The TWO WEEK report (1/17 - 1/28)

I was too lazy to type up a report last week! :-P

Yesterday, the girls weren't feeling well so we skipped school.

Bible -  We have been working through the New Testament stories with Rod & Staff and 101 Favorite Bible Stories. So far, Jesus was born, remained at the Temple to discuss the Scriptures and just started His ministry!!

Math - I decided to restart 1b next week so we've been reviewing 1a this past week. Squeak is flying through it all without a problem...we haven't worked on Singapore in a while so I was happy that she retained the information.

History -  The tepee village is complete!! We set it up on Daddy's Indian blanket!

Then we used it to act out various parts of Indian life like farming, council meeting, hunting and war with other villages.

We will begin studying Christopher Columbus as well as continue learning about Indian life.

Science - We are working on Astronomy and Squeak added the Asteroid Belt to our Solar System chart to separate the Inner Planets (rocky) from the Outer Planets (gas). She drew and colored her own Asteroids:

I bought a Solar System foam craft ball set from Wal Mart - it includes all the balls needed to make the Solar System. We are painting each item as we learn about them. Since this set included Pluto as a planet, Squeak decided to use it as the moon. So this past week, she painted her moon and the sun:

She also taught Packy stuff on the Solar System chart and now Packy can point out the Asteroid Belt, the sun and knows how many planets there are! We are rapidly nearing the end of Sonlight Science K, I plan on purchasing Noeo Chemistry I next week!
Other - We have been reading aloud our library books and are continuing A Lion To Guard Us for history. Squeak also has been reading books herself and has one more book to read to make her Pizza Hut BOOK IT! goal.

At the end of this week....

I'm going to have a TWO WEEK report on here!!

Weekly Report 1/10 - 1/14

Meltdowns and mayhem!! haha!!

Bible - We started back through the New Testament stories. I will read a story from the 101 Favorite Bible Stories book then the following day, work on the same story in the Rod & Staff Story/Coloring book.

Math -  As talked about in my previous post, we dropped BJU Math 2 and are returning to Singapore Math. I had to purchase the textbook and the HIG as I sold my textbook a while ago. I plan on starting up with the IP books once we get into 2a and Squeak is a bit older. We will resume 1b by working through the textbook up to the point of where we are in the workbook. This will bring it all back since it's been a month since we were in SM. This week we started Horizons 2 Math:

Packy also has been pulling out our old Critical Thinking Company Mathematical Reasoning A book and counting everything in it and naming the shapes:

And, of course, the server is rejecting that photo!

History - Here is the meltdowns and mayhem update! Squeak's perfectionism issues caused major meltdowns two nights in a row. Therefore, we didn't work on much history this week except reading from our chapter book - A Lion to Guard Us. We are going to give it a go tonight and finish up the two tepees we have been trying to complete this week. That will be 6 tepees total with two more to go! Here she is putting the finishing touches on one:

Science - "The universe declares HIS majesty!!"  This week was the start of our Astronomy study! We are in Week 32 of Sonlight Science K. First, we learned how astronauts get into space and acted out being space shuttles then we talked about how astronauts stay protected in space. Next we will find out what they do in space.

Other - More of the usual stuff...crafts, read alouds, projects, we also went to the Preschool Story Time at the library. I think Squeak is getting a little bored with it though. She likes the stories but not so much the songs. Oh well, it's fun though!!

Our first curriculum FLOP!

This is our first curriculum flop!

(Now, we tried lapbooking before and Squeak didn't care for it but I don't consider that as a curriculum flop since a lapbook is not an actually curriculum. And Moving Beyond the Page was dropped but at least we completed a section of it.)

So....the winner of our FLOP AWARD IS....

BJU MATH!!

LOL! Yes, Squeak asked to go back to Singapore Math after trying a week and a half of BJU Math. The reason why I tried this switch was because I didn't feel confident in my Singapore teaching ability and I thought I wasn't doing it justice. But that probably was because I didn't use the HiG - duh to me, I guess. Squeak enjoyed it and was doing well at least.

So, this is what I plan on doing: I still have our 1b workbook and sold the textbook so I will have to purchase the textbook AND the HiG for 1b. Then we'll "refresh" by working in the textbook up to the point of where we are in the workbook.

That's it!!

Weekly Report 1/3 - 1/7

Welcome back to school! Squeak has 5 more months of Kindergarten left!!

Bible - We are going back through the New Testament stories again using the 101 Bible Stories book and the Rod & Staff Bible Stories & Coloring. Here is a picture of them working this morning...actually Packy was busy counting the markers and colored pencils in the Crayola Crayon Caddy:

Science - We buzzed through 2 weeks of Sonlight Science K this week. I thought the material was a bit tedious. We were looking at how things work and the detail was just getting...well...boring. So we kind of read the main passages about each item in one sitting  and moved on. We will begin Astronomy next week.

Math - This week, we started BJU Math 2. The first chapter went horribly! Squeak was very bored and just shut down. I have to admit, I thought we would just go through stuff for review because Horizons 1 already covered this stuff (and about 40% of BJU Math 2 - that's how far ahead Horizons is because I think BJU is pretty much at grade level). But that "thought" backfired! So we are going to skip chapters 2 and 3 and work on Chapter 4, which is calendar and time. Then we can go back and do portions of Chapters 2 and 3 (again, Horizons 1 covered a lot of the material).

History - American History has been a hit so far this past week (our first week)! We are using a couple of different resources including Sonlight materials (some of the history spines and the regular readers) and project stuff I have gathered.

First we are reading through a picture book called North American Indians by Marie and Douglas Gorsline. We also started making a tepee village using a kit from Rainbow Resource. Squeak is decorating her first tepee here:

We will make eight total tepees!

For our nightly chapter book, we began reading through A Lion To Guard Us by Clyde Robert Bulla. This is a Sonlight regular reader that correlates with the history spine. Squeak is really interested in the story and is able to easily answer comprehension questions. Tonight, we are going to make two more tepees and read another chapter or two in the book.

Other - We have been doing our "regular" stuff like snack/story time and crafts. We also went to the library for a new story time. Packy was the "wildest" kid there...sigh. Squeak made a birthday gift for Grandpa too!

Weekly Update 12/27 - 12/31

We didn't do anything this week except chapter book read alouds and "snack/story time".

Squeak is obsessed with her Legos and has been building things for hours at a time! Next, I'm going to invest in Snap Circuit sets.

Next week we are going to begin our new stuff - BJU Math, Horizons 2 and American History. We are also going to start building a tepee village for history! Squeak is very excited to get back to school and work on her new things. She told me that she is sick of "whale math" (HM 1) and that I can throw it out! LOL!!

I have also decided to detour to Noeo Chemistry I when we complete Sonlight Science K. Squeak is also excited about this too (especially when I told her it includes a molecular building kit!).

May the LORD reign in your heart this coming year!!

Weekly Report 12/20 - 12/24

"Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us." Matthew 1:23

Just a few highlights of this light week. (When I said we were taking the week off and that we NEED to take time off, Squeak screams "NO! NEVER!!")

Squeak met her reading goal for BOOK IT and we went to Pizza Hut today to celebrate. She is getting more and more confident in her reading and I even taped her reading a book all by herself.

We made cookies and crafts this week. Read the stories in the Bible about Jesus' birth.

I printed some fun worksheets for math fact practice. We are not going to start anything in math until January 3rd. We are also starting American History at this time too. Squeak is VERY excited about American History!

Here are some pictures from the week!

Making cookies:

Crafts:

Packy making a block train and counting them in English and Spanish:

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

And praise to our LORD AND SAVIOR, JESUS CHRIST!!!!!!!!!!