Week 13 Wrap, Week 14 Day 1.

Week 13 ended on a high note.  Monkey did very well across the board.  I was happy.  He was still sleeping like crud, though, so there was never any time to blog.  There was never any time to shower, much less blog.  Mercifully, Skeeve can keep an eye on a boy while I get wet - same is never the case for blogging.  It's all time full of "What'cha doin', Mommy?  What's that? Can I type letters, too? I wanna play too!" and nothing gets done.  Right now, I'm blogging during reading review in the hopes that it will keep him occupied long enough to get something done.

Reading:  Reading went well.  Monkey went through both long A words, and long I words.  I wanted to (and did!) review them with him in the beginning of week 14.  He retained fairly well, and while he does need occasional prompting on the silent e, once that's done he kind of goes "OH!" and gets everything pulled together.  I'm pretty cool with that.  Sight words are still hard going, but I suspect anything memorization-based will be.  He's not so good with memorizing things he doesn't see a need for.  His fluency is still behind, though that's fine.  He is reading the Thomas the Tank Engine phonics readers for his checks, and as they keep getting harder, I'm not expecting him to make huge strides.  He's sitting at an average of about 22 words per minute, which is low for his instructional level, but for his age it is phenomenal.  So I'll more than take it.

Math: Math went very easily.  As expected, he blew through the lessons with ease.  He is now capable of counting to 50 by ones and twos, and to 100 by 10s.  He also adds within ten.  Week 14 will be continuing to add, which I don't know about.  He may do very well, he may revolt against all the review.  No way to tell until we get there.

Logic: Logic, as usual, went quickly and easily.  I'm going to review this next week, just in case.  He understands what is being asked of him, but doesn't often have the focus to really work on it, so he half-assedly hands me whatever is in front of him.  We'll review, and I'm fairly certain he'll have a handle on it by the time it comes up in week 14.

History: History went spectacularly well.  He did his mapwork and his coloring pages and had a wonderful time of it.  He traced the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, and stayed on the lines, which was impressive.  He also took pains to color the land green and the water blue.  I was fairly impressed, all told.  His narration isn't the best, but he can answer review questions, so we're working on it.  He'll get there eventually.

Science: We covered the life-sustaining properties of Earth.  How sunlight alone is not enough for life, and water is needed.  We currently have three pots of cress seeds around the house - one marked Venus, one marked Earth, and one marked Saturn.  Saturn lives in the freezer, the other two out in the yard.  We water Earth every day, and Monkey pointed out to me today that the seeds are growing in the Earth pot, but not the Venus one.  Skeeve will talk with him later about how that is, and why that happens - Skeeve is the science experiment guy.

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Week 15 will start French.  Week 14 is planned and underway.  As it's our Monday, today we only have Reading and Math.  Next week, we'll have French on this day as well.

I think Monkey's sleep will be better soon.  Last week he was having trouble with long I words, even after having gone over the silent e long A words. Today, I wanted to cover long O words.  He blasted through the review of long A and I, so I tried him out on the remaining lessons in the unit.  Sure enough, he was perfectly able to work his way through lessons 3 and 4 as well.  Tomorrow, instead of working on long O, he's going to be working on 'ee' and 'ea' combinations.  We'll see how it goes over and where we go from there.

Like I said with math, he'll either ace this week or hate it.  It's all reviewing how to add, and how to add with the abacus, or the tally sticks, or using them to make the numerals and adding with the numerals - along with the abacus and tally sticks.  The leap to just using the numerals will be interesting, but they're taking it nice and slow, so it's hard to say what will happen.

Fridays are always difficult.  We're just coming off our weekend, when Skeeve is home to allow nearly unlimited television time, and we're generally off our routine.  It'll be nice to get back to it, but until tomorrow, the "it's school-time" stuff tends to be met with "but I wanna watch SpiderMan and his Amazing Friends!!!" and another chat is had about needing to finish work before we play.  I have to laugh, though, as he'd be starting full day JK this year, where much more would be expected of him than one hour of activities - and I get the feeling a lot of people would give me crap about his having to "do school" every weekday, when it's a whopping hour to hour and a half in our house.  Versus six hours at JK.  Sheesh.

Week 13 - Catching Up.

This week has been a little weird at best.  I have everything all planned out well, and pacing is good, but Monkey has decided that the only way to sleep is in 20 minute increments, and after that time is up, he needs to wake up screaming and crying - unless we are in the bed with him, of course.  So, while my planning time is fine, my prep time is gone, which makes things feel harried.

Reading: We made it through both long A and long I.  Again, it takes a little working on it to get there, but he does understand the principle, and he still hates practice.  I checked to see if he "got" silent e words as a concept, and he hadn't yet, so we're doing one vowel at a time.  He's doing great, and is using the time between reading and math to play Starfall on my computer, also eating into my blogging time.  Ah, well.  He's enjoying it.

Math: Math is still flying right by.  We'll need to reinforce what a "dozen" is, but as of right now, he's still going through both sections of a lesson in a day.  Even more fun, though, is that he has decided that if he fights me on doing it, I'll somehow let him play Starfall more.  I'm not sure where he got that, but whatever.  So, he spent half an hour this afternoon dinking around instead of putting together seven cents.  I finally snapped and told him flat out that not only was he not watching television, but he wouldn't play on the compy anymore if he couldn't get his act together.  He assembled seven cents in about three seconds.  I'm glad he gets it, but I am unamused at the stalling tactics.  Maybe we'll save Starfall for after the school day is completely done.

History: We wound up doing both sections of chapter 1 today - the nomads, and the nomads becoming farmers.  He did *spectacularly* well on the mapwork for the fertile crescent, and he did a wonderful job coloring the farmer with his shadouf as well.  I was really impressed that he is now choosing his colors with care - he wants blue for the water, green for the grass, etc.  It used to be that he'd just color whatever he wanted in whatever his favorite color of the hour was.  So I was pretty pleased.  He also did a fair job with the review questions.  I think it might take a little while to get him narrating, but that's okay.  I'm happy to know he listened, and happy to hear him able to answer questions - even if the nomads were camping out in tents.

Logic: This went well, too.  I printed out three lessons, colored in the boxes, and cut them out.  Then I scrambled them (within lessons) and put them down for Monkey to determine their order.  I'm still doing a bit of scaffolding there, but he seems to be catching on faster, so I'm cool with it.  He's also doing more sly-putting-things-in-the-wrong-order-to-see-if-I'll-call-him-on-it, so I'm going to have to find strategies to get him out of that habit.  'Cause I do not deal well with the "I'm going to deliberately waste your time!" stuff.

Science:  This week science will cover living conditions, and whether or not life is sustainable on other planets.  I'm looking forward to that, truth be told.  I'm loving the science, and Monkey is a big fan of the experiments.  Should be a good time.

I may have to drop back to a once per week wrap up, 'cause I'm having such a hard time keeping up between Starfall, PBSKids and Monkey's poor sleeping.  I keep trying to blog, and then get sideswiped by something every time I try.  Go figure.

Falling Behind.

Well.  Blogging, reading, teaching, cleaning, gardening, reading and teaching seem to be completely impossible to complete simultaneously.  Particularly if my browser window crashes and I forget to reopen blogger.  Whoops.

This week has been a bit of a bust.  I didn't get a chance to plan, due to lack of sleep, which was caused by reading a really good book... so it's my own fault, really.  But, we did do work every day, so it's something.

Reading: I seem to have found Monkey's instructional level for reading - 2.2.  Now, that's subject for revision as I found a way to make the long a sound stick today, but we'll see.  This week's lesson was on silent e words with the long A.  So, we watched a lot of LeapFrog Word Caper, and we did endless repetition of "silent e makes the first vowel say its name" that didn't help in the slightest.  So, today, in reading the actual 'practice' section of the book, I finally just said, "Monkey, all these words have the long A sound.  The A says A in all these words."  Thinking about it, I don't think that's any much different than "Now you're going to learn to read words with the long A sound" so I'm thinking he may just blow through this as well - once I find the keys to teach him what sound we're working on, he's racing ahead.  He went through the first line (of three) in probably half an hour. Then, I hit the "everything says A" and he went through the last two lines in about five minutes.  So, we'll see what we get tomorrow.

Math: Today we did combinations of coins, counting by 10s, evens, odds, and halves.  Monkey raced right through that lesson as well, once I got him focused on the work.  He even drew the correlation that we were cutting shapes on the lines of symmetry (which, since we folded paper shapes in half, then cut on the fold, was 100% accurate).  I about fell out of my chair.  He can do a lot more than I planned.  Most of the rest of the week, he was working on evens and odds, and counting by tens to ten-ten.

Science: Today we talked about the relative size of the sun, and why it looks so small in the sky when it is, in fact, unimaginably huge.  We also talked about what the word diameter means, as well as which number was bigger - the 500 miles we drive to Hammie's house, or the 856,000 mile diameter of the sun.  He got that in one, too.  Skeeve will work on the actual experiment for this concept on Wednesday or Thursday, cementing the idea.

Logic: I spaced on logic this week.  I think, over the weekend, I'm going to give Monkey some logic puzzles to solve, and see what happens - what this means is that I'm going to print out the lessons he's already done, color them, then cut them out.  Monkey can then use the squares individually to arrange them in order.

History: This will be gone over tomorrow.  It will probably be the only thing gone over tomorrow, as we have a load of grocery shopping to do, and I'd forgotten to get on that earlier.  No big, though, as I plan for four day weeks.  Anyway, history will be the first piece on The Earliest People.  I really need to spend the next bunch of time going through the history book.  There's more than one religious story presented as fact, and this is only the case for one religion, and that seems... not equitable.  Therefore, I need to edit the sections as I go, making sure that everything is presented fairly.  Should be interesting.

Pre-School: Monkey will (I hope) be rejoining his preschool from last year.  They work on things like his fine and gross motor skills as well as his social skills - things which are exceptionally handy for me to not worry about.

Next week, I wish for better planning and a less engrossing series of books to read.  The bright side is that I'm now at 78 books read for the year, with a goal of 100.  So at least some kind of goal is being met?

Week 11, Days 2&3

I thought I'd forgotten to update...  Ah, well.

Saturday was Monkey's birthday party, so it was a school holiday.  Therefore, yesterday was day two, and today is day three.

Day 2

Reading: We read for fluency, choosing Hop On Pop as that seems to be the bigger success for him.  He jumped from 20wpm to 28wpm, which is a great thing.  He doesn't want to do it... but then when we start, he doesn't want to stop either.  It's very odd.  I have no idea how else to encourage fluency, and I have no memory of learning to read myself, so it's a struggle for me to sort out how to help his fluency match his skills.  He is perfectly capable of reading the words through the end of unit 3, but actually reading them - as in from a book instead of sitting down to sound out individual words - is incredibly tedious for him.  I'm guessing this will be an area of asynchrony for him, and I need to just let it go.

Math: We covered sorting for ease of counting today.  Making rows of tens so it is easy to count large groups.  He still has some trouble with it, in that he wants to make one large line instead of many small ones, but with a little support to remind him to break at 10, he does well, and then counts easily.  It is much easier for him if the groups are sorted by color according to his abacus, but either way, he can do it, and that was the important part.

History: We talked to Hammie about her history.  We filled in her page in our family history book, and we reviewed historians and archaeologists, what historians do, and what archaeologists do.

All in all, day two was easy, and a resounding success, which makes things seem much more do-able.

Day 3

Reading: Today we went over sight words.  With the exception of two words, he has mastered the group of sight words he's been given, and I'll start adding a few more as we go.  Now, he's watching unit 3 one more time before we bump him up to the next level of reading.  Fluency is still a worry for me, but again, I think it's going to be one of those things I need to just let go of.

Math: We finished lesson 30 today, talking about estimation.  He's not particularly good at estimating, but he understands the concept, which is good.  We'll review more in the coming days, which will cement that, and I'm good with it.

Science: I'd say today was science review day, but really, he knows more about the solar system than I do I sometimes think.  We'll spend some time this afternoon playing with the Solar System Adventures set he got for his birthday for the Tag, and call it a wrap.

Week 11 has been good to us.  There is very little going on that shouldn't be, everything that is going on has been covered well, and there are very few areas of confusion.  I'm pretty pleased with the whole thing, truth be told.  I'm enjoying this review week thing - and it came at a good time, too, with Monkey's party right in the middle of the week.

Week 11, Day 1

Thankfully, week 11 was already decided to be a review week.  Skeeve is home from work ill today, which throws a lot of things out of whack if we're looking at new learning.  Obviously, not his fault, but I'm really glad for the review, as it means there's less concentration needed in most things.

Reading: Reading went remarkably well.  We reviewed Unit 3, going over the review page.  Monkey still has an issue with slowing down to read the words that are printed rather than the words he wanted to see there, but since I had the same problem as a child and read absolutely voraciously (and always have), I see no reason to worry.  Particularly not since when I slow him down, he has no issue sounding out the correct word.  His fluency still pretty well bites.  He sounds out everything, rather than using past knowledge - his use of past knowledge comes into play for things like "dented" where he says /d/-/e/-/nt/... dentist!  So he is capable of the fluency, he just needs to actually use it appropriately.  That's okay, though. We're working on that.  It would be less of an issue if he didn't need the repetition for this, but he hates repetition.  Reading and re-reading the same things makes him nuts.  This review week is only bearable because he's able to color his sheets, and he's able to jump and play while he reads the words.  I know he needs it, but holy WOW is it difficult to get done.

Logic: He re-did the lesson 1-3 worksheets.  He understands exactly what the lesson wants of him, but refuses to slow down to get the right answers.  There's a lot of scaffolding going on here, largely because while I know he knows this, I also know that getting them entirely wrong isn't a matter of lack of understanding, but instead lack of care.  I'm not sure how to instill that care, though.  I suppose we'll see as we go.

Math: This will go all day.  Literally.  We're reviewing the values of a penny, a nickel, and a dime, and how to enter them on the abacus.  This is, again, something he full well knows.  He just doesn't want to slow down enough to make sure the answers he's giving are the ones he wants to give.  And so, we review, and hope for the best, really.  He's good at it, but it's a challenge trying to make sure he slows down enough to demonstrate what he knows versus what he simply can't be arsed to do.

All in all, this is a good day. A little awkward, with Skeeve home and Monkey's penchant to not learn well with many people around, but that's okay.

Another Moment of Freaking.

Every Thursday, I take part in the NAGC chat (Twitter chat at 9 Eastern, 8 Central, #nagc ).  This week was "Back to School Hopes."  We got onto the topic of the Common Core Standards in the US, which 45 states have adopted, with leniency in how they are implemented. These are the standards I use as a basis for the scope and sequence for Rowena's Browncoat Academy.  Obviously, as these are common to the US, this does not apply to us here in Ontario.  I base my school thus on the very simple concept that I was trained as a teacher.  I graduated with a BS in Elementary Education in the state of Illinois, so using their standards was familiar to me.  I went with it.  Not long ago, I learned that the standards in Canada are very different.  Generally speaking, whatever grade a child is in at their American school, they will likely be studying the same things in Canadian schools... anywhere between 12 and 18 months later.  I've known this for a while now, as I was looking into Canadian curricular and educational standards months ago.  But chatting tonight brought it to the fore, and left me assembling the pieces in all my utterly dumbfounded glory.  I have been basing Monkey's educational plans on the theory that, according to the standards I have, he is firmly (currently) sitting between a 1st and 2nd grade level.  This depends on the topic - he is very good at social studies, reading, and science, but he is learning an entirely new math system, so that's slower than it could be.  When I put it together, this puts him anywhere between 2nd grade and 4th grade in Canadian schools.  This is just boggling to me.  Granted, this changes nothing.  I have no "shout it from the rooftops" plans, I have no intent to suddenly enroll him in college at age 6, nothing changes. But sometimes, ones mind is so thoroughly blown that you have to express it somewhere.  And really, where better than the homeschool blog dedicated to the adventures of educating a gifted Monkey?

Week 10, Day 4

This should probably be alternatively titled "Mommy is entirely too under-caffeinated for this."

Reading: Today I wanted to do some more work on sight words.  Skeeve had done a review mid-week on the sight words, and Monkey did really well, so I was expecting this to be a not-big-deal.  Turns out, I was mistaken.  Instead of doing the first bunch of sight words, then moving on to the second set, we did the first set and kept at them.  I think we're going to keep that going, and see what happens.  I still need to do a review of Unit 3, but that can be done whenever we have time.

Math: We didn't have math today, though we did talk about numbers when we went for a walk, and we talked about coins as we cleaned and found pennies, nickels, and dimes, so I suppose that's really a review in and of itself.  So, I suppose we'll play some games and review sorting-for-counting over our 'weekend' and see what happens.

Extras: We didn't have any of our usual extras.  Today is Grocery Shopping Day!  So, it's a lot of social, and a lot of how-stores-work.

All in all, a very relaxed sort of day, which is a good thing, as I'm woefully under-caffeinated for the day.  I've been trying to schedule things so that Tuesdays are a light day.  We're not behind in any way, and if I leave Tuesdays for a light day, it gives us the day for review if we need it.  Of course, the hard part is that Tuesdays are grocery days, so we have to make sure to hustle and get things done early, before Omero wakes for the day and we all go shopping.  Once shopping is done and Omero is up, there's no going back - Monkey is thoroughly wound up, and won't work at all.  He will work on things if it's just him and either Skeeve or me, but any more than that, and it's just... no.  Pulling teeth is easy comparatively...  Anyway!  Week 10 wrapped up on a high note, and week 11 will see us reviewing most of week 10, just for the sake of a "quarter" review.

Do You Know Where Your Towel Is?

Something I am learning more and more as time passes is that Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, while not the genuine hitchhiking guide my mother assumed it to be all those years ago, it is very right about its cover.  "In many of the more relaxed civilizations on the Outer Eastern Rim of the Galaxy, the Hitchhiker's Guide has already supplanted the great Encyclopaedia Galactica as the standard repository of all knowledge and wisdom, for though it has many omissions and contains much that is apocryphal, or at least wildly inaccurate, it scores over the older, more pedestrian work in two important respects. First, it is slightly cheaper; and secondly it has the words DON'T PANIC inscribed in large friendly letters on its cover." -Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, Douglas Adams, 1979  

Don't Panic.  This is often where my life is anymore.  It's four o'clock, and dinner's not even a concept?  Don't panic, we'll find something.  It's August, it's a million degrees outside, and the garden is wilting - except for the tomatoes, which look like a jungle and are threatening to eat neighborhood dogs?  Don't panic, the hose and a bungee cord will handle everything.  Then...  We arrive at my Monkey.  

Monkey is currently happily "playing" video games with Uncle Omero.  Monkey has a controller that lights up.  It isn't hooked to anything, but he likes being One Of The Big Guys.

I mean, look at him.  He looks pretty normal for a nearly four year old.  He's (mostly) sweet and kind, he's curious and loves to play, and in my own opinion, he's cute as a button.  But then, then there are days where I actually think about what we're working on for school.  These days are usually triggered by what other people's children roughly Monkey's age are doing.  Today's freak-out was triggered by a giveaway.  The blog I stumbled into was giving away a "learn the alphabet" CD/DVD+workbook.  The poster's 3.5 year old loves the system.  There were several commenters that mentioned that they think their four year olds would love it, too.  So I go check it out, because really, if the kids are loving it, and it's a giveaway, I may as well enter, right?  Not today.  The system in question is to teach children letter sounds and formations.  I have no real use for either aspect of this.  Monkey's fine motor skills won't support pencil writing in workbook sizes.  His letters tend to be about 18" tall, when he makes them at all.  Letters with curves (C,D,B, etc) are barely legible at all, even at that size.  But letters and sounds, Monkey knew all of those before he turned two.  He knew uppercase and lowercase letters and could make the sounds for all of them before he turned three.  And I hadn't paid any much attention to his learning at that point. Then, at 3y2m, he asked me to teach him to read.  So, I gathered myself up, and off we went.  He is now just shy of four (like, two days shy!), and happily working on Hooked on Phonics.  We started Hooked on Phonics in June, and now he's getting ready to finish the first grade levels.  Also, since May, he's done 12 weeks of math work.  Not terribly impressive until you realize he's done those 12 weeks of work in eight four-day weeks - making the actual numbers more like he's done 15 weeks of work in his 8 weeks.

This is where I panic. And not a little either.  Everything is all about Back to School.  Monkey would be gearing up for his first year of public school, entering Junior Kindergarten for full-day, spending the day with children who are socially and chronologically his age, but emotionally years older than him, and cognitively years younger.

I look at the numbers on the materials he's using and my mind rebels.  As Monkey is my only child, and we don't know any other children his age, he seems like he's just a normal kid. His books and interests tell me another story. It's confusing and slightly disturbing.  He doesn't fit any "regular" parameters.  Parenting books are no use - what section do you turn to?  2, 4, or 8?  Other people don't understand - I'm not pushing my son.  He just does this. The only thing I push is that he has to try.  Even if it's just for a minute, he has to try.  Since he'd be starting school in the fall anyway, I don't feel this is unfair in any respect.  He asked me to teach him to read.  He could add and subtract within ten before I even realized he could, before he was 3. This is who he is, this is how he is.  I wouldn't have him any other way.  And then, there's the flip side - he throws epic fits when he is upset.  I hesitate to call it temper tantrum, because this is not a "for attention" thing, it's simply that he's upset and can't manage his emotions.  And these storms are not quiet, they are not short.  These are epic screaming, crying, kicking, hitting, flailing storming fits.  And people look at me and wonder why I don't "discipline" him, why I don't make him mind me, why I don't sign him up for group sports that are drop-off-and-let-coach-deal events.  It's not that I'm sheltering him, or trying to raise a terror.  It's that emotionally, my child is about two. He is just not ready.  This is just who he is, this is how he is.  I wouldn't have him any other way.

Having a gifted child is absolutely a gift.  So is having a "regular" child.  Just as having any other child is full of ups and downs, good times and hard times, so is having a gifted child.  I'm sure that if I weren't panicking about Monkey's academics, I'd be panicking about something else.  But as it stands, this child I have surprises me on a nearly daily basis, and most of the things he comes up with pull me up short, reminding me that I really need to find a good picture to hang all over the house - one that clearly states, in large, friendly letters, "Don't Panic."

Week 10, Day 3

Today was a bit of a rough start.  We drove Skeeve in to work, as it's a holiday and the bus doesn't come in time to get him in.  This means our day started by 7 instead of by 9.  However, there was an awful lot of First Thing Dawdling that went on.  Really, from both of us.

Reading:  Reading went... fairly well.  It was a fluency day, and when things got cleaned up for our Tuesday Night Game Night, Monkey's Slim Sam book went a-missing.  Bad news, since that's the one we were using for his fluency scoring.  AUGH.  So, instead, today we broke out Hop On Pop.  This was sort of a bonus.  The last two times I'd checked his fluency, he was reading 6 and 10 words per minute. Today, he got a whopping 20.  Now, as "fluent" is 45 words per minute, he's got a ways to go.  But, for a picture book, 20 seems pretty good to me.  Thing is, Monkey seems to have a one minute timer.  Once his minute of timed reading is up (whether he can see the timer or not, whether he knows I've started it or not!), he stops reading, and starts goofing off.  Really odd to me.  I am, however, glad I can get that first minute out of him.

Math: Math was a whole lot of crazy.  Monkey got the concepts, but was steadfastly refusing to use the abacus.  So, I would ask him to enter his dimes on the abacus, and he would enter them as ones, or as a random number of tens.  If I asked him what he had, he would tell me the right amount, but entering it was just not happening.  So, I cut the lesson a bit short, and we'll work on it again tomorrow instead.

Science: This went fairly well.  The only issue is that he adores the science book.  This is an issue only because he loves looking through it at all the things that are there, and I need him to focus on the surface of the moon today - we're going over the lunar surface in his experiment this week, so today we read about it.  Initially this went well, but as we got on, he wanted to explore the rest of the book.  So, once we made our way through the lunar surface pages, I let him browse whatever he wanted, and he was happy.

School today was done by 9:30.  So, while I cut math short, that still puts us on three subjects in about an hour and a half.  This tells me we will likely see (as we go on) three subjects happening in right about two hours, which puts us at two hours per day, four days per week.  Not too bad!  And certainly beats the tail off of public school with its six hours per day.  Rock.

Week 10, Day 2

Reading was a right pain in the tuckus. Monkey would much rather have been watching Blue's Clues than lessons, and since Omero was home and up this morning, it put a little wrench in the works - Monkey doesn't like to work in front of people who aren't me.  He feels the need to show off instead, but he won't show off his academics, he would rather showboat in chatter.  Fine, but if I'm hoping he'll work, it's a little harder.  Anyhow, he read his words, and we eventually got him to go through all of them - chipmunk, hopscotch, suspect, etc.  I'm not sure how much of his reluctance falls under "I caaaaaaan't!" and how much of it falls under his hating review, but once he actually paid attention, he was great at it.

Logic got dumped into today after yesterday's mess.  There was a fair bit of scaffolding involved, as he wasn't quite understanding what was being asked of him.  However, once he understood what I was looking for, he was good at the concept... but also very easily distracted by the illustrations.  I think I'm going to find some similar things for him to work on during the rest of the week - he loved it, blew through three lessons, and wanted another one.  I stopped him at three as that was all I had printed, but I think I'll make some more sheets for him to practice on.  For the moment, he's content to color the pictures from the pages he's done.

Math may have been pushing it.  I went for all three back-to-back, which would have seen us done (on an ordinary day) for the day by noon.  Now, it could have just been that the math lesson was supposed to take three days, but again, he got it in one.  I'll want to review grouping by 10s for ease of counting, as that was where he started getting fidgety, but otherwise he seems to have gotten it with no problems.  He continues to astound me.  Anyhow, he got "opposites" and more/less just fine, and I'll see about playing the Less Game with him this afternoon just for reinforcement.  He also nailed "copy" and "reflection" just fine. It was almost eerie how quickly he got that one.  Tomorrow we're back to money and estimating, so I'm hoping he'll grok onto grouping by 10s tonight/tomorrow, if for no other reason than making tomorrow's lesson easier.

Today was also a history day. We're doing the second half of the first chapter, but I just didn't have a chance to get an archaeology dig set up for him.  So, we went over his history book instead - he's asked Daddy about his history, and I filled in my own, so we reviewed what Mommy's history is.  Then we did the review questions and the narration.  Unfortunately, this has a history of being very like pulling teeth, so I went in expecting this to be difficult, and trying not to let him know I was expecting it.  The read-aloud itself went much better than I thought it would.  Last go-around it was a challenge to keep him from running through the house shrieking.  Today, he sat and listened.  Of course, when it came time to answer questions (what does an archaeologist do?), he decided it was naptime and he'd tell me when he woke up in the morning.  Once we got going, though, it was pretty easy to determine he had been listening.  He was able to tell me what archaeologists do, give me some examples of things they would find, and how they do it - I just had to find the right tools to link it to something he cared about.  When we went to the Children's Museum, he and a friend played at digging up fossils of dinosaurs.  Linked to that, he has a crystal clear idea of what an archaeologist would do, what he would find, and that he could learn about history itself from the kinds of things left behind. 

All in all, I'm very happy.  He's done wonderfully, and took the addition of logic completely in stride.

Week 10, Day 1

Reading: Holy COW!  Unit 3 is *hard.*  It hadn't occurred to me just how many sounds -ed makes - there's "ud" like lifted, there's "t" like kicked, and then there's "d" like smelled.  WTF, English?!?  Could you be more confusing?  I'm sticking with the same tack as I've been using, though, letting him watch the unit as much as he wants, and then I'll see what he got out of it when we get to the end of the week.  If he didn't retain much of it, then we'll do it again next week, and that would be okay with me.  This whipping through things at mach two is a little dizzying.  It looks, however, like he was doing pretty well with it, so we'll see where it ends up.

Math: Geometry Whiz, coming through!  Today's lesson was on coins (penny, nickel), and on reflections and lines of symmetry via geoboard.  The penny and nickel were difficult for him, so I'm going to keep right on reviewing those with him.  The lines of symmetry and making reflected shapes on a geoboard?  Yeah, that was apparently the hard part of the lesson, and he whipped through that too.  He has taken to geometry like a fish to water.  I'm a little astounded, as I know I don't particularly care for it, but hey.  Whatever he likes, right?

Today was also supposed to start logic.  However, as we had a video call with my mother today, and once we hung up, Omero came downstairs to play videogames... that never did happen.  I'm going to try again tomorrow, see what we get.  The bonus is that I can tell science is sticking - Monkey made a point of informing us we all live on the planet Earth.  And quite solemnly declared it was very large.  

Week 9: The "We Really Should Have Done This Earlier In The Week" Edition.

Today is Friday, which would ordinarily be the start of Week 10.  However, Skeeve's work schedule was severely borked this week, which means our weekend was Th/F instead of W/Th.  All that should have needed accomplishing today was Monkey's science experiment (a flip book on phases of the moon), but due to general craziness and the aforementioned borked-schedule, we also needed to review unit 2 of reading and re-do history.

The science lesson went well.  Very well.  Everything else... was like pulling teeth.  And that was putting it lightly.  History was a page and a half read aloud with two narration/review questions.  Half an hour to finish the read aloud, and another 15 minutes to finish the questions.  Reading, we spent more time watching Monkey's fingers pretending to be Thing 1 and Thing 2 who were going to read the words than we did actually reading the words.  However, when he actually focused on the words in front of him, he read them just fine.  His fluency and speed still are really bad for level, but he can do it.  I suspect when we find something, anything that really interests him, though, he'll take off.  

Tomorrow we start our official Week 10.  We will add in logic 1x week, which will be simple - at least to start with.  I suspect these concepts are not going to be new or difficult for him, at least not at first.  Once we get into the swing of things, it'll be much easier, and I'll be able to better figure out where he is.  If nothing else, we're covering a lot more than JK would, in less time, so I'm not worried about taking this year to make our way through these things.  Though, I think I might print out two lessons of the logic and if it is that easy for him, we can do two.  Since the lessons seem to break up by twos, it shouldn't be a big deal.  I suppose we'll see!

Week 9, Day 4.

Well, today is the end of week 9.  Our week has been all kinds of weird, as Skeeve's work schedule has been screwy.  He hasn't had a full weekend in a while (okay, he had one day off last week instead of two), and is working today, but off Friday, so we've shifted a little.

Today we had no math, I figured to use the day for whatever review Monkey night need.  However, he seems to have the concepts down well, so we really just "did math" as we went - reading signs with numbers, counting steps, things like that. We also reviewed counting by twos.

Science was today's "extra" subject.  We went over phases of the moon - waxing, waning, full and new.  Skeeve will do an experiment with him on this over our weekend.  I'm also going to try to squeak in another go at the history lesson that didn't go so well the other day.  That's sort of an 'if time, then history' thing, though, so it's not too bad.

Reading was the hardest of the lot.  Not because it was inherently difficult, but because sight words as a concept require memorization, which is not Monkey's strong suit.  Not that his memory isn't good, but that he actively dislikes the process of memorization.  I think I might see if I can get a game together for this.  Maybe I'll get a sheet of plastic, anchor it, and write the words on it.  Then I can call words, and he can go jump on them.  I really do think sight words are going to be the hardest thing for him.  I suppose we'll just have to see how it goes, though.

And so, for this week, we've accomplished:
Reading: Lvl2, lessons 5-9, kindergarten sight words
Math: Lessons 25-27
History: Introduction, What is History, begin family history
Science: Phases of the moon