First Two Weeks

We are loving homeschooling! I am still learning how to balance and tweak our curriculum, but overall I think everything is going well. Here is a highlight of our first two weeks.

Bible
Not much has changed in Bible this year. I am still not sure what I think of the Vos Story Bible. I love her descriptions but I am struggling with whether I think she is compromising accuracy of the text with story telling. I am still praying about direction in this area.

Math

After reading Developing Number Concepts Using Unifix Cubes by Kathy Richardson and Math Their Way by Mary Baratta Lorton, I have decided to revisit some concepts that I think that SharkMan already has mastered. Both of these books stress that young children need multiple exposures to how numbers physically look. For example when you think of the number eight, most people don't "see" eight items in their head. They may see a combination of 3 and 5 or 4 and 4. These two authors contend that unless children really solidify what numbers under 10 (and especially 3-5) look like, they will struggle with math. So while SharkMan can easily count with one to one correspondence beyond 20, I decided that it couldn't hurt to review. We took one week to create a book of 3. Each day, I used 5 sheets of paper and a new manipulative to look at different combinations of 3. We used toothpicks, wooden cubes, pattern blocks and Do A Dots as manipulatives - one each day. We enjoyed looking at all the different ways we could make groups of 3. At the end of the week, we stapled all the pages together and made a book for our book basket.

We also have enjoyed using other manipulatives. We have copied patterns on our hundreds board.

We continue to use our Cuissennairerods and alphabet book. Sharkman is getting better at recognizing the lengths of the the different color rods. We use the same letter that we cover in phonics with the cuissennaire rods in math.

We also played a great game with Tangrams. We were each different colors and tried to cover the most dotted areas of the board. We played several times and SharkMan quickly picked up some strategy!

Literature/Phonics/Science:

We have enjoyed reading about the ocean the past two weeks in preparation for our beach trip. We continue to use the Phonics Road to Reading's plan of alphabet introduction with Phonogram Activity Sheets by Cindy Franklin. Basically, this program introduces all the sounds that a letter makes at one time. Most phonics programs introduce all the short vowel sounds then long vowel sounds. This is SharkMan's favorite part of the day. At the end of phonics time, I ask him to tell me the correct sounds the letter makes and the he "earns" a card with that particular letter on it. He loves earning his letter and it is typically the first thing he tells Papa Shark about each day.

I did decide to change our handwriting component of phonics. SharkMan just doesn't have the fine motor to control the pencil perfectly on lined paper. He was getting frustrated that his letters didn't look right. After three days of frustration, I changed my plan. Instead of writing the letter, we are using manipulatives to form the letter. One day, we used dried beans and another day we used Wikki Sticks. I also pulled out my Montessori sandpaper letters to practice where to begin each letter. All of a sudden his resistance disappeared and he looks forward to see what new material we are going to use each day.

We also have enjoyed the literature rotation. We did a sort on things that you find in the country and the city when we read The Country Mouse and The City Mouse.

When we read The Crow and the Pitcher in Aesop Fables, we did an experiment to see if we could raise the water level in a dish by adding stones like the crow did. SharkMan loved it and did the activity twice.

History
We worked on the Pledge, sang songs about America and did a US map. We read a number of books about patriotics songs and a biography on Betsy Ross. We placed our first picture (Adam and Eve) in our time line book.