Week 15 overall went well. We're now juggling scheduling with preschool, which eats up parts of our Mondays. But, since Mondays are usually a science read-aloud, fluency, and something fairly easy for math, it's not too bad.
Respectfulness went about as well as can be imagined for a 4 year old. It's getting better, but for most of the week, I've wanted to hit myself over the head with a shovel. However, we made progress, we got through our schoolwork, everything was mostly uneventful, and we carry on from there.
This week, we are doing Not Week 16. Monkey and I are leaving town to go back to my mother's house for a funeral this week. We're leaving early Monday morning, and probably returning on Wednesday. Because I'm so completely wrecked (a friend of mine died unexpectedly at 34 {natural causes} and the funeral arrangements have only recently been set), I'm not focusing properly, and I don't want to subject Monkey to half-assed teaching.
Instead, I will take my child, who is obsessed with all things relating to death and dying, and bring him to a funeral and hope for the best. I need to say goodbye to an old friend, and this is the only way it would make sense to do so. So Rowena's Browncoat Academy is closed for the week, and we will pick up week 16 when we return. Hopefully, that will turn out to be the smarter move.
Friday, September 14, 2012
Friday, September 7, 2012
15-1.
Also known as "the day I want to rip out all my hair."
Reading: Monkey did very well with lessons 5 and 6 of his reading. He is still struggling with silent e words - when they're presented to him without any preamble, he defaults to short vowel sounds, then ignores the silent e - but ee, ea, ow, and oa were all rather easy for him. I'm thinking we'll move on, and review silent-e words as we go. That may also be a fluency/context thing, as cub makes no sense in something like "the six sided die is in the shape of a cube." I suppose we'll see.
Math: Always fun, that math. It was ridiculously easy for him to count by tally marks, but apparently Monkey's focus and my patience are on holiday in the Caribbean together today, as partitioning (as in splitting 5 into 1-4, 2-3, 3-2, 4-1) was an utter bust, and while he added plus-ones competently (when he would hold still), he didn't quite see the pattern.
I'm thanking lucky stars at this point that Fridays don't have a third subject yet.
Last night, we had a family meeting. We talked about being respectful, and about school, and work before play, and things like eating meals in less than 3 hours, and such. I'm hoping it's just a matter of getting used to the new normal, but right now, it's insanity in here. Belligerence, screaming, rudeness, hitting, completely ignoring instructions (be they "add one bead" or "don't stand on the easel," or "could you please bring me your froggy bowl?")... It is an utter nightmare in my house, and I'm debating running away. However, I'm trying to hang in, and see what happens. I'm also considering returning to dairy-free. That made a difference forever ago, I'm not sure if it's something we're going to be able to do, but we can sure as all get out try. I need to do something or I'm going to go nuts.
Reading: Monkey did very well with lessons 5 and 6 of his reading. He is still struggling with silent e words - when they're presented to him without any preamble, he defaults to short vowel sounds, then ignores the silent e - but ee, ea, ow, and oa were all rather easy for him. I'm thinking we'll move on, and review silent-e words as we go. That may also be a fluency/context thing, as cub makes no sense in something like "the six sided die is in the shape of a cube." I suppose we'll see.
Math: Always fun, that math. It was ridiculously easy for him to count by tally marks, but apparently Monkey's focus and my patience are on holiday in the Caribbean together today, as partitioning (as in splitting 5 into 1-4, 2-3, 3-2, 4-1) was an utter bust, and while he added plus-ones competently (when he would hold still), he didn't quite see the pattern.
I'm thanking lucky stars at this point that Fridays don't have a third subject yet.
Last night, we had a family meeting. We talked about being respectful, and about school, and work before play, and things like eating meals in less than 3 hours, and such. I'm hoping it's just a matter of getting used to the new normal, but right now, it's insanity in here. Belligerence, screaming, rudeness, hitting, completely ignoring instructions (be they "add one bead" or "don't stand on the easel," or "could you please bring me your froggy bowl?")... It is an utter nightmare in my house, and I'm debating running away. However, I'm trying to hang in, and see what happens. I'm also considering returning to dairy-free. That made a difference forever ago, I'm not sure if it's something we're going to be able to do, but we can sure as all get out try. I need to do something or I'm going to go nuts.
Monday, September 3, 2012
Week 14, Day 4
Today went remarkably well for being right after a massive sick day.
We got done most of the things I wanted to, we are only behind in math (I'm so not doing two lessons in one day) and Monkey is having enough trouble concentrating that I'm beginning to wonder if there isn't something more going on than just "he's an active boy." Tomorrow is our Not Going Back To School picnic - we hope. It might be a trip to the Central Library, as it's supposed to be miserable and rainy, but I'm still hoping we'll be out to the park. Monkey needs the time to run and be free. ^_^
All in all, a productive week. The only problem I have for the foreseeable future is that he is now sounding out ALL a-words with a long A sound. Including things like cat and has. Whoops. We'll get there, though.
We got done most of the things I wanted to, we are only behind in math (I'm so not doing two lessons in one day) and Monkey is having enough trouble concentrating that I'm beginning to wonder if there isn't something more going on than just "he's an active boy." Tomorrow is our Not Going Back To School picnic - we hope. It might be a trip to the Central Library, as it's supposed to be miserable and rainy, but I'm still hoping we'll be out to the park. Monkey needs the time to run and be free. ^_^
All in all, a productive week. The only problem I have for the foreseeable future is that he is now sounding out ALL a-words with a long A sound. Including things like cat and has. Whoops. We'll get there, though.
Sunday, September 2, 2012
14-3?
Well, I prepped for today last night. That should have been my first clue. Skeeve is home from work sick, which makes anything school related an absolute bear, as Monkey hates an audience. However, I am also down with a stuffed, fuzzy head and sore throat, and Monkey isn't any much better. Therefore, today has been called in favor of sick day, and getting better before we get worse. Ugh.
In other news, I've sent an email off to the GDC in Colorado. If I don't hear anything, I will give them a call on Tuesday. I'm trying to sort out what kind of testing they will want to do, and how much it is likely to cost us. I can see some of the things being an absolutely invaluable resource, but the fact that it's worth the money doesn't make us any more likely to actually have the money, so... It's a research mission.
In other news, I've sent an email off to the GDC in Colorado. If I don't hear anything, I will give them a call on Tuesday. I'm trying to sort out what kind of testing they will want to do, and how much it is likely to cost us. I can see some of the things being an absolutely invaluable resource, but the fact that it's worth the money doesn't make us any more likely to actually have the money, so... It's a research mission.
Saturday, September 1, 2012
Week 14 Day 2
Today, as predicted, went much easier than yesterday. Happily. It seems Monkey is coming down with something, though we're not exactly sure what yet. Skeeve has a headache and sore throat, which we're thinking came from Monkey, so... We'll see.
Anyway!
Reading: Reading went exceptionally well. He watched and completed lesson 5 today, with absolutely no difficulty. I was rather surprised, as we didn't even need to talk about what ee and ea say before he was competently able to sound out the words on screen. Tomorrow will be sight words, though if we have more time on our hands, I might just see if I can get him through a couple more lessons - not pushing, just looking to see what he'll get up to.
Math: Math was also ridiculously easy. It was another day of adding, this time using numerals and not tally sticks, but he used the abacus to add up to tens. It was really rather nice, and while the warm ups were challenging (due to a thorough dislike of repetition), the math itself was simple for him. I'm again leery of the rest of the week, on account of that whole review thing, but I'm hoping it will go much like today.
Logic: Today we did some review, and a few changes to methodology. We only did one new sequencing exercise, but instead I pulled number cards 1-6, and the last three lessons we worked on. We lined up the cards in order, then lined up the lessons underneath them. It turned out well, and he seemed to understand what I was asking a little better. When we went through the new exercise, he made a couple errors, but they were due to rushing rather than incomplete knowledge. I can certainly handle that.
All in all, a good, productive day. I like when those happen - it's not entirely a frequent occurrence, but I'm hoping it will be more frequent as time goes by.
Anyway!
Reading: Reading went exceptionally well. He watched and completed lesson 5 today, with absolutely no difficulty. I was rather surprised, as we didn't even need to talk about what ee and ea say before he was competently able to sound out the words on screen. Tomorrow will be sight words, though if we have more time on our hands, I might just see if I can get him through a couple more lessons - not pushing, just looking to see what he'll get up to.
Math: Math was also ridiculously easy. It was another day of adding, this time using numerals and not tally sticks, but he used the abacus to add up to tens. It was really rather nice, and while the warm ups were challenging (due to a thorough dislike of repetition), the math itself was simple for him. I'm again leery of the rest of the week, on account of that whole review thing, but I'm hoping it will go much like today.
Logic: Today we did some review, and a few changes to methodology. We only did one new sequencing exercise, but instead I pulled number cards 1-6, and the last three lessons we worked on. We lined up the cards in order, then lined up the lessons underneath them. It turned out well, and he seemed to understand what I was asking a little better. When we went through the new exercise, he made a couple errors, but they were due to rushing rather than incomplete knowledge. I can certainly handle that.
All in all, a good, productive day. I like when those happen - it's not entirely a frequent occurrence, but I'm hoping it will be more frequent as time goes by.
Friday, August 31, 2012
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.
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.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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.
Sunday, August 26, 2012
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.
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.
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