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.