Crossing a Finish Line

1/28/16

Today was a fairly normal day for us, but I  wanted to mention something exciting - E completed All About Spelling Level 1!!! He could spell most of the 170 words a long time ago, but we did the work to reinforce the key rules. 

Here he is learning about open and closed syllables. We learned open syllables usually have a long vowel

Sound, and closed syllables have a short sound. We did learn two exceptions - a and the. They can go either way. 

Back at it!

Started back up yesterday after a long break.  Feels good to be back at work! 

I've decided to speed up our spelling, so he's getting an entire lesson in two days. He LOVES it! 

Math was a bit of a struggle today, as he kept forgetting to properly carry the 1 when adding 4 digit numbers. If that's our biggest issue, we're good.

We didn't start formal school until after lunch today. This morning we took a field trip to the county vital records office to pick up N's birth certificates. Eli decided that was a "cool" experience. After that we went to Your Delalb Farmer's Market for some groceries. He helped by checking things off the list.

This afternoon, we are meeting friends of ours who just became a homeschooling family at the park. Our kids are almost the same age, and we will be studying Hebrew with them starting next week! (We started working on reading/writing yesterday.)

Dreidel, dreidel, dreidel

We made them out of clay! 

The Write Stuff

Today we did a couple special things along with the usual stuff. 

First, it was our day to do Pirkei Avot, and E took a lot of pride in being able to write our summary of the line we studied. He was also pretty excited to finally be able to reach to hang it on our board!

The other new thing we are trying is for writing. E LOVES to use his imagination to write stories. So we are going to take a break from Writing Strands and try out a book Ingot from my Usborne book party called My First Story Writing Book. We are going to do 2-3 sections a week, and then he will work on filling a blank book. It should take us through February to finish it. He was really excited to try it!

Working on "About the Author." 

Getting back to it!

Yesterday (11/30/15) we finally got back to normal school after vacation and sickness and Thanksgiving. E begged me to start with math, so we did. 

The lesson was on adding 3 numbers, with a focus on sums of 10 and 15. We practiced different ways to think about adding them, and then we played a fun game. 

One thing I love about this curriculum is that it has a huge focus on games. E actually giggled and said he loved this particular one. 

For spelling, we worked on final blends. Easy peasy. Also a spelling test that he aced. 

We also began learning about proper nouns and worked grouping into lists in writing. 

A great day!

Not That Kind of Tablet...

9/30/2015

I am a little behind in posting this one - sorry!

Today was just a regular school day, but we did some fun things so I thought I would share.

One thing that really drew me to our math program was that is has a huge focus on using games to apply the concepts being learned. This time, we were working on quickly adding 0-9 by playing War. We each played two cards, and he had to add each pair to decide who won  the round. 

We also spent some time studying Pirkei Avot. He was writing our summary of the verse on a card for our board.



Next, we worked on writing. This was his first assignment in the Writing Strands Level 2 book. We were working on using adjectives, incorporating commas and the word "and", and composing sentences.



Lastly, we worked on a project for history - a cuneiform tablet. Referencing the Cuneiform alphabet, he decided to stamp his name into the terra cotta tablet.

Sukkot

Monday, 9/28, was the first day of Sukkot. Our friends were planning to come over for lunch and decorating in the sukkah, but the weather didn't cooperate. So here's what we did instead....

We started off by having an interactive snack - carrot and cucumber sticks and mini bell pepper rings with hummus. We had the kids try to build sukkot with their food. Some were more successful than others...

Next, we learned some sukkot terms and did a fun secret code worksheet.

Since we couldn't hang out in a real sukkah, we decorated and created our own! 

This little guy came all the way from my grandmother. He used to sit in my model sukkah when I was little! 

Last, we made all kinds of paper chains, flowers, and lanterns. A. Made the longest one!