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.