Day 3

Corb was in an ok mood yesterday. Not really much to note other than some intentional antagaonizing in the evening followed by defience. Shortly after he went to sleep. He did really well with school, quickly going through everything.

I set up a "safe place" for him Tuesday night, this may have helped him over the course of the day. I removed a bunch of furniture from his room, added a desk I scored at a consignment shop that I plan to stock up with the coming school sales. I also added a bean bag chair and a spot for all of his favorite books. A few toys that are just his, some new puzzles and I popped my Lego cherry by buying our first set of Legos and a small table I also found at the consignment store.

We told him he can go into his room, no questions asked, when he starts to feel angry or just needs to get away from everyone. We also told him that if we notice he needs some alone time we will ask him to go there, but that he is not going because he is in "trouble". He was very happy with this idea.

Math-SM1B 3 number subtraction, he picked it up very well.

Language Arts-
Grammer-First Language Lessons 1st Lesson "What is a Noun?"
Phonics- ETC 1 page, 2nd Bob Book in 3rd set
Reading Comprehension-1st exercise in workbook to help with reading comprehension
Writing- HWT 1 page

Science- Continued our talk about Mammals. He picked Elephants as one of the Mammals he wanted to study. We read "Watch me Grow Elephant". Looked at African and Indian elephants on internet and learned how to tell the difference between the two. We also listened to different elephant noises and watch a few videos on youtube. Corb liked the elephants charging..ahem. We also walked like elephants. Last we followed the migration of the Elephants of Cameroon, it is a Google Earth download and pretty cool.

I am going to start recording Corb's mood everyday for my own reasons.

Corbin was in a very argumentative and irritable mood most of yesterday. This did affect school somewhat, mostly in Math. He was only happy if he was playing on his own. He did well controlling his anger most of the day, only incident was when he slammed his toolbox lid on Lennon's hand because Lennon wanted to use his tools. He was craving sugar.

Math-SM1B, did 2 pages of higher number subtraction. Trudged through but when promised a break after he finished the page he did it very quickly and correctly. Maybe he knows it but is bored?

Language Arts:
Phonics-ETC 1 page, read the 1st book in the 3rd box of Bob Books.
Writing-1st exercise in a Journal workbook.-he really enjoyed this and even assisted in sounding out words.

History-SOTW Activity "History of my Family" book, read "Me & My Family Tree"

Science-Corb named 3 mammals(elephant, blue whale, giraffe), identified the mammal when presented with a group of their toy animal figures, told me the characteristics of a mammal. Read "What is the Difference Mammal".

Other:
Listening skills-exercise 1 in a workbook to practice following directions.
Logic-Lesson 1 in a book about logical thinking.
Helped Clint replace the alternator in the Jeep.
Went to the bank to find out how much money he had in his account(he has been asking to do this for a few weeks).

And, we're back!

Today was our official start day for Corbin's 1st grade year. Here is what we did:

Math-Singapore Math 1B, we are working on larger number subtraction. Once I feel he has a good grasp on it(he is very close) we will move on to money.

Language Arts-
Grammar: Mad Libs
Phonics: Explode the Code 1.5, Last book in the second set of Bob Books
Writing: Handwriting without Tears Power Printing 1st page, Garden Journal

History-we are using Story of the World 1 book and activity guide
Read "What is History?" then answered the review questions

Science-we are using "Let's Read and Find out" as our spine books mixed in with Singapore Early Bird Science. I am using "Learning through the years" as a guide for what topics to cover.
We talked about Taxonomy. We are keeping it to Mammals, Reptiles, Amphibians, Fish, Birds, Insects and broad Invertabrates. Over the next 7 weeks we will cover one "family" per week. For our first week we are covering Mammals. Today we talked about the characteristics found in Mammals. We hung the Mammals up on our wall chart(that will eventually hold all the different families). We listed a bunch of animals then followed the characteristic "clues" to decide if they were mammals or not.

Corb has also been following the pumpkin seeds he planted 7 weeks ago. Each week he makes a journal entry about the growth of the plant. This week he discovered 2 little pumpkins. He drew them life size in his journal and wrote "There are 2 little pumpkins."

Hadley started back up with her Math, Writing and Phonics. She decided to join us for Science and Mad Libs but not History.

We took an unplanned trip to the Vet today as well.

I am going to start offering ETC and HWT to Lennon after his birthday on the 14th, but it will be entirely up to him if he wants to do anything or not.

Summer Vacation

I should have posted before, we are taking a break for the month of June. Everyone needs a break, right? The only scheduled sit down school type thing Corb is doing for now is his weekly Garden Journal. I asked him to pick a plant in the garden to Journal about from planting to harvesting. He picked pumpkins-his favorite. They are in their 5th week of growing, and growing fast.

I decided to take this time to pull my thoughts together for the coming "new" year. I am putting together plans for Corbin's 1st grade year, so far I've gotten July done. I am hoping to take it a month at a time in the planning arena. I want to get our planned schedule posted on here once it is all finalized. I am still toying with the idea of starting an art curriculum, but I am also afraid of adding too many new things at one time. As it is we will be picking up grammar, history, full time science, and some critical thinking/logic/reading comprehension/listening skills.

Hadley's First Story

We have a good sized tadpole that we are going to watch morph into a frog. We've been learning about the process. Hadley wrote her very first story today all by herself. It is about a frog...

The letal frog fond(found) a grl. The grl pikt(picked) up the frog. She gav it a hug. The End.

Nature Studies

Yesterday was Nature Studies with our homeschool group. Lot's of fun. The kids played a whole bunch of nature related games. Afterwards, the kids and I(my kids) searched the pond for tadpoles. I really wanted to bring some home to watch. We found a huge tadpole and caught it. We are going to make a home for it today.

I am very happy with what the kids have been doing. For now we do math, phonics and handwriting every day. They also each read a Bob Book to me. I am going to cut them back to 2 x per week on the HWT because they are moving through it too quickly. I am going to introduce other ways of doing copywork. In the next couple of weeks I am going to order the last few things we need for the new school year-we start in July. Clint and I decided to have Lennon start on a few things at that time, he will be turning 4 in July. Just a few simple goals-recognizing his name, writing his name, letters and sounds, numbers, colors, shapes. All the basic stuff.

Corb's Quetion

I love some of the questions Corbin asks us. He asks things I am sure I never questioned or even gave a second thought to. Yesterday, while he was doing his handwriting, he was given the word "Six" to copy. He was quiet for a little, then asked me how you spell "a". I told him it was "a". He rattled off a few other letters, then fell quiet again. When he spoke again he phrased this question "Why don't the letters have words? Why do only the numbers have words?" Hmmm.... Well, I never thought about it before. I told him that sometimes you have to write out the word for a "6". I thought that was a pretty lame answer so I went on with...Well, letters make up words and they are all sounds so we don't really need a word for letters. But then I thought some more about it, I asked Clint about it. His reply was that you need the word for "6" so that we know what "6" sounds like to say otherwise, it is just a symbol with no clues as to how to say it. I retorted with but so are letters. Why don't we spell "B" like it sounds-"Buh"? And maybe we do and I just don't know it, or we don't use the "words" for letters very often. Of course by the end of our conversation(Clint and I), Corb having long grown bored with us was off playing.