This Week in Learning: October 24th, 2014

With the older children still away I’d had high hopes for a wildly productive academic week after last week being a disrupted one. The week however evolved into an un-ordinary week again with yet another dental visit and our monthly get together with our local homeschool group.  Our focus this month was The Human Body in Sculpture.  Each month throughout the year a different family organises an activity, they have included; print art, felt making, science activities, orienteering, lawn bowls, library tour and our annual sports day. Our group started meeting again this year after a hiatus and has been quite successful with our numbers increasing and many wonderful friendships being formed.

With Christmas approaching we are focusing on the Life of Jesus for our Faith readings. I’m reading Amy Steedman’s A Little Child’s Life of Jesus to the younger children.  Not dumbed down in any manner yet straight forward enough for the children to retain the whole story. My plan is to have completed the book by Advent.

Maths has evolved into a bit of a competition between Jelly Bean (10) and Jack Jack (8), they are both undertaking the Grade 3 work, revision for JB and an easy stretch for JJ, as Jelly Bean is determined to complete all the lessons before Jack Jack, and he is not giving her any ground.  Healthy competition here as both are understanding the work and motivated to work hard.  Jem (6) settled into working hard on his lessons, the work ethic spilling over to him too.

We are using Writing with Ease, to cover Writing and Grammar, with Jelly Bean and Jack Jack. They like the approach, scripted narration and copywork exercises, however we start on the Grade 2 work next week which includes dictation as well, not sure how it shall be received;) Whilst the work has been easy for them thus far I wanted to work our way systematically through the book as it is our first time using it.

Managed to do our All About Spelling lessons, though I am concerned we sometimes undertake the lesson with a ‘must do our set lesson’ approach, or at least on my behalf.  Not sure if it really matters as the children are certainly becoming solid spellers, PC was impressed the other night at dinner when JJ could spell a challenging word.  That’s the beauty of the program, it makes you stop and decode a word.

Reading for JB and JJ revved up several notches this week, JB continued to put in a solid hour practice a day and JJ upped his time to 30 minutes a day.  Towards the end of the week it all seemed to click for Jelly Bean (happy, happy dance:):):) she declared several times to me, “I like reading” !!!!! and then proved it by reading several books in one sitting and then initiated a visit to the library! coming home with a bagful of books.  JB found several books she enjoyed (reviews to come) and a few she didn’t but read anyway!  She realises at this stage she is judging books suitability on print size and amount of words on a page, as each day progresses she is happy with more and more print on a page:):) Jack Jack not to be out down insists on reading everyday, and in fact tonight was adamant he needed to read despite a blackout and so he read by candlelight.  Oh happy days.  Jem (6) has about ten more letters to learn with All About Reading, we are awaiting the next level to arrive. He managed to pin down another 3 letters this week, hopefully he’ll still retain them next.

Our Leaping into Literature continues to be a popular hit with us managing to read another pile of books this week. We found more keepers than duds compared to last week, reading topics such as; Australian, Books/Libraries, Carpentry, Geography, Science and more.  By going to the library and selecting rather than just reserving online I was able to search for more ‘meaty’ story plots appropriate for older children.

Bass became engrossed in jigsaw puzzles and spent hours focused on them.  Today we went to a garage sale of preschool items and bought several items he has been working with all afternoon. A memory game, puzzles to compare small, bigger, biggest, letters, occupations and materials and a balancing board.  He’s loving all the new items.

Bella (10 months) is crawling and more rapidly as each day passes, we’re having to be conscious of keeping the floor clear of little items.  She is now pulling herself up and getting into things, today she pulled the dress ups out of the box and dumped them on the floor!

Linking up at Wine Dark Sea’s Guilt Free Learning Notes.