We started off the day by heading out to our fortnightly home birth group meeting - it was an easy one today, as it was practically just around the corner from us! It's nice to meet with like-minded people and share stories and experiences, and while not all of them home school, they are all pretty used to having my lot around! There are always plenty of kids to keepeach other occupied, and lots of babies!
The afternoon was spent on book work at home, and I'm pretty pleased with what we achieved today.
Zakari
Zak worked from Maths Plus 4 Stage 2, completing pages 86 (3-digit subtraction with trading), 87 (Decimal place value), 88 (Cross sections) and 89 (Millilitres). He works really well with subtraction, once he gets started. Decimals were a little trickier, as he kept confusing ones and hundredths, but after I explained how it worked and did a couple with him, he eventually got the hang of it and completed the exercise without any further problems.
I don't think he completely understands the concept of cross sections, because some he does quite well, but others are not so clear. He told me he can see how it's meant to work in his head, but sometimes, he just can't get it out onto paper, so we may need to do some more work on this. He doesn't seem to have any issues with millilitres.
I then gave him some more handwriting to do, pages 26 - 28 in Writing Matters 3, which was working on horizontal joins in cursive writing. He does appear to struggle with joining letters after v, w and r, so it looks as though we need to work on that some more.
Later in the afternoon, he played The Legend of Zelda on the DSi, which I think is teaching him some creative problem solving skills and lateral thinking.
Kaliah
I gave Kaliah some work to do from Writing Matters 2, pages 5 - 8, which was revision of lower-case and upper-case letters. Although I have been getting the kids to write a journal every night to keep them practicing their handwriting, Kaliah isn't writing as neatly as she could be - I think she tends to rush, regardless of how many times I tell her to slow down, think and write carefully.
I then got her to complete Unit 1 in Targeting Mental Maths Year 2, and we came across a few small problems. Firstly, she needs to pay attention to numbers in general, and like her writing, she sometimes just needs to slow down and think. She needs to be more aware of writing her numbers properly - her 8's ended up sideways, and I had to explain to her that when she gets older, she'll learn that a sideways 8 means something totally different, that it's a symbol meaning "infinity" which means it is bigger than any number that anybody knows, and that the answers to some of her maths problems was not going to be infinity. Her 8's need to stand up!
She still struggles with grouping things, and I think overall, she just doesn't read what the question is asking. I do think that she needs to slow down in order to concentrate on the task at hand, not only with school work, but with her chores as well.
Later in the afternoon, she had a play date with our neighbour's little girl, which I think is good for both of them, as they both have brothers, so it gave them a chance to play "girly" games together for a while.
Khaemon
Khaemon is really itching to be able to do as much work as his older siblings, and proved that today by trying to write today's date in his book!
He then went on to do pages 6 (number 5) and 7 (Match, write and draw (1)) in My First Maths Book. He got a little frustrated that he couldn't write the number 5 by himself, but after sitting with him and talking him through it (we put the pencil on the page and draw a line down, then we go around, and then we take the pencil back to the top and put a little hat on it) he got the hang of it and became pleased that he could actually write 5!
He wanted my help writing the numbers 1 through 5 that corresponded with the dots (1 - 5) on the next page, but was happy to draw objects that corresponded to the numbers.
Once he had done that, Khaemon played Brain Training and Mario Party on the DSi.
I have to point out that I don't expect Khaemon to do huge amounts of work ... I let him dictate how much he wants to do. I let him stop when he has had enough.
Veygas
Vevo loves sitting with the others and "working". He had his Letterland First alphabet activity book out again and was quite content to colour in. While he doesn't sit with them for long periods of time (and quite honestly, I wouldn't expect him to - I think he does well as it is!) he wanders off, distracted by Nintendo games or the lure of playing outside, but comes back every now and again and colours in a bit more.
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