October 21s t- 27th

We began this week on Sunday because Jonas and I were so excited about starting a new reading program that a friend of ours lent us called Right Track Reading Lessons, by Miscese R. Gagen. Jonas began straight away with lesson 1: sounds m, t and a. Once we talked about the individual sounds of these letters Jonas was asked to form a few words (I gave him the words and he put them together from tiles with the sounds written on them). After forming the words he was asked to read some words with the same sounds from the book. He did great!

On Monday we continued with the reading/writing lessons and he learned the sounds s and d. Once more he wrote the sounds and we talked about reading from left to right again. He formed words (given him again) with the sounds from lessons 1 and 2 and then he read more words from the book. We also have been making flash cards to practice the sounds from every lesson.

In addition to reading on Monday we also began to put more math exercises in the notebooks. Jonas and Ronan explored the concept of most and fewest. In this exercise I wrote a list of many members of our family and they had to decide which name had the most letters and which the fewest. Jonas counted all the letters in each name and wrote the number next to the name so that he could more easily figure out the answer. 

On Tuesday we began with geography, talking about the earth. We looked at pictures of what the earth looks like from space, we talked about water and land masses and cloud formations and we began to discuss the 7 continents. Both boys drew a picture of the earth in their books with North and South Americas in green and water in blue.

After geography we started a science project. The boys each planted a bean on the side of a clear plastic cup so that they can watch it grow.

They also had horseback riding lessons in the big arena!

On Wednesday we started school-time with a Spanish lesson on animals. As a family we are trying to incorporate more Spanish into daily life. Wednesdays are Spanish days though, and we try to do everything in Spanish including bedtime reading and songs. One exception to this, however, is our reading lesson. Jonas did lesson 3 in his reading book studying the sounds i, and f. This lesson was particularly difficult, not in the subject matter, but in the length. He was asked to make many words, and also to read quite a few. I think in future I will pick and choose which words he needs to make/read.

Wednesday night in our math before bedtime we discussed the concept of half. I used their "tippy taps" (pogs as I remember them) and gave each of them several groups of them that they were asked to split into halves. Ronan needed some help to figure his out but Jonas took to the concept quite easily.

On Thursday we talked in more depth about plants. Both kids drew a diagram of the parts of a plant (Jonas drew a tree that even included a woodpecker's hole and the seed from which the tree grew and Ronan drew a remarkably good flower with seeds, roots and lots of leaves). They also both drew a picture of the cup with their bean sprout in it and we talked about what plants need to grow (sunlight, water, air, mineral rich soil). Jonas began an observations page for keeping track of his bean's progress and he noticed that his bean was bigger! He observed that this was probably because of all the water it had taken in.

After our talk about plants we continued with geography, studying maps and the four main directions. We drew our own maps and tested our ability to recognize the directions on the map. Ronan did a remarkably good job at writing out the directions on his map!

Music: Several days this week the boys practiced their violins. Ronan is just beginning and therefore we talked a little bit about the parts of the violin and he started to play open G and D strings. Jonas is coming back from over a month without practicing but he can still play his G major scale remarkably well and his sight-treading is pretty good on Good King Wenceslas. 

On Friday we made more observations about our bean plants. The kids also began helping me more with household chores, Jonas put away the dishes and Ronan swept the stairs. This is something that I will be adding into our learning: how to care for yourself and your home. Included in this will be cooking, cleaning, organizing and projects.

What a fantastic week we've had!

Friday, October 19th, 2012

Beginning Kindergarten for Jonas, Preschool for Ronan

One of the challenges of teaching two young children of different ages at home is keeping them both interested and learning, but teaching them at their own level. Jonas is ready to read while Ronan is just beginning to write and recognize his letters. Jonas knows his numbers and basic addition and subtraction while Ronan is just beginning to catch these concepts on his fingers.

Vacation time is now over and our vacation was much longer than most as we took a whole month in Peru at the beginning of the school year. This was by no means wasted learning time. Both children learned a lot of Spanish, visited some very important parks (Attacama Desert, Islas Ballestas from Paracas...) and ruins of ancient Incan culture (Machu Picchu), and were exposed to differences in culture which we will begin to explore in these first couple of weeks of being home.

This week in schooling we are beginning to create our pattern. At the beginning of the week we were still recovering from our trip. Therefore Monday and Tuesday were basically days off. On Tuesday however the kids had a riding lesson with Ms. Monica and loved it. Afterwards they helped Ms. Tiana clean out a stall for one of the horses while mama finished cleaning a different stall.

Wednesday we came home from the gym to begin our lessons in front of the white board. We learned how to write today's date and where on our paper we should put our name and the date. We talked about the three parts to writing the date (month, day, year). Jonas and Ronan both wrote October 17th, 2012 (I helped Ronan with the numbers) and their names in their notebooks. After name and date we moved on to beginning some word recognition. We talked about the words 'a' and 'and.' Jonas and I created a sentence with each word and Jonas wrote them in his notebook. Ronan practiced writing A's and his name. They both earned 5 stars (written every day on the whiteboard) and earned apple pie.

Thursday we began our lesson with a scavenger hunt. I wrote up 5 clues of short rhymes and they followed the clues to find stickers and temporary tattoos. After the hunt we sat down by the whiteboard and reviewed writing the date by getting our new page ready with the new date. Then we talked about the sounds 'th' and 'sh.' Jonas and I came up with 4 words for each sound and he wrote them in his book. Ronan practiced writing 'L's and 'I's in his book (and made their sounds). After sounds we talked about different kinds of lines (vertical, horizontal, squiggly, zigzag,...) and how these can be used to make shapes. Each child was asked to create a self portrait in lines. They both earned 5 stars again and we put the tattoos on their arms.

 Today we began again with a scavenger hunt. This time they requested it to be longer so I hid nearly 10 clues leading them to today's lesson, several Halloween activity sheets. Ronan practiced the concepts of more and less, bigger and smaller, and decided his favorite thing about Halloween was black cats (he wrote 'black cats' and drew a picture of a robot black cat). Jonas connected groups of spiders to their written numbers, practiced writing today's date and his name on all of his pages, wrote 'My favorite thing about Halloween is dressing up' and connected pictures to their beginning sounds.

Looking back I think I missed a good opportunity this week to go over rhyming. But since scavenger hunts were such a big hit perhaps we can go over that this weekend. We continue to do math time at bedtime however, I look forward to adding math lessons into our sit-down time in front of the whiteboard also. As I plan out our next week I will begin to create a better balance of subjects including science, geography, music. This weekend I will work on a schedule of subjects to keep this balance.

As I am slightly at a loss as to how to properly teach reading and writing a teacher friend of mine has offered me curriculum resources for teaching/learning and documenting these processes. I look forward to beginning Jonas' lessons in reading this next week. Ronan will begin "Handwriting Without Tears" as well and Jonas will probably end up reviewing this although his handwriting is very nice when he focuses. I will start Jonas on cursive letters as well.

This weekend we will focus on outdoor time when available and observation/question learning.
Next update will be on Friday, October 26th, 2012.