about how to get the student ready for the high school years.  I will be following what Susan W Bauer said on the lecture. 

As far as X8, he is really coming along! Phonics is going great and he is getting more comfortable with reading and writing.  It's great to have that one on one time with him in the mornings while A10 is doing her independent reading.  It is really helping him!  We'll see how far he gets this year! As for math, he is having no problems at ALL!  He is really enjoying multiplication.  let's hope it stays taht way for the rest of the school year!!

School Week 5 2012/2013

This week A10 read the book From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler and X10 read the book Higgins Bend Song and Dance.  I'm not making A10 do a summary for every single book she reads, she'll do two books in a row and then I'll give her a couple of easier books to just read.

X8 however is doing some type of literary response to every single book we read.  Not the same thing every time, and mostly requires him to draw something, which he doesn't seem to mind at all anymore.  I bought him several how to draw books and they have really built up his confidence in drawing!!

A10 is asking for a more advanced drawing book... she wants to be able to draw animals with more realistic details... I haven't found the right book yet.

School Week 4 2012/2013

This week we had a few outside activities plus all of that co op homework, lets just say our days were long... too long.  Most days we got done by 3:30- 4 o'clock.  That is a little too long. A10 got done reading Igraine the Brave and read through two Roald Dahl books, Esio Trot and Giraffe and the Pelly and Me.

X8 read the book The Bravest of Us All.  I think we had a breakthrough as far as his reading.   It seems he has no problems reading certain things, like when Daddy is playing his Avengers game in his computer, but there seems to be a "problem" when we are doing phonics... Hhhmmmmm.....  I pretty much told him to cut the bull and to start getting serious about it.  There were a few tears but I noticed a change in his attitude towards learning to read.

Well see what happens...

School Week 3 2012/2013

This week was our first week of Co op.  The kids had homework from their language arts class and of course, the science and history class.  It was our first full week of school.  We are really enjoying Astronomy, and for history, we picked up right where we left off.  It is nice having two days of science and two days of history, it makes it easier somehow.

We started Math U See, Epsilon for A10, and Gamma for X8. We are doing two worksheets a day, so X8 has three days of math while A10 has three days of mus and one day of Life of Fred Fractions, which BTW, she is really enjoying!

A10's independent reading for this week was the book Listening for Lions and X8's was The Cat on The Mat is Flat. After she got done with our book selection she started reading Igraine the Brave for Co op.

Co op went really well today, we had four classes instead of just three, which made it very tiring but the kids were all great!