Weekly Wrap-up

This week went by so fast! Monday daddy had the day off and we didn't have co-op, so we spent the day cleaning and organizing and playing games with the kids. Nothing too exciting, but the house needed it! 

Bear has been working hard on her reading lessons but she still doesn't want to share progress with anyone. She recently switched to hooked on phonics instead of OPGTR. I prefer the latter but she wasn't a fan of it. 

Monkey has surprised me by really liking history this year. We've never been very consistent with history, she's much more a STEM kid. We've changed our plans at least once every year, trying to find something that she can find even a bit of interest in. She started with state history this year thinking she would like that, but she found it very dry. So once again, we switched up history plans. For the third time we gave ancients a go, this time using History Odyssey. She's loving it! Twice this week she asked for history before science!! I'm hoping to get through ancients in a little under a year so we can complete the 4-year cycle in three years. I have my sights on years 7 & 8 of Build Your Library, so I'd like to finish our world history tour by 7th. We'll see how it goes, I don't want to rush it if she's enjoying the rabbit trails and extra readings. 

Bear's favorite subject is math. She usually does at least two days worth of what I have planned every day. We're using Singapore Essentials and I've heard that A is closer to a review of preschool level but B picks up a lot in difficulty. So I'm fine with her going so quickly through book A; we can slow down when she gets to book B and spend more time there. 

Monkey is still really loving spelling. I'm going to adjust our schedule so we hit it twice a week instead of just once. She's doing level 3 right now since she wasn't home last year to do it and we didn't want to skip any levels with this program (AAS), but I think she'd be happier at a higher level.

Engineering fun! She loves using the engino's to build something new each week to go along with our engineering lesson. We're finishing up our unit on wheels, axels, and inclined planes. I think we're moving on to pulley's next. 

In science we're learning about Newton's laws. Here she is testing to see what happens to the lego guy when we push the car under him with and without support behind his back, and running it into a wall. 

The big blue ball has been getting a lot of attention this week! She bounced on it through her entire math worksheet and still wanted to roll around on it during science. 

Taking a break to play some Lazer Maze while I worked with Bear. We have a lot of these solo-play thinking games. They're great for a bit of a break from seat work without getting out of thinking mode for school. 

Bear likes to play them, too. This one is Rush Hour. I will do a post soon with some of our favorite thinking games.

Bear enjoys having some computer time after she's finished her work with me. She's doing either Hooked on Phonics or ABCmouse here, I'm not sure which. All the paper scattered about is because cutting up paper is her favorite thing to do while I'm working with Monkey. We're still working on picking the bits back up!

Monkey is enjoying her new theater class! This week the class learned a skit that they're going to perform for the other classes at the halloween party in a couple of weeks. They played games and practiced one of the songs for their year end play. 

We went on a field trip with our co-op. The girls learned about energy sources, leaves, solar power, and explored some pond water for life!

We went for a hike to check out all the awesome fall colors!

And I'll end with this picture that demonstrates the difficulty I have getting Monkey to sit still for lessons! She really is my monkey :) 

Our schedule

We don't worry about keeping to exact times, what we do is more of a routine. But I do like to have a schedule mapped out with times just to help me know about where we should be and to help me be realistic with time expectations.

Monkey's Schedule

Monday:
Co-op day! Co-op is a pretty full day, so at most Monkey does some Beast Academy in the car on the way to or from.

Tuesday - Thursday:

9:00 - Morning time: memory work, ASL, and read alouds
10:00 - Math
10:45 - Language arts: T/Th - Writing, word roots, dictation W - Writing, spelling, cursive
11:45 - educational sites on computer
12:00 - Lunch break
1:00 - Science: T/Th - Physics W - Engineering
1:30 - History
2:00 - Quiet/read time

Friday:
9:00 - read alouds
9:30 - math
10:00 - writing
10:30 - art
12:00 - lunch
1:00 - cooking, games, or whatever else they're wanting to do

OR - Friday field trip with math and writing at some point.


Bear's Schedule:

Monday: Co-op

Tuesday - Thursday:
9:00 - Morning Time with Monkey
10:00 - Free play in school room
10:30 - Math, phonics, Kumon
11:15 - Free play in school room or on abcmouse
12:00 - Lunch
1:00 - Tags along with Monkey for science and history or free play
2:00 - K read alouds

Friday:
9:00 - listens in to read aloud
9:30 - free play in school room
10:00 - math and phonics
10:30 - art
12:00 - lunch
1:00 - cooking, games, etc....

OR field trip

I aim for one field trip a month. We tend to leave afternoon stuff for after lunch even if we finish morning work early. That just means a longer lunch break! The most likely part of the schedule to get skipped is the first half of morning time. I really like to be starting seat work by 10 so if we have a slow morning, we skip whatever we need to of morning time. I consider 10 to be one of my "anchor points" in our schedule. Seat work starts at 10, lunch stop at 12, the rest is flexible.

Weekly Wrap-up

Wrapping up from last week because I totally dropped the ball on posting Friday. :)

Monkey is moving right along in math. She's loving Singapore and we're glad we switched. She had wanted to try Math Mammoth this year, but we quickly realized it wasn't a good fit for her. (Great program, just not for her!) She's still doing Beast Academy, too, just on the side.

Physics this year for science has been a good choice. It fits in well with doing engineering for her tech class. She's also in an animal studies class at co-op and that has been a lot of fun for her. Every week a child spin the globe and touches a spot. Over the next week they each choose an animal from that region and prepare a short presentation on it. They spend most of the class on the presentations before choosing the next. So far Monkey has reported on the Giant Panda, the NW Moose, and the Giraffe Weevil of Madagascar.

History Odyssey is a new addition over the last week. Before that Monkey was going to do Studies Weekly to do a state study. But she found it very dull and it wasn't what I really wanted to focus on anyway, so we let it go. She's enjoying studying the ancients much more than on our previous attempts at it (once in 1st and for a short bit last year when we were afterschooling). Bear is following along just without Monkey's required output.

Bear took a bit of a break from learning to read. She was getting a bit overwhelmed with it, so I let her take a small step back. We'll slowly get back to it. In the meantime she's doing great with math. I'm guessing she'll be on to 1st grade with it well before the end of the year.

Bear is enjoying tumbling but Monkey decided to take a break from it. She's now doing a theater class. She's only been once so far but she liked it. It's all singing and being dramatic, I'm sure she'll do great!!

No pictures this week, I just got a new phone and haven't yet messed with getting my pics off the old one :)