I’m only a month behind. Not too bad. I lost my mojo 1 week after I came back from our vacation and writing a flurry of stuff. I guess it didn’t help that we got into a car accident (all’s well) and I had to deal with the fall out from that.
The kids are doing A LOT of IXL now. I feel kind of bad. But as the homeschooling podcasts I listen to says, we go through seasons in our homeschooling life, due to, you know, life. So no need to beat myself too much for it.
Thumper
- English –
- Grammar – adverbs
- Books – Story of Dr. Dolittle (AR 5.1)
- Writing – Writing With Ease Book 2 Weeks 21-23
- Spelling – Evan Moore Spelling 2.9-2.12
- Chinese – Characters – 童話莊子
- Reading – 水滸傳 (4th), 說給兒童的世界歷史 audiobook completed
- Writing – #200-210, Writing with Ease (童話莊子), 來玩寫作的遊戲 chap 8,
- Math – decimal multiplication, fraction multiplication, division review, similar/congruent/equivalent
- Science/History – reptiles, amphibians, dissected frog!, birds
- Others – Art class (studied Russo), monarch butterfly fieldtrip, swim, Christmas holiday hike in the city, rainbow loom
Astroboy
- English
Reading – Primary Phonics level 2 reading books, AAR Book 2 #10-13, Magic Treehouse finished (audiobooks)
- Grammar – prepositions
- Others – cursive writing
- Chinese – 神奇樹屋 #9-#35, Sagebooks characters writing, Reading 123 小火龍 series, 說給兒童的世界歷史 audiobooks
- Math – division memorization, fraction add/sub same denominator, frac multiplication whole number, triangles
- Science/History – same as sister
- Others – same as sister,
Reading – Primary Phonics level 2 reading books, Maybe I will really try to keep it short and sweet this month.
Biggest thing for Thumper was her obsession with 說給兒童的世界歷史 and she powered through the complete set (20 CDs!). At least now I can say she knows the general world history timeline. Other big item is we switched to a different spelling curriculum. She does not get the logic that All About Spelling uses. So I’m trying a more traditional method of just memorization and then practice through writing. Oh! And I also went back to doing 來玩寫作的遊戲 for writing assignment. She’s much happier.
Biggest thing for Astroboy is the fact that he went through 26 神奇樹屋 Magic Treehouse books. 26! That’s like a book a day! The frustrating and yet such a my-logical-and-stickler-child thing is his insistence that he HAD TO read the books in order. Other than advancing in English phonics, he’s kind of stuck at multiplication/division memorization and other parts of English learning. Oh! And he’s really really really into dinosaurs now, after we studied reptiles and went to a dinosaur museum.
As I mentioned, both kids are using a lot of IXL, something new I’m trying this year. What I’m finding is that it’s plugging in the holes or showing me the holes in the kids learning. For example, I taught Astroboy English grammar. He seems to get the concept. But then he runs through IXL and it’s apparently he forgot a lot of it. Or I can use it to cover items not mentioned often in my Montessori albums.
For Thumper, because she’s so good at comprehension, she often fools me into thinking she understands a concept, because she understands what I’m teaching her. But then we use IXL and she makes mistakes on these seemingly easy concepts and I realize she actually didn’t quite get it.
Astroboy in general has a language comprehension and retention issue. Not a problem, just a different way of working. He needs lots of fun repetition and then he’ll process it and bam, one day he gets it and knows it better than his sister does.
It constantly fascinates and frustrates me in how both kids learn so differently, with the frustration in the puzzle of figuring out what is the best way to help them learn.
Oh oh! Other notables. Thumper has her first violin recital. We started a new art once a month co-op which was fantastic. Finally, we are getting some art in the classroom!
I thought it was a light month. But we had a lot of extra curriculars when I look at the pics!
