Week 4 wrap up

Wow four weeks down! A whole month! So many things have been learned already. George is doing amazing. George has learned what all the letters of the alphabet make, which for us is a big step. Prior to this year reading consisted of recognizing sight words and trying to sound out words now he's sounding out so many words and is getting better and better at sounding them out without doing each letter individually. Hearing George read is so nice. Today we went out to the library and got a lot of simple reading books and he was over the moon happy about it.  This week we also started our study of the sun. We discussed how the planets orbit the around the sun and how we should never look directly over the sun. Also today we did an experiment with it which you will get to see!  Monday we ended up with the day off but made up the work on Tuesday. So Here is on to some pics of the week!

 

 



 

 

Fall has arrived!!!! With the helped of Daddy we changed the border in the classroom. George noticed right away and was happy to see it.

Up close shot.

In spelling we had a bingo game. I would give him the sound of the letter he would then find it and mark it with a resee chip. When the game was over we got to eat them :)  Our spelling and reading has a lot of re-enforcement on the basic sounds to be sure they understand it. In reading we are still reading 3 letter words and just now getting into small sentence's which is great! I love seeing George do good at the basics before we work into more advanced stuff.

And like usual look who visited us!!

George wanted to have his pictured taken laying down sun bathing with buddy!

I got George a sun catcher that you make with scratch paper. He had a lot of fun doing this.

After it was all done! He did an amazing job! Although time consuming which he wasn't happy about it paid off. I love having this hanging up!

Now isn't that cute! He now wants to make more of them!

Going along with our sun lesson in science we talked about how the sun is bad for your eyes and how the eyes act as a magnifying glass and can burn your corneas. Also your corneas have no feelings (that was new to me!) So we took some cold chocolate outside and a magnifying glass and with the help of daddy we melted chocolate.  George found this fun!

Helping George get it just right.

He's got it going.

Ok we have a lot of fun with this. I didn't get a picture but we also burnt leaves hahaha.

Working on his Draw Write Now book.

Only Lilly would lay like this!!!!

End of the week!!!!!  Ticket count comes to............ 22!!!!!!!!!!!! and he....... SAVED so he got a bonus so its now 23!!!!!!!!!!!

We had a really good week and I am very proud of how good George is doing. He is amazing me everyday at how excited he is to start the day. The only thing he has a hard time with is the writing. During our science while I read he played in his kneitic sand and when we had to retell facts about it he had tons to tell. So it clearly helped keep his concentration. He's learned lots with the science. he remembers that the moon is a satellite from last week and knows that we orbit the sun. George is learning more and more each week! He's reading many words and reading faster!  Hope you enjoyed reading about this week! See yall next week!!

Week 3 wrap up

So we have finished week three. We are currently half way through week 4 but this is about week 3, I'm just a little a little late on the update. So many things are being noticed now. The main thing is reading! George is now reading! Not just sight words but real words he's sounding them out and really getting the hang of it. I think I will do a write up about our reading program because its thanks to that, that has helped his reading. I never thought we would get to this day and here we are. It is truly an amazing thing to sit here and hear him sounding words out and working through books.  So here's onto the week!

 

 

 

 



 

Every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday he reads a bob book and then tells me a sentence about it which you see on the mini dry erase board beside him. He then copy's it into this journal and draws a picture that goes with the story. Every week he's getting better and better at reading. We are also now moving onto having him read them here and their for bedtime story's. Even Robert has noticed the improvement in his reading.

So during the morning we do many journals and its easiest for me to set up in row on this dry erase board (this is the one we use for our spelling and reading, so the abc's  are always their) and I just grab the next in order to hand him.

I found this cool rock excavation block. We like to do fun thing during the week and this was one. I found this at Lakeshore Learning for 2$

This is what it looked like a block of the material and a chisel, brush and magnifying glass.

George was very excited to dig in and find the two hidden gems. Sadly I did not grab a picture of the hidden gems but it was a lot of fun for him and definitely something we will do again. We talked about archeologists and how this is stuff they do.

Once a week we do a bible study. This week it was about how Eve ate the apple. George really got into this story and told me how bad the snake was for tempting her. He is really enjoying the bible study's we do and learning a lot!

Working on making numbers with multiple digits and reading them correctly. He quickly got the hang of this and was bored doing this with the blocks. We did one day with the blocks and the rest he just told me the answers without using the blocks. Some times he's all about the blocks other times he doesn't want to use them and just wants to get through the subject I follow his lead.

Lilly decided to poke just her head in and watch over school for the day.  Love seeing the fur babies watch us.

This was called gobbledygoop. You just add hot water and yep you end up with goop!

 A total mess but George loved it!

It was ok, but a pain to clean and I didn't think the cleaning was worth the mess hahaha not something I will buy again. We do have some left over because it only uses half the powder to make it so I am up on the fence on if we will even use the rest.

Each week I like to plan a craft. The fist week we did one of these so I pulled out another one. This one was supposed to be a frog. George loved doing it again!

Here he is again doing the sentence that goes along with the bob book.

As I've said this year we are learning all about the solar system so we have learned the planets and he can almost get them in order but we wanted to see the size comparisons. So we used punch balloons, and model magic to show the size comparisons. George had a blast doing this! Once it finishes drying we will hang them up! Sadly the sun has popped so it will be all minus the sun. We used string to measure the sizes and then formed the balloons or the model magic and have the string fit around it.

 Here it all is with the sun ( the sun did not have a measurement just said as big as possible)

Close up of just the planets. Sadly Pluto is being blocked (our since book teaches to which way the parents want taught with or without Pluto as a planet we have decided to include it)

And the very end of the week, George gets to see the fun Friday box and determine if he is going to spend his tickets or save them. For the second week in a row he has saved them! I rewarded that with a bonus ticket! He is up to 19 I think. He is very proud of his savings as are his dad and I. 

This past weekend was busy and then leading into this week we where back into school so this is the first time I found time to sit and write the blog. Seeing all the progress George is making is amazing. He is loving school and still looking forward to it each and everyday. He is telling us that he is now enjoying reading more and its becoming easier because he can sound words out but he still dislikes writing. Who knows maybe with time that too can change. Hope you enjoyed reading about the day!

Week 2 wrap up

Wow we are done with our second week of school! We had a great week as you will see through the rest of the post! George loved all the new curriculum choices I picked which I was so happy to see. It is taking us between 2.5-3hrs to complete all the work I have planned which is not bad at all! Sometimes it takes more if I chose to do games and other activities for that day. George did express to me this year that he does not like writing so I try to space out the big writing assignments with other more hands on things which he  likes.  So here's some of the photos of our week!

 

 

 

First up is what the daily bins looked like on Monday. Friday looks so slim because some of the books from earlier in the week we would use again later. So once we used them they moved further down to the next day we needed them. These bins help a lot! I do need to keep the teacher manuals on my desk or else it all would never fit though.

 

I told you all about the new magnetic dry erase board I had ordered well here it is. This is where we do our spelling and reading since they use those magnetic tiles you see at the top. Right now its just a-z. As we get further in the lessons we add other tiles.

Here's what my lesson plan book looked like! Lots of stuff going on! But we got it all done.

The Math-U-See program comes with a dvd to watch before you start the lesson so this is George sitting down to watch it.

This is the guy on the dvd teaching the lesson on place value. We do a lot of pausing to work a long with the dvd. George thought it was a lot of fun because you build with these really cool blocks.

Here he is building a number. The green ones are the units or ones place, the blue are the tens and the red are the 100's. George picked up on this pretty quick.

Here he is at the magnetic board working on spelling. I was saying the sound of some letters and he had to find the letters. This week he mastered all 26 sounds.

I got these water marbles that we decided to grow. You put them in water and they grow to 200x their original size.

You can see them through the cups. One had less water than the other. We  where curious if that would effect how much they grew. It did not. Now we are seeing if leaving them out of the water for the weekend effects their size as well.

This was Georges story this week and his drawing.

We had a visitor this week! Thumper came hoping around and wanted to see what was going on in the school room.

Here was what the water marbles looked like when they where out of the water. They bounce and squish if you push hard enough. They are pretty neat! George liked them a lot.

To break up writing assignments I gave him a piece of scratch paper and he drew a house, a castle me and him some clouds and wrote mom I love you..... Such a sweet kid!!!!

We had to move the daily bins because a certain bunny was eating our books! So Robert and I threw this shelf together real quick and have solved the problem.

To track his progress in reading and spelling we have this charts. Each time he completes a level he gets to add a sticker.

Here he is working in one of the books.

This was in the reading book. Matching rhyming words. Goofy smile!

End of the week progress!!!! All 26 letter sounds, level 1 of spelling and level 1 and 2 of reading.

All and all a great week for George this week he had all 5 daily tickets and 3 bonus tickets. Instead of turning them in he decided to save them. He has his eye on a bigger prize. So proud of him for saving them! He's Also done good with listening as I read out loud to him. He does get fidgety so I bring out the kentic sand and that helps a lot. He still pays tons of attention but its just enough to keep him still. He's learning lots already and looks forward to school each day. He loves showing daddy everything he does. I hope your enjoying all of our posts and are following along on the journey. Check back on Wednesday for another post all about another subject we are teaching!