The 3 "R"s: Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic

I'm back....after a full month.....I'm back.

On our vacation we didn't do any formal history or science (the things that are fun to blog about) and just did the basic three "R"s....Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic.  Here is my assessment:

(let's go from most successful to... needs help, shall we?)
Arithmetic-
AWESOME!!! Maxwell is doing wonderfully amazing with math. Doing RightStart lessons with Saxon worksheets was definitely the right choice for him for this year.  I feel he is ahead of where he "should" be and is grasping the concepts and thinking like a mathematician. After some study and pondering, I have decided to skip the Saxon grade two workbook part-one, and go directly to workbook part-two for next year. Yippee!

Reading-
Good.  We are plugging right along.  I've decided to continue with the Common Sense program, and Maxwell just passed another assessment with flying colours.  (I admitted to Dustin how I wanted Maxwell to pass this assessment as much for ME as for him...oh the vainess and frailty of me....) But we are still reading out of Dick and Jane everyday too.  Maxwell has lost his initial enthusiasm for this, but it still gives him confidence.

I LOVE it when Maxwell starts reading in everyday life.  The other day he said "Mom, you can't park here, it says 'no parking'"  I said "good reading" and he said "I didn't read it, I recognized the words." I need to explain to him better about what reading really is.

Writing-
Ummmmmm....awful.  I thought that writing would just come naturally by copying and life.  I was wrong.  Maxwell has yet to consistently make letters that are neat and tidy.  He writes numbers just fine, because I TAUGHT him how with RightStart.  When I realized how wrong I was about getting writing skills by osmosis, and that I needed to specifically teach him to write, I nearly had tears, so I decided to use the curriculum, Handwriting Without Tears :)

 I had heard about this curriculum at the beginning of the year, but failed to see the value until now.

Now, I'M SO EXCITED ABOUT HANDWRITING WITHOUT TEARS!!!
Here's why:

-simple consistant vocabulary (big line, little line, big curve, little curve)

-multisensory  learning (wooden blocks, special chalkboards, music, and puppets)

-fun stories to remember how to form letters

-the very easy-to-follow workbooks

-methods to prevent letter reversal and sloppiness.

I am pretty confident that this method will do the trick for Maxwell.  However, I've decided to start from the beginning....kindergarten level.  We will do a crash course and hopefully be done by summer.  During the summer hopefully we will get through a lot of Grade One, and then by the end of Grade Two (I'm still not used to the Canadian "grade one" instead of the U.S. "First Grade") hopefully he'll be caught up and we will do cursive for grade three.

Yes I messed up with writing, but Maxwell is a pretty forgiving guinea pig.



And of course, even though we didn't do history or science officially while we were gone, we were still having fun and learning:

Quality time with Grandma-

Leprechaun traps-

 Museums-

 

Crafts with cousins-

 

and cultural experiences...

 

Metal and Gladiators

I'm ending this week early because we're going on vacation.  In fact, I don't know when I'll write again.

This week we had a great science class.  I even recorded my science kids singing their science songs, but the older ones who knew it were in the back being quiet, and the younger ones who kind of know it were in the front being loud....so I decided it wasn't impressive enough to share.

We learned about metals..how they have lustre, are malleable, are solids (except mercury) are ductile, conduct heat, and our favourite, conduct and even help generate electricity.

I was sooo happy that my potato-battery kit WORKED!  I had tried and tried to make a homemade battery last year, and couldn't get anything to work.  That's why I bought a kit this time to show how the metals copper and zinc can help make electricity.

We learned about gladiators/Christian and slave suffering this week.  OH MY GOODNESS!  I can't believe how retched ancient Rome was!  I've never really thought about gladiators before, but I've read the Hunger Games trilogy recently and I was hosting a book club about the first book, and since we were already studying ancient Rome, I did a little extra look at gladiators....wow....just wow....I could go on for hours on the things I read, but this blog needs to fit in a book by the end of the year, so I'll just say, reading "Gladiator" by Watkins is a good place to start.

I found these cute books at the DOLLAR STORE! that weren't actually all that cute because it had kids colouring and cutting out men and women being eaten by lion and tigers....but well, that IS what happened.

And they played a little gladiator themselves, but they actually made these weapons to represent the full armour of God, and they wrote CTR on the shields, but I thought I would include it anyway.

And I know I've slacked on recording Maxwell's scripture verses, so here's one.




And of course I do teach little Daniel a bit, even if I never mention it, and here he is being the cutest little boy ever reciting his ABCs: