Another two weeks over, and despite waking up sick this morning it looks like I might get this one up in time.
So, for some random info Optimus Prime brought something home and was really sick for about 48 hours. No big deal. He got better almost immediately then passed it onto Bumblebee and Scooby-Doo, both of whom have been sick for over a week now, Bumblebee especially. He even lost his voice for three days. Sigh. Optimus Prime has been fine since the initial 48 hours, just really tired. Then, this morning I wake up sick and Bumblebee is STILL doing bad (at least he got his voice back yesterday). Needless to say we have not gotten much schoolwork done this past week. As of this moment we are officially three days behind with no end in sight to whatever this is that's kicking around the house. So here goes...
We FINALLY finished up our first Concept Week for this quarter. We did calendars, and I'll post about it in a couple of days. We'll start seasons in a few days, I want to finish off our Week 6 schoolwork first, which we'll hopefully finish off tomorrow...
Scooby-Doo was a trial this past week. We actually did nothing but read books and are technically a week behind in his workbook. He was happy with his workbook (Dora Colors & Shapes again) up until he got sick. As for coloring and stickers - both are totally out. Stickers now go on the body instead of paper and he likes to position the marker in my hand and make me scribble on the pages instead of doing it himself. I explained to him that I already know how to color, but he wasn't interested in what I had to say. Bumblebee decided that I needed some "help" with getting Scooby-Doo to do his schoolwork, so he colored and put stickers all over the coloring book pages for Scooby-Doo. Scooby-Doo saw that as an invitation to either run away or freak out, depending upon his mood. Right now I'm content to let Scooby-Doo fall behind. Our homeschooling goals for him are more guidelines than set in stone, and since he's been sick this past week he has wanted nothing to do with schoolwork and everything to do with cuddling and napping. Plus, I know he'll catch up quick once he feels better - he loves his Dora workbooks and next is a Minnie Mouse one and I'm sure he'll be equally excited to do that one as well.
Optimus Prime and Bumblebee, like I said before, are also sick. Bumblebee actually has been completely housebound. I wouldn't let him go to football practice or anything. Optimus Prime made it to practice two out of three days but it really wore him out. Despite being sick, however, we actually have managed to stay almost on schedule.
Handwriting is the same as always. Sloppy for Optimus Prime, varying between neat, okay, and sloppy for Bumblebee.
We are behind in Spanish. I was planning on having the colors unit finished up by now, but with them being sick it hasn't happened. Actually, I don't think we did any Spanish at all this last week...
We are behind in Science, however our Science book (which covers animals by continent) likes to do an in-depth look at an animal or two for each unit and this last week we got to do that twice, so they were really excited. There's a book you get to rip out and staple together. Then you read it and color it. They love doing that and they were thrilled that they got to do it twice in one week. So there was a bright spot.
We finished off our first Math and English textbooks and should of started new ones yesterday, but like I said we are a little behind.
Math we went over fractions, time, and money. They did good on fractions and telling time by the hour. Once we got into the half-hour things got confusing. Bumblebee kept reading the hour wrong and Optimus Prime just started making things up when reading the clocks. We need to work on this some more. Our kitchen has a little digital clock that I use when cooking, so I'm thinking maybe I should get an analog clock to help them out. The only one we have in the house is my watch, which is always missing since I never wear it. They understood the concept of pennies and one dollars, but anything more than that just confused them. They said that they understood a nickel equals five cents or five pennies, but when it came down to it they just did not understand counting by fives to count the nickels. They wanted to say five nickels equals five cents, not twenty-five cents. We have some Disney Time and Money workbooks, and I'm thinking next quarter we need to pull them out and really work on the concepts of time and money.
As for English we worked on sentences - telling and asking ones - punctuation, and word order. There was a LOT of writing, more than they are used to. The unit was really designed for a first grader that knows how to read.
They loved Geography, of course. We just finished map keys and symbols and are currently onto map borders.
Reading was a little different. For the past week and a half we read the story The Little Red Hen from a workbook and did the activities that went along with it. It was a nice break from trying to teach them how to read. On the plus side, they are starting to read very basic sentences, but only if they know all of the words in the sentence and only if the sentence is a few words long. Example - The cat saw a bird. I can read books. Etc. They haven't figured out sounding out words that they don't recognize yet, or guessing the word based on the context of the sentence - but it's a start!
Spelling was pretty good these past two weeks, they both did really good on the last two units. However there are about ten words total, apiece, from previous units that they do not have down. I've decided that it's time to do something about some of these words. Tomorrow we will ideally be starting Unit 7 and some of these words are from Unit 3. One thought that I am having is to do a Spelling quiz everyday until they are caught up. Another is to give them extra Spelling assignments using these words. I'm not sure what I am going to do but I've got to figure it out by tomorrow night.
Logic and Art are both fine. They are thrilled to have extra Logic schoolwork. Now they want Art dropped, but I told them no. Some days they are really into Art, other days not so much. I'm thinking that maybe next quarter I'll change our assignments for Art, we'll have to see...
For a side note we just ordered the last Dinosaur Cove book and it should be here in a couple of days. Then we will promptly read it (because god forbid we not immediately read a book about dinosaurs the MINUTE it arrives in the mail) and then I'll put up a post about the series. I'm also thinking about doing a post about chores. I keep going back and forth over this in my head. It's not about homeschooling, however when you homeschool and your kids are in the house all day making a mess there are a lot of chores to do... I'll let you know one way or another this week.
On a final note I have decided that we won't start our one-on-one time until next quarter. Right now with everyone sick, just finishing last month's Concept Week, football practice 3-5 days a week, and being three days behind there is just too much on our plate right now - in my opinion - to start throwing one-on-one time into the mix. We will definitely start it next quarter, however, since Optimus Prime at least really needs it. Right now the only one-on-one time we get is when we do our Reading assignments for the week, and sometimes we don't have a chance to do that one-on-one.
All in all it was a good two weeks despite everyone being sick. So long as I don't wake up worse tomorrow I think we can start working on getting back on schedule.
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