School Updating
I haven't talked much about school this year yet. We've been concentrating pretty heavily on learning to read (Grace) and accomplishing better reading (Ruth). Both girls are making progress and I have to admit, I feel tons better about this school year than last year. Reading, to me, is the one thing that a great education hinges on. If you can read and read well, you can learn anything. Once Ruth began to read, I began to breathe a little easier. Once she could sit down with us and do the readings from the King James Bible (not perfectly, obviously, we're still working at it after all) I really took a deep breath for the first time in a long time. One down, three to go.
Ruth is also doing a list of spelling words each day. I found a list of first grade words on the internet. At the beginning of the week, Ruth and I sit down and she spells words off the list and I check them off until she has between 6 and 8 words that she gets wrong. I use those words to compile her spelling list. I figure, why have her keep spelling words that she knows, right? I keep the list on the white board and each day Ruth copies her spelling words. On Friday I test her on them and so far, she's moved on each time.
Each day the girls have handwriting practice. I have to say that some days are so much better than others. There are days that I'm in awe of Ruthie's handwriting and other days that I look at it and think "What happened!?". Grace has already gone through her book of learning to write the letters, so now she is working on making them neater. David even has a "writing" book, but really it's a pre-writing book designed to help a little one master control of the pencil before moving on to actual writing. He works on it when he feels like it. Some days he really wants to do school, other days he'd rather play.
Ruth is preparing to enter double digit addition. I am using a math program that works quite a bit different from most math programs. Instead of learning a little bit about a lot of stuff, you work solely on one part of math until you master it. We are finishing last year's book that concentrated solely on single digit addition and then subtraction. We will be moving into the next book in a month or so and will then focus on multiple digit addition and subtraction. Compared to public school, we are moving behind schedule. But, by the time Ruth reaches middle school, she'll be right on track with pre algebra. By breaking it down into single digit add/sub, multiple digit add/sub, single and multiple digit multiplication, single and multiple digit division, fractions, and lastly decimals and percents, you cover one topic each year and by 7th grade, you are on your merry way to algebra. Or Prealgebra if the regular is still a bit much. The theory behind this is that there is less reviewing. Instead of learning a little bit about each of these topics each year, she'll learn one of them thoroughly and then move on. We tried the other way and found it rather boring and tedious to review the same material over and over. (Also called spiral method-you learn a little bit, then a little bit more, then a little bit more etc, etc until you have the whole picture.) So, compared to our friends, Ruth is behind, but in reality, they will all end up at the same place in a few years. We're just taking a different way of getting there.
So that's our everyday stuff. Language Arts (reading, phonics, grammar, spelling), math and penmenship are all we do daily. A couple of times a week we pick up science, history, foreign language (French, though we're not hitting it too hard) and not often enough art and music. I'm really in need of some good art books for kids (eg lots of color photos and easy text), art prints and cd's. Yes, I could utilize the library, but then that requires a trip there with a bunch of kids and that is just not fun. So, for now art and music are hit and miss. We do listen to the classical station every day and it's fun when the kids recognize a piece from our Beethoven's Wig cd's.
Well, that's all, folks!
Since we're hitting the reading/phonics pretty hard, we're also incorporating grammar this year. I'm finding Grammar so much more fun than it was for me the first time around. Maybe I understand it better now? Here is today's lesson for Ruth on the white board. Basically, she has a page of work to complete every day. Today we covered punctuation, capitalization, homonyms, and combining sentences.
I tried out a new idea today. Once a week, Grace has a word list that she must read and check off each word as she reads it. I had Ruth sit down with Grace today and she (Ruth) listened to Grace read her words and made sure that she read them correctly. Oh and I gave them the option of doing school in their pj's today. You can probably guess what they chose by checking out Gracie...
Ruth is also doing a list of spelling words each day. I found a list of first grade words on the internet. At the beginning of the week, Ruth and I sit down and she spells words off the list and I check them off until she has between 6 and 8 words that she gets wrong. I use those words to compile her spelling list. I figure, why have her keep spelling words that she knows, right? I keep the list on the white board and each day Ruth copies her spelling words. On Friday I test her on them and so far, she's moved on each time.
Each day the girls have handwriting practice. I have to say that some days are so much better than others. There are days that I'm in awe of Ruthie's handwriting and other days that I look at it and think "What happened!?". Grace has already gone through her book of learning to write the letters, so now she is working on making them neater. David even has a "writing" book, but really it's a pre-writing book designed to help a little one master control of the pencil before moving on to actual writing. He works on it when he feels like it. Some days he really wants to do school, other days he'd rather play.
Ruth is preparing to enter double digit addition. I am using a math program that works quite a bit different from most math programs. Instead of learning a little bit about a lot of stuff, you work solely on one part of math until you master it. We are finishing last year's book that concentrated solely on single digit addition and then subtraction. We will be moving into the next book in a month or so and will then focus on multiple digit addition and subtraction. Compared to public school, we are moving behind schedule. But, by the time Ruth reaches middle school, she'll be right on track with pre algebra. By breaking it down into single digit add/sub, multiple digit add/sub, single and multiple digit multiplication, single and multiple digit division, fractions, and lastly decimals and percents, you cover one topic each year and by 7th grade, you are on your merry way to algebra. Or Prealgebra if the regular is still a bit much. The theory behind this is that there is less reviewing. Instead of learning a little bit about each of these topics each year, she'll learn one of them thoroughly and then move on. We tried the other way and found it rather boring and tedious to review the same material over and over. (Also called spiral method-you learn a little bit, then a little bit more, then a little bit more etc, etc until you have the whole picture.) So, compared to our friends, Ruth is behind, but in reality, they will all end up at the same place in a few years. We're just taking a different way of getting there.
So that's our everyday stuff. Language Arts (reading, phonics, grammar, spelling), math and penmenship are all we do daily. A couple of times a week we pick up science, history, foreign language (French, though we're not hitting it too hard) and not often enough art and music. I'm really in need of some good art books for kids (eg lots of color photos and easy text), art prints and cd's. Yes, I could utilize the library, but then that requires a trip there with a bunch of kids and that is just not fun. So, for now art and music are hit and miss. We do listen to the classical station every day and it's fun when the kids recognize a piece from our Beethoven's Wig cd's.
Well, that's all, folks!
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