This month started a little rocky. We had just had three months off schoolwork-free (well, Optimus Prime & Bumblebee had to do spelling & reading - but still, pretty much schoolwork-free) and one would think that I would have been FULLY prepared to start our new quarter. What with all the free time off and whatnot. Nope. I was not prepared. Scooby-Doo was eager to restart schoolwork. His brothers, not so much. They wanted another three months off or something. Which was tempting in theory but not in reality.
So, what did we do? We dove in head first even though we were SO not prepared.
In math Optimus Prime & Bumblebee started working on separate stuff. We worked on one of their second grade math books (that we never did during the summer) together, but Optimus Prime worked on some kindergarten/first grade math as well while Bumblebee started working on third grade math. In Spelling & Reading they worked on their reading skills while doing spelling units (that I created) based on the stories they were reading. (I'll get the spelling unit post up soon). In English we had two units that we alternated between each week. For weeks 1 & 3 we focused on nothing but phonics. In part this was because Bumblebee desperately needed to work on his phonics to help him learn to read and also as a refresher and help for Optimus Prime who can read very well but forgets to sound out his words when he doesn't know them. Instead he just makes wild guesses. I figured we needed to put a stop to that so a crash course in phonics would do him some good too. On the alternate weeks we worked on our reading comprehension workbook which used lots of different English skills to support the stories - including phonics.
For History we did ancient Egypt for the entire month - the culture, the religion, the pyramids, the rise and fall, the pharaohs, etc. It was a new idea of mine to spend a month a unit instead of 1-2 weeks. I hated it. Every minute of it. And they hated it too. We'll continue on the quarter this way because that is how I wrote the schedule but next quarter we'll do something different. Anyway, for more information on this refer to our Concept Week posts. Then we had Science which focused on the earth, weather, and plants for the entire month. They enjoyed that. For Logic and Art we did a bit of painting as well as some coloring and activity books.
Scooby-Doo did not have therapy this month. He starts it next month, which I was VERY glad for because he had a FULL schedule - seven subjects, just like his brothers. It was nice to have an entire month to get him used to the idea.
He worked on his handwriting, of course, and he had Logic and Art as always. We also did another Magazine unit which was nice. He always likes those.
We also had some new units this time! We had Spelling, Science, and Reading! Reading was a definite story time this month. I always try to make it stick and it never does. We made it through a whole month of it so hopefully it will this quarter! For Spelling he refused to write most of the words but he was very willing to spell them out. He does NOT like writing at all. I kept hoping he'd outgrow it but now I'm beginning to doubt that. And he had Science for the first time! I have a book of twelve science books (in a series called "Know-It-All's") so we did a new book each week with a lapbook to go along. The information on those units will also be up on our Concept Weeks page soon.
All in all it was a VERY full month. I'm not sure we were ready to do so much schoolwork after taking the entire summer off and dealing with the move. We had a very rocky start but so far so good.
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