I spent the last few days debating about the longevity and practicality of the "Two Week Review" posts. I thought about stopping them, I thought about making them monthly, I thought about making them quarterly, and I thought about continuing them. Which is the most practical? Which is the most informative? Which is the most helpful to me and my audience? Does anyone actually read these posts? Do I really need to rehash what we did (especially since it's currently a rather pitiful line-up)?
Long story short, in the end I decided that they need to stay, but for the whole of this quarter I'm not going to get into specific details about what we are doing in our "classes." Why? Because we really don't have any consistent classes this quarter. Yes, I could talk about what we did in Math the four times we did it over the last two weeks, but it's not the same level of information as when we did five times a week for two weeks. W're only doing subjects like Geography and Spanish once a week here. They're not really getting much out of these subjects right now. It's more like touching base than learning something new. How can they learn something new when the next time we'll talk about it could be an entire week away? What's the point, their chances of retaining it are non-existent.
For now the focus is on teaching Optimus Prime and Bumblebee how to read, and Scooby-Doo how to speak. So, if something relevant comes up in a class (like a major break through) then yes, I'll post about it. Otherwise these posts (for now) will just be about the level of reading Optimus Prime & Bumblebee are at and updates on Scooby-Doo's speech therapy.
So, Scooby-Doo started going to speech therapy consistently. We now no longer go with him. There were tears at first when we dropped him off, but he's warmed up to the staff. There are four different people he works with: two developmental specialists (they are who he regularly sees), the speech therapist (who visits him sometimes), and a preschool teacher (who also visits him sometimes). We did nothing at home in regards to schoolwork, however he counts for his therapists all the time (he refuses to admit he knows some of his alphabet) and they say that he talks a lot (even if they can't understand a word of it).
Lets see, now onto Optimus Prime and Bumblebee... We did nothing for these two weeks other than read books. I read to them, they tried to read to me, they did read to me (sometimes) - that sums it up. So, what did we read? A lot. The "Reading List"/"Book Series We Have Read" pages have exploded. The number of books we read in one month is pretty similar to the number of books we generally read in three months. And this doesn't count all of the non-chapter books we read and the number of books they have read to me. So what did they read to me? We've been working our way through "Fancy Nancy" (which is the only level one books I could find at our library) and Bullfrog's "Colors in Nature" series (also from the library). The list follows.
Optimus Prime:
Big Bear, Small Bear by Stan & Jan Berenstain
Fancy Nancy at the Museum by Jane O'Connor
I Spy a Skeleton
Fancy Nancy Poison Ivy Expert by Jane O'Connor
Colors in Nature: Red
Colors in Nature: Orange
Colors in Nature: Yellow
Bumblebee:
Big Bear, Small Bear by Stan & Jan Berenstain
Fancy Nancy Sees Stars by Jane O'Connor
I Spy a Skeleton
Fancy Nancy The Dazzling Book Report by Jane O'Connor
Colors in Nature: Green
Colors in Nature: Yellow
Colors in Nature: Purple
We tackled 3-5 pages in one sitting depending on how hard the book was. The exceptions to this were "Big Bear, Small Bear" which we did in one sitting since they have most of it memorized and "I Spy a Skeleton" since the book had picture sentences. We read so much that they did an entire month's work in two weeks. So, I think we did okay. Hopefully they'll get this whole reading thing down soon.
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