Saturday, May 28, 2011

Artistic Pursuits - Lesson 4; Artists Communicate

We finally did an Art lesson - amazing I know! :-)  K learned that artists communicate in their drawings and then she was to communicate something in a drawing and then color it with watercolor crayons.  She told me she was communicating that this was her outside, happy, about to go into her play-ship (notice she drew the red door open) that is next to her slide and then don't forget the cherry on the tree!

SOTW 1: Chapter 12 - Egyptian Chariot

We FINALLY got around to making this chariot lol.  K loved doing it and we used the top of an egg carton lid to build the cart and it worked really well!  K wanted to use her baby pony - so cute and she now has a new toy too that she played with for an hour or so! ;-)


Thursday, May 26, 2011

Independent Work - Second-Half of 1st Grade

I'm so overjoyed how much independent work K has been able to take on since finishing up the OPGTR.  Not only has she read almost the entire easy book list for 1st-3rd grade in 3 months and this year's "assigned" list, she is reading so well that she doesn't need me reading what I used to from different subjects.  Here is what she is now able to do independently:
  1. Reading - this is an obvious one, but wanted to include it as well.  She does her "assigned" 4th grade reading level for 30 minutes and then does her evening "fun" below-reading level book for 30-40 minutes.  She also is able to do her once-a-week fluency reading on her own.
  2. Saxon 2 Math - she can do all the work on her own, she no longer needs me to read the directions or the problems!  All I do is teach the lesson and then give her the work.
  3. Rod & Staff English 2 - she reads the lesson (I don't have to even teach this anymore!) and does the activity orally on her own!  Another subject I don't have to teach anymore, woohoo!
  4. Spelling Workout B - she studies the tip and does the lesson on her own now and I don't need to read anything for her!  I also don't have to administer the spelling test, because we have been using Spelling City for that!
With writing, I read the excerpt from the story and then ask questions and then she does the worksheet herself.  With history and science, it is still very involved for me.  I have had her listen to the history lesson on cd but she doesn't seem to remember as much - she does better when I read the lesson.  Science is reading books and doing projects basically, so that is very parent-involved as well.

Overall, I'm very excited that my teacher-load is lessening!  I thought it wouldn't be until 3rd grade for her to be able to do this much without me but getting her on that 4th-grade reading level was the key that unlocked time for me!  The English 2 didn't happen till this week, she wanted to start reading the lesson, so I would let her and she read almost as fast as me, so I figured why not?  Then today, I was very busy, so I had her just do what she could - in just a minute or so she had already read the lesson and did the work!  I was floored and so came to write up this post! :-)

It is so exciting to see your child learn to teach themselves - that is what we are trying to do as homeschool moms - training them to LEARN independently!

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

K's Fluency Reading Practice

K reads out of McGuffey's Third Eclectic Reader once a week for fluency practice.  Today, she read a dialogue between a daughter, Rose, and her father:


Friday, May 6, 2011

Week 6 - Skin, Hair & Nails

Read
Kingfisher First Human Body Encyclopedia - pgs. 14-19

Miscellaneous
Videos
Games
Books
"Your Skin Holds You In" by Rebecca Baines
"The Tooth Book" by Edward Miller

Week 5 - Digestive & Urinary Systems

Read
Kingfisher First Human Body Encyclopedia - pgs.70-77

RSO Labs
Unit 7 - Digestive System

Miscellaneous
Videos
Games
Books
"What Happens to a Hamburger?" by Paul Showers
"Your Skin and Mine" by Paul Showers
"Gee Whiz! It's All About Pee" by Susan Goodman

Summer Schooling Schedule

We have 12 weeks of school that we are doing from May till the end of August and here is our tentative daily schedule - notice I said "tentative" because although this is my goal - life happens LOL! =0 

Mon-Wed

In Bed
Prayer
Bible - 10m

1st Hour
Reading - 30m
Grammar - 15m
Memorization - 5m
Writing - 10m

40m
Math - 20m
Spelling - 20m

2nd Hour
History or Science - full hour

Thursday
OFF

Friday
Prayer
Bible - 10m
Homeschool Group
Reading -30m
Leftover History and/or Science work
Projects
Art, Music and Home Economics

Evening Work
30m evening reading Mon-Fri

Weekends
OFF

Nate (husband)
Reads classics to K
Family prayer & Bible teaching
Teaching K piano

Planning - Completion Dates for End of 1st Grade

We are schooling year-round seeing how we took so many months off and had a family emergency trip, so we are just going with it and schooling through summer.  We will start 2nd grade around the second week of September.  We are taking off this coming week because its my 3-month freezer cooking week.  So we have 14 weeks to work with and we may have a vacation in there too and time off, so I'm only scheduling for 12 weeks of school to be safe.

Here are our plans to finish 1st grade:

Bible - we will finish the entire Golden Children's Bible by the end of summer and start our new Bible curriculum in Sept.

Reading - K has almost finished her entire 1st grade "assigned" 4th grade level book list!  She still reads in the evenings "easy" below-level books and we will continue this all through summer - we don't take off from reading.  We will start her 2nd grade assigned book list in Sept.

Grammar & Vocabulary - we already finished 1st grade grammar but I wanted to continually review so K doesn't forget anything, and I've found that Rod and Staff's English 2 is awesome review and extra practice!  We are also using the last unit in the book, Unit 6, as a separate course - Vocabulary.  It is teaching K alphabetical order and how to use a dictionary.

Spelling - K will finish Spelling Workout B by the end of summer and we also plan to start All About Spelling 2 soon and finish that by the end of summer.  So we will start SWO C and AAS 3 in Sept.

Writing - we have 10 weeks of writing left, so we will finish WWE 1 by the middle of July and K will continue to do copywork from the Bible until we start WWE 2 in Sept.

History - We have 14 chapters left in history and doing 1-2 chapters a week will have us finishing on time and going right into SOTW 2.  We really enjoy history and like taking our time through it reading library books and doing activities and watching related videos.

Science - We have some of the Human Body left to finish but we are already into Plants right now and will finish that soon and study animals.  We will finish all these by the end of Summer.

Math - We will finish 2nd grade math by the end of Summer and continue on with 3rd grade math in Sept.