Sunday, April 27, 2008

Week #7 Review

What an insane week! We've been without internet since Wednesday, which is why this update is late. In addition, I've been helping Stephen on a project for work that the EARLIEST we've quit on this week was 1:30 a.m. One morning it was 4:30. Of course, with 3 young kids, you don't compensate by sleeping in the next day! So things have definitely been interesting here this week.

Thankfully, Matthew was very cooperative this week so school went smoothly.

The week was very tough on the kids with them not seeing Daddy AT ALL, so on Friday we made him pictures. First, Matthew made a sunshine with a smiley face (the eyes and nose are kind of hard to see in the picture). I know it doesn't look like much, but I'm AMAZED at how far he's come:


Then we traced a sign language "I love you" (he stands at the door each morning and presses his little hands up against the storm door in an "I love you sign" and keeps it there until he can't see Daddy anymore). So he signed it up against the paper and I traced it. Then I wrote "Daddy" on another page for him to copy, but he wrote these letters COMPLETELY by himself. I bumped the paper while he was writing the "y," but I was so amazed again at his improvement in this area!


Then the girls drew theirs. Jessica:


Ashlyn:


We hung them all on the fridge for Daddy to see when he came home in the wee hours of the morning. I think they brightened his... night.


This week's verse was "Forgive as the Lord forgave you" (Colossians 3:13). He was able to recite all 7 verses tonight, though was a little bumpy on the references, but I was impressed!


In planning ahead for a few weeks (I was amazed at how much time I had when I didn't have internet access ), I realized that since we skipped 25 weeks of reading, he only has a few weeks of reading left before he's done with the books we have. So I looked up what books were in the next reading level for Sonlight and then went to my trusty "Paperback swap" account (a GREAT resource if you don't already know that!) and was able to get TWELVE of the books off of the list for FREE! One of them was 16.99 through Sonlight and someone had it listed on Paperback swap! I couldn't believe my luck. Now I just need to get a Sonlight order together to be able to get the schedule for the readers. Hmm... wishlist items?

Saturday, April 19, 2008

Week #6 Review

Matthew had another week where he just wanted to keep going. He finished one of his books by Tuesday! But I always try to just go with it because by Friday he really doesn't want to do much. This Friday was devoted to crafts. We had read "The Clever Mouse" this week so we made a mouse bag puppet. I cut everything out and placed the whiskers because they were a little harder, but he put on the glue and placed the other pieces. He broke into a huge grin when I showed him that it was a puppet. He just didn't see that coming at all


On Wednesday at skating they got to ride on saucers while the teachers shot them across the ice. Needless to say, Matthew had a blast.


He is doing SO MUCH BETTER with his reading to me now that we switched books. He's so much more expressive and today got through an entire page properly pausing at all the periods, continuing on through line breaks if he didn't see a period and really enjoyed looking up and making eye contact at the end of phrases.

He's also doing great with his memory verses. He learns one each week and tonight was able to quote all 6 of them and had only forgotten one reference. His memory never ceases to amaze me. His verses so far have been:

Week 1: Pay attention, my child, to what I say. Listen carefully. Proverbs 4:20
Week 2: Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. Hebrews 11:1
Week 3: God loves a cheerful giver. 2 Corinthians 9:7
Week 4: Let the peace of God rule in your hearts... and be thankful. Colossians 3:15
Week 5: Tell your neighbor the truth because we belong to each other. Ephesians 4:25
Week 6: Obey your leaders [because] they keep watch over you. Hebrews 13:17

We also went to the store together and picked out a Kumon workbook. It's the Let's Cut Paper book for the younger kids. They had one for 3, 4 and 5, but he's had NO experience with scissors so I got the one for age 2 and up and added the other to our wishlist. He's done two pages so far and is really doing well. His hand shakes when he tries to line it up but he's able to open the scissors wider than he was a couple of days ago and has cut fairly accurately on the line. I'm restraining myself from getting a few of the other workbooks (a coloring, tracing or maze one to help with his pencil holding), but I'm impressed with Kumon so far! Everyone's recommendations were right on the money!

On a non-Matthew related note, Ashlyn has recently started to sit through longer and longer books. She'll find one and bring it to me and just plop in my lap. Today we got through an entire book of Matthew's (as in, not a short board book) and she never moved. Granted, it was a Blues Clues book and that's something that completely holds her attention, but still, it was motivation to start to save harder for Sonlight's Core P3/4. I was hoping it would be something all of us could do together (I currently have to wait until the girls are occupied or napping to work with Matthew to avoid distraction) and it seems like the girls are getting closer to attentiveness in that regard.

So all-in-all, another good week. It definitely has its difficult moments, but so far our schooling journey has been very positive.

Friday, April 11, 2008

Week #5 Review

As a general note, I got the wish list up earlier this week. So leave me feedback about any of the items you’re familiar with if you’re so inclined It’s in the right margin and I’ve included links to each item.

This has been a good week. It started on Sunday with Matthew asking as soon as we got home from church if he could please do school. It ended today with him saying “Can we do MOOOOORE school please?” when we finished for the day. It’s definitely nicer when the week goes like that!

In science we were learning about summer and therefore focusing on the sun. So for our craft we made a sun out of Matthew's handprints. The girls LOVED it and want to touch it and hold it every time they're in the kitchen where it hangs on the fridge. I guess it's all the yellow



During his skating class this week he got to play hockey again. He had an absolute MELTDOWN when his teacher removed the net from the ice so the public skating session could start. He skated almost the entire length of the ice to get down to it and then right before he got to it she took it off the ice, then told me to go to the door back at the other end of the ice so he'd have to skate all the way back. I felt so bad for him, but he certainly did get extra skating practice.


By Friday, we typically only have a few books to work on because on certain days he’s wanted to go ahead in books or whatever. So today I put the four books we needed to work in on the counter and told him to choose which ones he wanted to do and then we’d do the rest later. He picked all of them except one – the reading book. We’ve both pretty much loathed this book for the past 5 weeks. He doesn’t enjoy reading it, it’s really beneath his ability, plus there are no pictures and the stories make no sense to him because they all try to use smaller words to convey the story. He just doesn’t enjoy it at all. I had been holding out hope that it might get harder as the weeks went on, but so far, it hasn’t.

So today, realizing we still had TWENTY weeks to go in the book, I flipped to the very last lesson and realized it was still stuff he could read now. So I made an executive decision to scrap that book. I picked another book from his pile of readers and he flew through it and asked if we could do more! That was music to my ears. So starting Monday we’ll just move on to the book that’s scheduled for week 25. I’m hoping by the time we get to the end of his readers that he currently has that I’ll have saved up enough money to get Sonlight’s Core P3/4 and then he’ll have plenty more books to fill up the holes in the schedule.

And as you’ll recall, we started Math a week ago today. One would assume we’d be on or around Lesson 6, correct? (last Friday, then 5 days this week). Nope. We’re on Lesson 18. And we’d be farther but today after 7 lessons in a row with him just continually asking for more I had to tell him LAST ONE. Horizons is definitely a colorful curriculum and I think that makes it more fun for him. I know some kids would be distracted by that, but it’s definitely a plus for him. So I had to adjust all of next week's schedule after today because we wouldn't have any math otherwise!

Anyway, I’ll end this insanely long post and try to enjoy my weekend. Hope you do the same!

Friday, April 4, 2008

Week #4 Review

Another good week. This week in Handwriting Without Tears Matthew finally got to the letters. He is still very wobbly with a pen, but THOROUGHLY enjoyed building the letters out of the wood pieces. He did that for probably 2 hours one day, just finding different letters and figuring out how to build them. He thought it was great fun.

We enjoyed going outside several days this week to do our science lessons since we're learning about spring. We just pulled up a pile of pollen and looked around trying to find the things mentioned in the book!

Matthew's ice skating went well this week. He had some special visitors come watch him skate and he enjoyed the "snow fight" they got to have for the last 10 minutes of their lesson. He got to throw snowballs made from ice shavings and who wouldn't love that? (Especially a kid who has hardly ever gotten to experience snow! It's been so warm here in the winters since he's been born!)

Today we decided to try math. I hadn't been using his math book because it really assumes the child can write (a lot of it is writing and tracing numbers, circle this picture, cross out that picture, etc.) Today I realized, I can just write whatever answer he says. He doesn't have to actually do the writing. Then I realized, why write it? I can just have him point and I can make a mental note of what concepts he's having trouble with and we can reinforce those. That way, he still has the math book to use when he CAN write for himself, or if he gets beyond these math concepts, I'll have a program for his sisters. He LOVED it. He did 6 lessons before I had to tell him it was time to take a break! Another incentive for the subjects he doesn't like as much ("if we finish this we can do MATH!")

Since he is reading 4-5 years ahead of his age/level, there's some grammar in the books that are really beyond his comprehension. Right now the grammar is apparently focusing on exclamation marks, because they're everywhere in the stories. He understands what an exclamation mark means, but he doesn't really know yet to "read ahead" and see that there's one at the end of the sentence. So he reads something like, "I can't wait to go to the PARK!" or "I told you not to GO!" He yells the last word of the sentence while reading the rest of it in a fairly monotone voice. It's quite humorous to listen to :-)

So another good week. Starting next week we will be incorporating crafts based on stories we're reading, I just haven't been organized enough to tackle that yet. So more pictures should be coming. I'll also be adding a "wish list" to the side bar where our curriculum is listed, so if you see something on there that you have an opinion about, let me know your opinion! I always like hearing user's opinions of products. Or if you're a family member or friend needing gift ideas for my kids, start there! :-)