I sent Haley to school last year in part because I was feeling overwhelmed and not confident that I could do it all. I got this great idea from Rachel to reflect on everything we have actually done this year. It gave her a great perspective and encouragement that yes, she’s doing the right thing for the kids!
VOCABULARY
This past semester, we started doing a lot more vocabulary. This is one of my kids’ area of weakness. They had a list of 10 vocabulary words to learn each week. Every day they took two words and wrote sentences and made flashcards for them. So. . .when you add it up, they’ve learned approximately 200 new words over the past five months. Also, each night at the dinner table I choose a new word for them to learn. Each time someone correctly uses a word in a sentence, they earn a dime. When they earn enough, we go to Fritz’s for ice cream. Maddie LOVES this game. She loves to go around and use the words whenever she can. One day we ran into the teacher I requested for her for next year. The teacher chatted with me for quite some time. When we left, Maddie said, “Mrs. C was really loquacious!” At other times, she'll rub up against me. When I ask her if she needs anything, she replies, "I'm just adhering to you momma."
SCIENCE AND SOCIAL STUDIES
I am very excited about the curriculum we are using! I have found that nearly EVERY activity they do involves higher-level thinking. For every activity, there are great thinking questions to ask the students. This is so far from the learning Haley was doing in school. At school, nearly everything she did was answer questions in which there was only one answer. Basically, you read and answer recall questions: no thinking involved. We started with the Rainforest Unit 7 weeks ago. While reading, they located literary elements such as onomatopoeia, similes and metaphors. They wrote a paragraph pretending to be a rainforest animal to tell about their day. I had them also do a research project on a different animal. Maddie took notes on the sloth, but Haley actually organized her notes and wrote a research paper. They did a lot of research on the computer at different rainforest sites as well as watched some videos we checked out from the library. In addition to our unit study, the girls also complete a Scholastic News once a week. Haley writes a paragraph summary (in cursive) of an article of her choice.
WRITING
Each day, the girls have 20 minutes in which they write in their journals. For this activity, I let them write anything and they don’t have to worry about their handwriting. Every day I have Maddie work on her handwriting as well. (this still needs a lot of work!!) Haley works on her cursive with quotation practice once a week. She’s pretty much mastered cursive now. She still has trouble with a few capital letters.
READING
Maddie
Read Tales of a Fourth-Grade Nothing, Superfudge, Double Fudge, Shiloh, Whipping Boy, One Day in the Tropical Rainforest, Where the Red Fern Grows. She also read dozens of biographies, Magic Treehouse books, Weird School Books (her favorites!) She has almost completed three books of reading passages, grades 2-3 in which she worked on context clues, predictions, and main idea.
Haley
She’s read too many books to even list here. She has 30-minutes of free reading each day, but usually reads more than that. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, she is required to read nonfiction during the 30-minute time slot.
MATH
Maddie has whizzed through grades 1-4 workbooks and is almost completed grade 5! She is currently working on multiplying and dividing decimals. (ie: 54.5 x 3.14) She struggles a little with math reasoning, but we are doing a lot of problem solving in a 3rd and 4th-grade book. She has gotten a lot better! Just a list of a few things she’s learned this year: telling time, adding and subtracting 2-digit numbers, adding money, multiplying and dividing up to 3-digits, perimeter, area, mean, range
Haley completed pre-algebra last fall and has almost completed Algebra I. I am starting to feel a little uncomfortable teaching her the concepts. I have forgotten a lot of the algebra rules and hope I am teaching her correctly??
MUSIC
Of course, the girls are still practicing the violin and piano. Haley played in the orchestra again this year, but wants to take a year off. We will continue the violin lessons and try orchestra again the following year. Maddie is in the middle of Level 1 Suzuki and Haley’s in Level 3. Maddie is working in level 4 on piano and doing quite well. Haley is doing a hodgepodge of piano work. She is working on a couple Sonatinas and I’ve started having her do some listening. She needs to start working on her musicality. Her fingers move like the wind, but playing musically is more of a challenge for her.
In reflecting over the past year, the kids have learned SO much here at home. They are so happy learning at home and feel challenged in everything they do. I only need to find the balance with Haley and her perfectionism.
No comments:
Post a Comment