The week ending December 15, 2006

December 13, 2006

This time, I am blaming my lack of blogging entirely on hsblogger. This is annoying.

It's been a pretty slow week. Wednesday, I was getting ready to do science with Cam and he was playing with a clove-orange that Cassia had made at the 4-H party. There was a bell on one end and a bow on the other. While I was flipping through the science workbook, trying to find the pages that corresponded to the plant section that we had read ealier, and Cameron pipes up with, “Hey, the bell is like the flower and the bow is like the stem!” :O Wow isn't that a fine bit of applying abstract knowledge to real life! (Or is that applying real knowledge to abstract parts of life?)

Cassia did some work in her Get Ready for the Code book. She zoomed through half a dozen pages again and now only has four left. DH is going to buy the kids a dance mat video game for Christmas, so it may soon be time for her to start earning video game time by doing schoolwork too. I've heard this particular game is great cardio, so they will basically be earning PE time, lol.

December 14, 2006

Thursday, we started the day bright and early with dentist appointments. No cavities (yay!), but Little Miss Cassia has some chips on her front teeth from biting ice cubes!! Maybe she'll finally listen when we tell her not to do that. After that we went to the library. Cassia got a TON of books, lol. She just walked over to the picture books and started filling her arms. How could I say no? Greyson got a book on smiles and one on cars. For Cameron, I picked up an easy reader about a girl who loves to do math! I figure that a story about his favorite subject just might interest him a little more than just plain reading. Their movie choices were very good this time: Horton Hears a Who and The Wizard of Oz.

Next we ran home for a quick bite to eat and then went back out for gymnastics. It was testing day in Cameron's class. He did really good on the skills, but in between his actual tests, he was a crazy man. He almost got hurt a couple of times because he and this other boy were trying to outdo each other in craziness. Little monkeys! Meanwhile, Cassia was playing in the toddler area with a bunch of foam letters. She picked up a P and named it correctly! We haven't done P yet!! Cameron did his math during Cassia's class – picture graphs, very simple. I really wish he would do more than one exercise at a time when they are that easy, but I don't really want him dreading math work either. I guess it's better for it to be too easy some of the time than drudgery all of the time. He did some phonics once we got home... more long vowel review. He's doing really well with it. He read a three paragraph story without complaining about the length even once. He was being very silly at points during it – especially because one of his friends' names was in the story – but he probably read 15 or 20 sentences and he read them well. I am very proud of him.

December 15, 2006

Cassia finished her Get Ready for the Code (Book A) today!! She seems to be having a bit of trouble remembering the difference between “k” and “t” but she can tell you that king, key, and kitty all begin with the /k/ sound. Likewise, she knows what words start with the /t/ sound and can point to the “t” when you ask which letter makes that sound, but she also points to the “t” for “k” words. I guess it is a similar sound. She can pick out the right letter on the second try though. Next she went on to her math book. She's almost done with that one too! She did the lesson where you have a bucket of water and several different sized and shaped containers and have to find which holds more. She had the exact same problem with it that Cameron had when he did it, so long ago, lol. I thought she might have a better grasp on the concept since it is the exact same thing that we've been doing with the Lentil Science, but she still assumed that the overflowing container held more. I guess it has something to do with the wording or something. Maybe it's the way the pictures are drawn that confuse them? Anyway, she seemed to understand it with a little explanation.

Cameron waiting until much later in the day to do his schoolwork. First we did another short, easy, two-page exercise in math on graphing. The one thing that impressed me was that he was actually reading the labels on the graphs. I would read the problem, “There are ____ fewer angelfish than swordtails,” and he would look at the graph – without my ever having read the labels to him – and give me the correct answer. I made a point of telling him how useful being able to read was to him at that point. He denied that he was really reading, but I say that counts. Next we did science. We did about 4 workbook pages on plant parts. Some of those Singapore plants are strange! LOL, it made it a challenge at times, but we made it through.