Weekly Reports 2008:40-43

Well, more like a monthly report! I've been too busy for a weekly report of late but here's what we've been up to in the past four weeks.

Before I start...
Here's a gratuitous image of Sam.Just because I can.
I opened up the garage roller door one day last week and he promptly took off down the driveway in our kiddy car. When I asked him where he was going, he replied with quite clear diction, "Going to shops". He went the entire length of our street in the right direction before I stopped him and brought him back (I went with him of course). Just for reference, that tiny pink dot on the path in the background is Abigail, about where our house is.

Literacy - Joshua
Joshua has really taken off in the past few weeks with his reading. He has finished Are You My Mother? from the Beginner Books series and also read There's a Wocket in My Pocket, The Cat in the Hat, The Cat in the Hat Comes Back and is three-quarters of the way through One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish. I am impressed because with the high level of repetition in these books he has moved from decoding almost every word to reading almost all of the words fluently in one smooth stream. A bit of it is the ability to guess, helped by the rhyme and pattern in the stories, so it is great to see him putting together other cues about what upcoming words will be as well. I had hesitated in using these books because they use such controlled vocabularies, but right at this point in Joshua's reading journey I think they are perfect, because he can decode every word if he needs to, and if he does have to do it, that provides reinforcement of the phonics rules he has been learning in our workbook. I can hardly believe that he has come this far from struggling through reading one sentence each day at the beginning of this year, such as "She has a zip on her red bag." Joshua has only four phonograms and a number of review pages to go in his Phonics workbook. He is a few pages ahead of Anna, because he very rarely has an afternoon nap, and if he does, then she is almost certainly also too tired for school as well. If they nap, they miss out on school for the day since we do our academics during the quieter hours while Abigail and Samuel also nap.

Literacy - Anna
Anna struggled through the fourth, fifth and sixth Ladybird Phonics books. It wasn't so much that she couldn't read the words (she was fine at that level), but more that she wasn't interested in the stories, which were oriented more to boys than girls, IMO. Which is ironic given that Joshua also found the books hard to deal with because he was too distracted by the pictures to concentrate on the words. I think I will skip these books with Abigail and Samuel. She has also read all the way through Green Eggs and Ham, with a lot less whinging than Joshua when he read it, which wasn't too long ago! She'll read one or two more Beginner Books before the official end of our term in just under four weeks, and then I think I will have her read the fifth box of Bob Books over the Christmas Holidays. Possibly. She is doing very well, and her handwriting is quite neat in the Phonics workbook. Anna naps about one afternoon out of the four or five we do academics, but she generally catches up the workbook task within the next few days. Reading gets skipped that day.

Literacy - Abigail
Abigail has started to ask for school lessons as well, but she is too young to give up her afternoon nap. (I have a hard and fast rule that all children in our household must have an afternoon nap until their fourth birthday.) So when she does wake up early from her nap, I have been getting her to trace her name on the megasketcher board. She loves this simple task, and is happy for this to be all of her "lessons" for the moment. She was even able to trace her own name on Jeff's congratulations card that we made for him last week. (The others each wrote their own name as well, without tracing, except Sam, of course.)I have begun letting her have her pre-nap cuddles on the couch as well, so she can listen in to at least the first chapter each day of our on-going Read Aloud book, immediately after lunch.

Literature
In the past four weeks we finished The Phoenix and the Carpet and also The Story of the Amulet by Edith Nesbit and loved the last book of the Five Children and It trilogy best. It would be a great book to read to tantalise children with a taste of history to begin academic study in this area. The kids also got their first taste of the myth of Atlantis from this book, which we followed up by reading a picture book retelling of the Atlantis tale, which I borrowed from Mrs T.
Taking a break from Nesbit, we turned to Mary Norton's Borrowers series and read The Borrowers with delight. Today we were able to obtain The Complete Borrowers from the library, so we have now begun on the second borrowers title, The Borrowers Afield.

Mathematics
Joshua and Anna continued to steam through subtraction.
We spent a few days reviewing telling the time, with Anna learning to tell the time to the hour and Joshua learning to tell the time to the half hour. Then last weekend, they both learnt quarter to and quarter past, although that was a quick lesson and will need a fair bit of review. Joshua knew how to tell time to the hour from Play School and Anna picked it up without too much difficulty as well. I'd like them to be comfortable with telling the time to the quarter hour before next year, so I will have to remember to ask them to work out the time whenever they ask me what it is!
We skipped the lesson on Days of the Week as they all know this well, even Abigail, since I made a "Today is" chart for our dining room wall.We often talk about what yesterday was and then I get them to work out what day today is and tomorrow will be. Even Abigail is becoming proficient at this process.
They completed Lesson 13 on counting by tens to 100, which both can now do comfortably. I have also been having Joshua practice counting by tens to 200 and further, and I think he has got it. They already knew how to count by hundreds to one thousand.

Science
We have completed what I wanted to cover with Science this year, and so our Science lessons have morphed into "Agriculture" lessons: backyard gardening with Dad. They have planted a wide range of vegetable and even fruit seeds (watermelons) and have also planted some flower seeds as well. Sprouts are starting to show up and Samuel has now been rebuked and corrected enough times to remember to stay out of the vegie patch, which is protected by a make-shift fence.
Not-at-home-schooling
Joshua has been thoroughly enjoying Boys' Brigade nights and Karate lessons. Here he is, showing off some of what he has learnt:Anna is looking forward to being old enough for Girls' Brigade next year.

[Book cover image from Amazon.]