Wrap-Up: The First 10 School Days

We just finished our second week of school. This completes Em's first 2 weeks of homeschool ever! (She has gone to public school since pre-K.) We have a couple of bumps to make it over this year, but overall things went well.

Em:

• Writing: Let's start with the frustrating one so it will all be uphill after that. ;) Writing With Ease 1 Week 1 & 2 are complete. I'm sorry, but she *hates* WWE with a passion. Unfortunately, it is exactly what she needs in a writing program right now.  

She completed 5 handwriting practice pages. Also, we are working on "fixing sentences," which is really difficult for a child who has totally forgotten the difference between upper & lower case letters. She wrote a very, very basic "thank you" letter to her great uncle (as in "10 words" basic.) We have a looong way to go with writing. I'm okay with this. First of all, Em is dealing with some physical issues that make writing a little harder for her so, if we think she needs to, she can see an OT in the future. We're holding off on this for right now, but the resource is available if we decide to go that route. Secondly, she was a preemie. She is going to do some things slower than average. I'm just glad she's home so that we can move at a pace that suits her. (Well, the "pace that suits her" would be "not doing any writing," so I guess I should say "a pace that isn't more than she can handle.")

• Reading: She has been doing a great job of recording her school reading and free reading in her reading response journal. She read "The Long Way Westward" and "The House on Walenska Street" (Yep, I am going through the Sonlight grade 3 readers available at my library ;) She did lots of free reading too, and finally finished the 5th Harry Potter book that she has been working on for the past month.
• Spelling: Finished the first 2 units in Spelling Workout D. She's not a big fan of this program, but it's something for her to do while she waits for me to work with her brother.
• Science unit on plant life cycle and plant parts. Completed unit and read supplemental books. Watched a couple of "Magic School Bus" videos on YouTube regarding plants.
• History: You really can't throw someone into history without starting at the beginning. The first week, I tried to put her in with El's "Story of the World 2" history program. She was confused, and I knew I was shortchanging her. You just can't begin a linear history program in 450 CE, so she is doing her own history thing for a few weeks using the 2nd grade Core Knowledge history sequence. Once she catches up to El, I'll lump her back into SOTW2.
• Math: The success story. Math went really well. I have my arsenal of manipulatives built up from Singapore with El so I'm ready to go with whatever I need for the day's lesson. Miquon is going great (we are working through the orange book, so it is mostly review for her) and she hasn't fought me on Singapore once. She only works on math for about 40-50 minutes a day and is ahead of schedule. I love, love, love the Singapore/Miquon combo for this grade. Easy, works well, makes sense, 'nuff said.

Overall, it's a start. This is her first two weeks ever of being homeschooled so I expected an adjustment period. I think we're all glad she's home.

El:

• Science unit on germs, antibodies, and contagious diseases. Read the first 1/3 of this biography about Isaac Newton and started a unit on gravity.
• Working on learning more about and using Google Sketchup
• Finished a Singapore math unit on metric capacity measurement (addition and subtraction.) Tried to start "Life of Fred Fractions" but we will have to hold off until he learns multiple digit multiplication. (i.e. 459 X 67.) Oddly, he can use long division to divide by double digits (which has not yet been covered in Singapore, so I'm not sure how he learned it) but has yet to learn how to handle these numbers in multiplication. He can do it in his head if the numbers are smaller (like 459 X 67) but he starts to have problems when the numbers get bigger.
• Finished Spelling Power lv. E, started lv. F and did 2 weeks of Evan-Moor Daily Paragraph Editing
• Read Grammar Town, through "linking verbs"
• History: SOTW2, First 2 Chapters (Fall of Rome & Celts, Angles & Saxons.) Watched clips from "The Dark Ages" on Netflix. Also, the Celtic story of Craith from SOTW2 is retold in this Russian folktale, so we did a brief comparative analysis of the two versions. It was just a "happy accident" kind of thing: We read one of our library books the day after reading the Craith story and we both went, "HEY! This sounds familiar!"
• Started Intermediate Language Lessons. This is a tiny little book from 100+ years ago that is just perfect for where El is right now in writing. 

This little book contains three "years" of lessons, thought I expect we'll make it through in two or less. Here it is for free, if you're into that kind of thing. ;) You can also download the free answer key here. 

• Learned about drawing in one-point perspective

The first 2 weeks of fourth grade seemed to go very smoothly for El. He was definitely doing a lot more independent work since I was working with his sister, but he handled it well. I think he's going to have a great year.

There wasn't a lot of school work the kids could really do together, but we did fit in some cooking and an awesome hike!

There's an Em in this pic. You just have to look closely.

Making mini-quiche cups (recipe here)

One week at a time (Planning for two children)

I want to create a separate post dedicated to planning before I write our first week's wrap up. This was our first week of school and it helped to have our weekly plan written out so that the kids could see what was expected of them. I did this in a couple of different ways.

First of all, I found this awesome download of a weekly checklist on Pinterest. I taped a copy to the kids' weekly folders (I haven't perfected the folders. They each just have a file folder filled with things they need to work on that week, and as they finish them I put the finished items back into the folders. At the end of the week I will empty them out and put all the finished papers in the correct place. NOTE TO SELF: Week one just ended! Do that thing you just said you were going to do.)

Second, I cut pages out of a standard lesson plan book (here is a free 2-page download similar to the one I had) and pasted them to a large piece of construction paper. I made two double-sided pages like this, with one on each side so I could plan for one child and while looking at the previous week's plans. I then had both pages laminated. I can write on the pages with wet erase markers and they just wipe off with a damp cloth.

Sorry. I know this pic is horrible. The light was reflecting off of laminated pages.

I hung both pages up on a bulletin board and then (after this picture was taken :p) hung the board up next to where we do most of our school work. Each child can see his or her own plans for the week.

I also found this helpful webpage from Donna Young, which offers downloads of lesson planning pages to use with more than one child. I really like the 5X7 2-child planning pages which offer separate sections for each child and then a section for the subjects the children do together. I haven't used this yet, but it looks like it would be helpful if I need a planner page for just me.