Week 11 Wrap Up

Sunday: We went to the zoo today.  It was 80 and beautiful.  I think everyone had the same idea as we did because the zoo was packed.  Master M HATES crowds of people and was very upset that the herpaquarium was packed.  We have a membership that we use quite often, but dad has only been with us once. On that particular trip it was our first time at the zoo and we missed the herpaquarium and the lorakeets. Oh, those lorakeets. They were the downfall of our zoo trip. The line was long and because so many people had come in and out the lorakeets were hiding. On a normal weekday there are a few other families at the zoo. We can hit up everything and spend 20-30 minutes in with the lorakeets (Master M really loves those lorakeets). Last time we went the bird guy told us the baby lorakeets were old enough to be added with the rest.  Master M was SO excited about seeing those new lorakeets, but not bad enough to wait 30+ minutes in line. After that he was done.  It was so wonderful though to see him telling dad all about the animals at the zoo. He was even telling dad which mallards were males and females. 
Master M played reading eggs for a while today. He just started playing it yesterday and is already on lesson 27. He sees it as a video game and he hasn't met a video game he doesn't want to beat. I also had him read a beginning reader book to me (with quite a bit of help).

Dad isn't home a lot during the week and Master M asked if we could start doing a science lab on the weekends so dad could participate. Our next lab was building cells out of our RSO life curriculum.  I already had the stuff bought to do it so when we got home from the zoo we started making our jello plant and animal cells. The jello is the cell membrane, the grapes are the chloroplasts, and the strawberry is the nucleus.

Monday: This week our FIAR book is How To Make An Apple Pie And See The World. We read it and put story discs on each one of the places they visited. We also put a story disc on the Indian Ocean.  We also colored in the countries on a printed map and wrote what continent each place was on.  Master M colored in flags of every country listed in the book.  After we finished up our FIAR stuff it was time for snack and the kids ate the plant cell they made yesterday. They both said it was yummy. Then we were off to speech therapy. Today was Pork Chop's first day of speech.  While she did speech I went over Master M's spelling words with him  (We are using Soaring with Spelling and Vocabulary) and had him spell them a couple of time with alphabet tiles on a white board. Then it was time for the pretest. This is our first week with this curriculum and he has a really hard time pinpointing the individual sounds in words so  I was afraid he was going to get them all wrong. He really suprised me when he was able to sound out and spell all but the last two words. (Can and Fan) He wrote cat and fat. When we went over the words he realized he wrote the wrong letter and happily wrote them correctly over in the correction section.  Pork Chop's therapy lasts for 1 hour so we had time to read a little reader and the first 6 chapters of our Magic Treehouse book (I can't think of the name but it's book #6 Amazon something). After lunch we worked on math which was adding past 10 by making 10's and 1's. Master M picked it up super quick and was coming up with the answers quicker than I could have him move our manipulitives!

Tuesday: Was a long day. You know those days when your children are ornery? Yeah, this was one of those day.  Still we did an experiment on evoporation, spelling, added to our timeline, reading, and worked on adding 2 digits where the sum is greater than 10.  We alse had a new friend come over and play. Then it was off to karate where Master M had his first class as on orange belt:)

Wednesday: Ran very smooth. We finished up our work in a short amount of time. I started Pork Chop on the MEP's Primary Practice book 1a.  She has been asking me for more worksheets so I figured this was a start.  She did 2 pages and seemed very happy with it.  We added to our scrapbook on How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World.  Master M can now group numbers like 8+7 into 10+5 to make 15 in his head. I was taught math completely different than what I am teaching him so this method of adding is ver new to me and I am having to relearn the basics.  This way seems so easier than what I was taught (I don't have to count on my fingers anymore *cough*cough*). I am NOT the math whiz of this house.  Master M is also really picking up speed on reading. He still doesn't *like* to read (he HATES sounding words out), but he can read BOB books pretty profiently (Just 1-2 helps).  We used our afternoon to go get Pork Chop some new glasses, pick up some groceries, play outside (for a few minutes 87 is quite hot!), play with model magic, and finish up reading our Magic Treehouse book "Afternoon on the Amazon". Then we whisked Pork Chop off to dance. 

Thursday: Was just plain HORRIBLE!! That's all I have to say about that.  I did manage to decide what we are using for Ancient History.  I decided to use A BOOK IN TIME's book list and notebook history.

Friday:Went much better than Thursday.  It was rainy when we woke up and we all just hung out until around 10 when we started school work.  We started our Ancient History Notebook today and Master M is REALLY into it. He asked if we could work on it first. When we were done he said "I know we don't have school tomorrow, but can we still work on this."  When people say "the joy of learning" I'm pretty sure this is what they are talking about :)  Master M finished up his first week of Soaring with Spelling and Vocabulary and took his spelling test today. I told him at the beginning of the week if he made 100% I would give him $1 (He is trying to save up money for the dinosaur gift shop exhibit at the zoo in April). He rose to the challenge and spelled every word correct!!!  I was SO proud of him!  Then we moved on to reading. This has not gone good this week (understatement!). I asked over on HIVE MIND for help on a child who isn't putting forth a good effort for reading and someone suggested to really draw out the words. Since we are at a point in OPGTR where we can't go forward until he is able to really read short vowel sound words we worked with letter tiles on a small white board.  When he came to a word he didn't know and of course refused to sound out (which is just crazy because he sounded out all of his spelling words during his test!) I really drew out those words. After the 3rd time doing it he looked at me and said "You can stop that now." I guess annoying mom sounding out words was enough for him to really try himself!  We only spent 20 minutes on reading, but he was really working at it and that's all I wanted.  For science they watched a Magic Schoolbus video on the body and then we journaled it. Math was finishing up yesterday's lesson on adding numbers larger than 10 while hiding in the basement from tornadoes.  Then we finished up our FIAR book How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World by drawing street scenes for art.