Weekly Report: 2/8/10-2/13/10

We have yucky colds here this week, so we didn’t do a lot above and beyond our basic schedule.  Our big accomplishment for the week is that R-girl hasn’t been in a diaper/pullup since Sunday nap time and has had only 2 accidents (one at night)! We’re calling her potty trained! Rejoice with me! Tomorrow I remove the changing table, diaper pail, and diapers from the girl’s room! Hooray!

Memory Work:

Bible: We added Gen 1:5.  Adding a verse a week to practice seems to be working well.

Catechism/Creed: We started the Nicene Creed this week.  I’m pretty much just reading it to the children at this point, but they’ll get it 🙂

Hymn: the second verse of A Mighty Fortress.

Manner: We’re enjoying Polite Moments, the kids always want me to read “another one.”  We aren’t discussing much, other than me explaining.  Next time through 🙂  I’ve actually moved this out of Circle Time to during breakfast and that seems to be working well.

Poetry: They’ve finished The Ingenious Little Old Man.

Counting: M-girl and N-boy can count by 10s.

Other Memory Work:  We’ve been working on “Who are your parents?” “What’s your Mommy’s name?” “What’s your Daddy’s name?” answering in whole sentences.

Phonics:

M-girl: She is powering through the ETC primers; 2 more weeks to finish! We learned about homophones (e.g. male, mail) this week and she narrated “G is for Giraffe” from CLP’s K Nature Reader.

N-boy: I’m going to slow down, cover 1 lesson a week until N-boy gets it.  He’s doing fine, he is taking a long time to do a lesson.

R-girl: We read some letter books this week.

Math:

M-girl: We did review of Lessons 6-9 in Ray’s this week.  She’s ready to move into real math!  Hooray!

N-boy: N-boy is doing well with number recognition from 11-100.  It has taken a bunch of practice.  I have some number magnets and put two sets of digits from 0-9 on a cookie sheet, I had N-boy “make” two digit numbers out of them.  I’d say, make 11, make 54, make 26.  It helped him learn how they work.  We’re starting on Lesson 5 where he has to read the numbers to me.  It will take a few weeks until he is proficient and has that immediate recognition.

R-girl:  She made the “4” in her number book.  She’s slowly learning her 1-10.  Her one to one correspondence is better than M-girl or N-boy was at this age and she counts very well.  She also *loves* the Mighty Mind puzzles and has a wonderful spatial ability, I have to help her some, of course, but she can see what goes where.  Amazing.

Grammar

M-girl:  We’re getting a little tired of nouns proper & common, but the poetry is good and M-girl is truly understanding the differences between proper and common nouns.

Penmanship: I’m enjoying Cursive First a lot.  We start with numbers and the children are doing very well with this.  Right now, we’re using a lined white board, but once we end up getting my sister in law’s old table we’ll start on paper.  (Our current table has a slightly thatched surface that makes it a bit difficult to write upon).

Geography: We studied Chile this week! We studied the three distinct regions, Easter Island, and tomorrow night we’ll have Chilean food (assuming I can get to the grocery store [smile])

Spanish: We start next Monday, Lord willing.

Science:

Art: We made Valentines … need to get some of them in the mail.

Bible: We finished  Teach Them to Your Children by Sarah Wean and are going to begin God’s Alphabet for Life by Joel Beeke and Heidi Boorsma.