I have learned over the past two years to remember to extend grace to my lad the day after a busy day. We don't plan serious book work. We learn as we do things.
Reading
World history.. we got kinda caught up in this book today so we read two pages,rather than the normal one. We learned some of the tricks of the trade to desert warfare, and about using elephants!
50 Magical stories: "the lad who went to the north wind". In this story the bad person got punished as a natural consequence.
Classic Animal Stories: "the elephant's child'. the big question of the day was.. why did they keep spanking him just because he asked questions??? and then why did they say he was bad when he spanked them back at the end of the story??? Why mom???
The ultimate guide to wildlife of north america. Today we learned about the giant hairy desert scorpion. It's venomous but generally people are fine. And the Eastern Cottontail. Did you know this rabbit mostly lives east of the Rockies and sometimes uses gopher holes to hide in during the winter?
50 Magical stories: "the lad who went to the north wind". In this story the bad person got punished as a natural consequence.
Classic Animal Stories: "the elephant's child'. the big question of the day was.. why did they keep spanking him just because he asked questions??? and then why did they say he was bad when he spanked them back at the end of the story??? Why mom???
The ultimate guide to wildlife of north america. Today we learned about the giant hairy desert scorpion. It's venomous but generally people are fine. And the Eastern Cottontail. Did you know this rabbit mostly lives east of the Rockies and sometimes uses gopher holes to hide in during the winter?
Today's Detours
the lad was playing with his smoothie today and I mentioned how it was starting to look like the leaning tower of Pisa. That turned into a discussion about what would happen if it was the leaning CN Tower. Which of course led us over to this wiki article on the tallest buildings in Canada.
It surprised us how many of the tallest buildings in Canada were bank buildings. "they must have lots of money mom. We should be a bank mom, our house I mean". :)
This of course led to a discussion about land use, and how much land we save by building apartment buildings. We talked about relative size, and did some greater than/less than work. Superkids did up this page for us. :) hopefully you can see it.
We took the time to look up some of the interesting tall buildings around the whole world as well. Many of them are quite interesting architecturally, but many are quite boring office type buildings.
second detour was Jelly ears. :) WE started here, and then went here.
the picture below comes from jmagnus
It surprised us how many of the tallest buildings in Canada were bank buildings. "they must have lots of money mom. We should be a bank mom, our house I mean". :)
This of course led to a discussion about land use, and how much land we save by building apartment buildings. We talked about relative size, and did some greater than/less than work. Superkids did up this page for us. :) hopefully you can see it.
We took the time to look up some of the interesting tall buildings around the whole world as well. Many of them are quite interesting architecturally, but many are quite boring office type buildings.
second detour was Jelly ears. :) WE started here, and then went here.
the picture below comes from jmagnus
The world
we started our work on our paper mache globe. The picture below was taken by my lad. We got the first layer done. it was quite a discussion deciding what to do. Should we just do the earth (the one highest up), should we do three earths (one for everyone in the family), should we do an earth for mom and son, should we do the moon, earth and sun? and paper mache them all? We decided to do the sun (not paper mached), the earth and the moon. An old agility frame came in handy for hanging them. We hope to do a second layer tomorrow. and then next week we'll do continents, paint, talk about north,south pole, longitude, latitude and all that stuff.
I enjoy doing these long term projects with the lad. it gives LOTS of time to talk about the world, to come up with interesting questions...for instance.. does the moon have layers like the earth does? why does the sun get storms on it and how do scientists know these things because the sun is too hot to travel to?
I enjoy doing these long term projects with the lad. it gives LOTS of time to talk about the world, to come up with interesting questions...for instance.. does the moon have layers like the earth does? why does the sun get storms on it and how do scientists know these things because the sun is too hot to travel to?
Sight Words
Today the lad had to do a short quiz on the five sight words we learned last week. He did fairly okay. We need to practice them some more. He surprised me when we did the practice piece just how many words he did know. So it's all rather neat. :)
Math
We took an assessment through K5Learning to see just where he's at for math. I learned watching him what he needs to practice a bit more, and some things we haven't really looked at a whole lot.
His results for reading were
For reading,
Phonemic Awareness - Exempt
Phonics - Inter. K
Sight Words - Early Grade 2
Vocabulary - High Grade 1
Reading Comprehension - Early Grade 3
Pretty much how I was at his age. :) I firmly believe that understanding phonics comes with age, and given that he's doing more words than I thought he knew...it's coming together for him. :)
Just got his math assessment and for most things he's in grade two, with geometry being grade three. He was majorly stressing over the measurement stuff (as we haven't focused much on that) so I helped him do those. (probably shouldn't have but I did). :)
His results for reading were
For reading,
Phonemic Awareness - Exempt
Phonics - Inter. K
Sight Words - Early Grade 2
Vocabulary - High Grade 1
Reading Comprehension - Early Grade 3
Pretty much how I was at his age. :) I firmly believe that understanding phonics comes with age, and given that he's doing more words than I thought he knew...it's coming together for him. :)
Just got his math assessment and for most things he's in grade two, with geometry being grade three. He was majorly stressing over the measurement stuff (as we haven't focused much on that) so I helped him do those. (probably shouldn't have but I did). :)
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