Catch up Post

I always forget to update this each day, so I have three days to catch up on.

Today's Word Search

We started our first literacy unit this week. The kids were given the option of either Little House in the Big Woods or Charlotte's Web.. Not surprisingly, the kids picked Charlotte's Web so we began reading two chapters a day. While I read, the kids have been working on coloring pages. After reading, we do a very short lesson to incorporate other subjects. For example, yesterday was a few "bug math" problems, today was a vocabulary word search. This was the first word find that the kids have ever done and they did really well with it.  We have read 6 chapters over the course of 3 days, so we're making a good pace.   We are still working our way through the morning drills every morning and the kids are quickly able to spell the month of September without prompting.

Morning Drill

Charlotte Web Coloring Page (and his drawn tattoos lol)

We are still working on our reading unit and each kid is able to read their poem without too much prompting (for example, today Ashleigh needed help with the word hungry but read everything else easily). We added an additional component using our flash cards where each kid had a set of word cards, they would select one word, tell the other which word they had and then they had to find the same word. They did wonderful on that and had alot of fun.

Math went really well too. We are still working on addition and simple algebraic equations. Today the kids did their entire lesson without the use of our bear manipulatives. I wanted to make sure both kids understood what they were doing and that one wasn't copying the other, so I had them work their worksheets in reverse, Ashleigh working top to bottom, Garrett working bottom to top.  They both did wonderful and got all the equations correct.  I also started to introduce word problems into our math unit and they have done really well with that.

Math Worksheet

Word Problem Worksheet

Today we finished with our science lesson. We've started on chapter 3 this week (we tested last week and Ashleigh scored a 90% and Garrett scored 80%) and are discussing how animals and plants live. Today we discussed how animals have fur to help them live in cold climates and discussed how hermit crabs use shells as their shelter. We also discussed antennae, fins, shells and hoofs. We're moving slightly slower than I had expected with our science class and are currently a week off what I had scheduled but that's okay as long as we are making progress.

No history lessons at all this week.   But we have still been receiving post cards. We're up to four at this point (expecting 1 more for this month) and have received one from Texas, Arizona, Alaska and New Mexico. The kids are really enjoying finding the states on the map and reading the post card to see what is on the back. We mailed off our post cards this week so hopefully the kids who receive ours will be very happy. Garrett and Ash took real pride in writing their own names on the post cards as well.