Week 4

This has been a very light week. We have had play practice taking all morning and visiting grandma at the hospital and grandpa at the nursing home. We have school some in the car but mostly worked on memory work for CC at home and FLL ETC in the car math has just been flash cards when we can fit them in. We cant wait to get to our new normal next week. One co op starts and two more the following week. I hope to get a full list of what we are doing on here soon as we are making some changes and why we make those choices

It is such a wonderful gift to watch your child "see" what she is learning. We are working on Story of the World and not only using the book and the Usborne book and the Activity guide we are using as many books I can find from the library. It was so neat to listen to her read one book after another and then have to her go wait I just read something about this and get another book to compare and contrast. Seeing that makes me sooo happy that we are teaching her and watch her get the connection and helping her through that. While I am not anti brick and mortar school I am anti for her. Doing some science work she "saw" the connection with her Classical Conversations memory for the week and what we are working on with the My Pals Science. We are using as many books as I can find with the library and she at first HATES to read them until she something in there that she has already learn or is currently leaning about in science. We are done with Spanish for the summer but she is still trying to learn and use words from her class. We have gotten more in to art. We are using more crayons, markers and paint this year than in the last. I need to make sure that we start using them more and art class with Co-op begins soon with Mr. Bader who is an professional art teacher. I need to work on lessons about the the Artists that he is working on this year. Her dance class this summer is more of a dance party dance which is way different that what she is use to and music that she is not use to listening to. (Well besides YMCA) She is confident with ballet and tap event thought she is not perfect. She is finding this more of a struggle. She prefers ballet. Her recital for this summer fun class is in a few weeks then back to normal. I think next summer we will stick with what we know we like. Soon she start with ballet tap and jazz with the studio and ballet and drama with the co-op. Her co-op play starts next week. She just realized that the director casted her for lines that she has to memorize again. This past spring she refused to due her lines due to it being what she thought of as a boy part in the jungle book. This time we told her she needs to just try and DO IT. She can remember the lines no problem and LOVES being on stage this quick play hopefully will get her over the hump of being able to do more than sing and dance on stage. Although it is cute when we were at the Muny this past week she told me she did not want to be a polo shirt employee that when she worked there she was going to work the stage. The Math jump that we have taken is working so well that she is doing math that she doesn't even think that she can do. We do two MEP sheets that we do and the either Math games or worksheets from other programs or life math. She is finding that math is all around us. We have started using Bed Time Math blog. Doing her FLL (first language lessons) she is getting bored and said that it way to easy. I think we are going to go ahead and do lessons every day and then get that book DONE with and start MCT around Christmas. All about Spelling we are still review doing words both orally, finger spelling and or written. It is fun to watch her spell the word wrong orally and then with out fail write in air or on paper and spell it correctly. Classical Conversation she is rocking through. Her memory is amazing. So far she has everything memories. I am using another persons website for online games which she love. She loves the president cards I got at the dollar spot at Target and trying to get them in order. She amazes me on how well she does. I wish I had her ability to memorize like she does as fast she does. My Pals Sciences i am slowing her down by adding LOTS of living books and videos and experiments that are not in the book. She is FLYing thru the book. The whole series is suppose to take her two years I am not sure how with this kid that it could take more than a few months Writing with Ease really only takes less than 10 mins and I really think that we are going to rock thru this and be done by Christmas and use MCT. I am getting ready to order Life of Fred as part of her BUILD system and then for next year order BEAST Academy and do them on different days. Who knows maybe that will also be merry Christmas to me too. Tomorrow we will go back and fill in any of the Olympic metals in the Map we have in the living room. We mark them first on a piece of paper and then on the map by what metal and what sport. We will write a small paper on each sport after reading about it. (it may be mom and dad type up a narration or something she handwrites). Soccer is getting underway. We are having two practices a week getting ready for a tournament. She is on a new team with new girls with one of mommy's oldest err longer friends. She is having fun even though most practices have been over 100 degree temp. She again is the youngest on the team and most of these girls know one another she thankfully walks right in and fits in!! Helps to have a friend on the team! Soon is a field trip with friends on what we are learning about in history. I am excited to hear about it. Now to work on lesson plans for the rest of the week!

Got to love fun days. Soccer practice then fun day with a buddy with water tower of fun swing set and chalk on chalk board and concrete and painting outside. Add to that bubbles and hula hoops life is good.

Moving up a grade

Wow it has been a while. We are just beginning our 1st grade year. We just ended our second week. So far we are doing great! We have already doing some switching around with subjects. We were going to finish Math U See Beta, however , I did not like how much she had to use her fingers so we have moved to games and MEP. The games have bee n a great hit. She is also like the MEP because to her it doesn't seem so “math” but little does she know she is gaining knowledge and confidence. She is picking up speed with some on line games. XtraMath is the one we have been using for the last two weeks and we just started one today. It is more game based so I will see if I will continue that one because I don't like the video games aspect. Daddy said “Not sure we are going to keep with it as she is having more fun with the game and not caring about the point of the game.” I rather the card games and the games I am finding from other blogs. Board games with math addition and subtraction facts as well as spill and add math have been the biggest hits. We are going to start a system that I saw on line called BUILD. Buddy, Use manipulatives, independent reading, Learning about numbers/Logic Doing Math. We will add Life of Fred as part of the Independent reading as well as books from the library. Story of the world is rocking along. She isn't wanting to turn books back to the library (which is fun because she has complained every time we start to read one then she gets in to them or the pictures) so she can reread them. Yeah! We have done two projects. We went on a dig in the garden looking for broken pots. She was so cute when she was pointing out the things that we were doing that was not how they really do them but it was ok because it was just as fun. We did a cave painting with crumbled up grocery bag over a large bucket. I left her in the school room to paint a story. She had blast painting and then giving me a long story of how she had crops then she painted a shaduf so she could water her crops and the animals she had on her farm. This is such a big hit she wants to do it again tomorrow. We did try to make a tent/shelter out of the large limb that fell out of our tree however someone was running a small fever and it was 106 degrees outside so it didnt work well. She is working on making a family history for each family member. We are going to work on that over labor day weekend when the whole family will be over. We are decorating the pages now and will do the interviewing while they are here. I am typing up the review questions and letting her answer them and I am pleasantly surprised how well she is doing. First Language Lessons. I planed to drag out the lessons nope she wont stand for that. She is doing a lesson a day. I have a feelling I will so have to start something else sooner than I planned. We are doing review in All About Spelling. She is rocking through the review cards. We have had a few stumbling points and will continue to review until she is strong in her answers. She is spelling with confidence. We are letting her pick if she wants to write out the words, spell orally, use the tiles or finger spell. She choses finger spelling most of the time because it is faster. Writing with Ease is still something she loves to do. She loves the stories however hates writing the narrations. I have her do it orally first because of her ability to retell the story is remarkable. I wish I had her memory. However when she writes her sentences she will write out the smallest fact she can remember. Normally I would not care however that is the what we are using for her handwriting at the moment. There is not enough pages I could let her do in ETC. She loves doing those pages. One day on summer break she did 18 pages for fun. She is doing My Pals Science and it so fills her need to do workbook pages. She is moving fast forward thru the Diversity book. We are working plants so I have lots books and dvd on order from the library. Plus what we have at home. I want to make this last longer that what it seems to be going to last. She loves it and wants to do it every day. We also are doing Classical Conversations at home. It is remarkable how much she can remember in such a short time. Daddy and I are having to look in the manual to check her. To her this is a huge game. Sadly for us she is winning she is totally beating us on the memory work! We will add Song School Latin in a few weeks as we just ended a summer class on Spanish I am looking for away to keep that going. She LOVED that class. We will be taking Art class with a professional art teacher once a week, a week of drama this summer ending with her playing two roles (not sure if either are speaking roles) and then begin her drama class and ballet and music class in the form of co-ops and then ballet jazz and tap at a studio. Not sure if we are going to do a girlscout type class or not. There is one Keepers of the Faith on Friday afternoons but not sure if I can fit that in. I may try. She loved the girlscouts last year but we just were having issues getting that in evening plus getting to bed at a decent time.

1st of 52

289 pgs of a quick fun read.

Garden Spells opens on the house of Claire Waverly. The Waverly family has always been special. The townspeople have sought potions from their garden to help them with life and love. Claire owns a catering business and has a special talent of making just the right food to make what her client's desires come true. Her distant elderly cousin, Evanelle, has the gift of anticipation. Evanelle is always giving people things she knows they will need down the road. When Claire's estranged sister Sydney returns to town with her 5 year old daughter Bay, Claire's life is turned upside down. What magic will happen when the Waverly women reunite?

Starting new things

We have decided to start something new. I am using this as a health class but we are also doing this as a family. We have lots of food allergies and GI issues in the house and we are in the middle of flare up. I know that food has a lot to do with how we feel and so on my way journey I have found that keeping food journals are very helpful. Well getting a five year old to write down is not easy so when I saw this journal: I thought BINGO. We started yesterday and she had a blast doing it and was more thoughtful about her what she was going to eat.
Now lets hope this is something we keep up!

New Year New Beginings

I had not realized that we had just dropped the ball on this. Working two jobs, health issues and learning a new way to cook eat I just failed this little blog. So to fix this I am going to do a few things. I am going to have my husband the main teacher of our little student write about their day or week and then have our little student write about her day from her perspective. I planning on joining in the fun when I can.