Saturday, June 30, 2007

Giveaway!!

Life in a Shoe is hosting a giveaway of Vision Forum's exciting new adventure series, Ballantyne books!

Friday, June 29, 2007

June Recap

We had a short month of school for June. We've been on holiday since the 22nd and we go back on July 3 after the Canada Day Holiday. Ds also celebrated his birthday this month and turned 7!

Language Arts - We finished Lesson 30 of First Language Lessons. We've covered all the variations of nouns that are persons, places and things. Another poem has been memorized "Work" by Anonymous and a new one "Hearts are Like Doors" has almost been memorized. Ds has learnt to write his whole name (first, middle, and last) though he hates writing anything other than just his first. Since we talked about addresses I also added daily memorizing of our complete address and he has it down pat. We moved not too long ago, so he didn't know it very well.

We stared using Spectrum Phonics Gr. 1 and have made it pg 20 and the short a sound. I'm glad we added this in as he has been having a bit of problem with the work of actually hearing the sounds in the words. He really enjoys the workbook though!

We also started doing Word Families this month. These are actually really improving his reading skills. I am picking one that compliments our Phonics program each week. The last family we did was 'The _ash Family'. Ds's latest narration:

The Little Girl Who Wanted To Be Dirty

The little girl wanted to be as dirty as a pig. Then her looked around and she wasn't in bed she was in a pig pen with two cute little pigs. She had fun at first then she went to supper and it was yucky and gooey. She got out of the pen and sneaked around to the back door and went upstairs to her bathroom and cleaned herself. She put on her jammies. The End
(ds, 7yo)


Reading - We finished Lesson 12 of our reading curriculum. He has now gone through all the magic 'e' long vowel sounds, which he already knew but he has them down pat now. We've also covered the sounds 'th, ch, sh, ck' and he picked those up very quickly as well. He is starting to become more confident and fluent with reading. He isn't guessing what the words should be as much now. He has finished the first box of first level of Now I'm Reading readers and was very proud to accomplish that. We've started the second level box of Bob book readers now.

Handwriting - continuing with HWT the last letter he did was 'g'. His handwriting is coming along nicely and he actually enjoys doing his work with this program. He hated Abeka handwriting last year.

Math - We finished Lesson 33 of Right Start Level B. His level of understanding has greatly improved with this curriculum and I am so pleased with it. He is working on all the addition facts up to 10. Geometry was introduced and he loooves it so much. We've covered parallel lines, perpendicular lines, right angles, right triangles, triangles, squares, rectangles, and quadrilaterals. He is learning the months of the year and almost has them down. Reading large numbers up through the 1000's has been introduced and he understands but doesn't quite have it down yet. He also learnt to add 10s and understands well (ie. 50 + 20 = 70 ) as well as 10s and 1s (ie. 60 + 3 = 63). Commutative law was introduced but he already knew this from Abeka's 'twins'.

Read Alouds this month were: Pippi Longstocking, The Adventures of Grandfather Frog and James Herriot's Treasury for Children. We are currently reading the Complete Beatrix Potter Tales. Dad continues to read the Andrew Lost books at bedtimes when he is home. They have just finished #6 In the Whale.

And that is all the official curriculum we are currently using. When we get back to school we will be starting Animals and Their Worlds.

Thursday, June 7, 2007

Box Day!!!!

Oh, we are so excited today! Our WP box came at 6:50 am this morning. We had no restraint and dove into it right away. We got the complete Animals and Their Worlds program and received everything except 4 books which were on back order and should be coming shortly. Everything looks wonderful, ds was very excited. We love box days! Here are the pics, though I'm afraid they are rather dark:

Box Day

Box Day WP Animal Worlds

Box Day - WP Animal Worlds

WP Animal Worlds

WP Animal Worlds

WP Animal Worlds