Night School

So Wednesday rolled around and we both finally felt up to getting down to business, but not until after dinner - our first "night" school!

We started with our usual math warm up, first.

We reviewed numbers on the abacus...

Then we made stairs on the abacus, and talked about how he knows what the numbers are without counting (hint: 8 is 5 and 3!). We also talked about how bigger numbers are long than smaller ones.

We reviewed parallel lines and planes, and learned about perpendicular ones.

Then we moved on to handwriting. We introduced "Wet, Dry, Try", and practiced E, F, and D.

First, I write the letter. Then he erases it with a wet sponge, following my lines.

Then he dries it, again, following how the letter is weitten.

Then, he tries it!

We also practiced E, F, and 1 in the workbook.

School for his birthday!

E loves doing schoolwork, so skipping it on his 5th birthday (Sep 3rd) was out of the question! This time, T also joined us for class. 

He really seems to love the RightStart math curriculum, so we started with that again. We reviewed Yellow is the Sun and showing numbers 0-9 on the abacus 

We also reviewed first, second, and third.

In this lesson, we learned about parallel lines and planes, and he went around the room and identified parallel lines in our space.

"These are parallel."

"These are not parallel." We have not learned about perpendicular yet.

We also learned that things with three sides are triangles, and things with four sides are quadrilaterals. We learned that "quad" means four. Interestingly, T had an easier time understanding how to physically make the shapes on the geoboards, but E had an easier time grasping the concept. It's fascinating to watch two different children learn side-by-side!

Next, we reiterated the concept of "10 is 5 and 5". When I asked both of them why 10 is special, E knew the exact answer - because it's five and five! This was definitely another moment that showed the difference in a child that's ready for this information, and a child who isn't there yet. Fascinating!

First, we showed the concept with tally sticks. 

Then we showed it with colored tiles.

And lastly, we showed it on the abacus. 

E is practicing the quadrangles. He had a difficult time making shapes other than squares, so we had a lot of practice. 

We realized we were ahead in our plan for handwriting, so we just skipped on to our unit study. This lesson was about the Earth and the Moon. E did a great job reading about the Earth and learning about what colors we can see when the Earth is viewed from space. we also read about the moon, and he drew a full moon, a crescent moon, and a moon completely in the shadow. We learned that the shape of the moon depends on where the Earth and Sun are in relation to it. 

Labor Day Lessons

Today T decided to join us for lessons!

We started with our math warm up - E read Yellow is the Sun, then they sang the song together. 

Next, we reviewed comparison words. We compared the length of two quantities on the abacus....

Then we learned the word beside. They are demonstrating it here - standing beside each other.

Next, they each took a turn organizing different size bars from longest to shortest. 

Sometimes they needed a little help deciding if one was longer than the next.

Then we took time to review finger quanitities with another round of matching. 

Our second lesson introduced 9. E is demonstrating several ways to show this number.

Last, he practiced writing tally marks. It took a little practice to get the spacing right. 

Next, we moved onto unit studies. Today we learned more about Venus and Mercury and added those pages to our coloring book. E did a great job reading all the information and choosing colors for his planets based on what he learned about them (and T followed right along).

Venus has yellow clouds of acid....