Zakari
Zak worked from Writing Matters 3, pages 29 - 31, all work on horizontal joins. He isn't too fond of cursive writing, and admittedly, his printing is much neater, but as the old saying goes, practice makes perfect ... After he completed these pages, he read Chapter 1 of George's Marvellous Medicine by Roald Dahl and the wrote about what he had read.
Kaliah
Kaliah worked from Writing Matters 2, pages 9 - 11, downstroke letters. Kaliah is starting to develop a bad habit of racing with regards to her writing - in comparison, her handwriting last year was much neater than it is now. To keep her in practice, I keep asking her to slow down and concentrate, and the paragraphs which she traced and copied today, i also got her to write out again in her practice book. She then read Tough Boris by Mem Fox and wrote a summary of what she had read.
Khaemon
We worked on pages 10 (Make a Number Group), 11 (Make a Number Story (1)), 12 (Number 6) and 13 (Number 7) from My First Maths Book. Khaemon can competently count to 5, drawing missing objects to make a required number (eg. if there are 2 flowers and the number says 5, he knows to draw 3 more flowers). We again counted and coloured various groups of objects and then Khaemon practiced writing 6's and 7's, and colouring the pictures.
Friday, February 25, 2011
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Semester 1, Week 3, Monday
Zakari
Practice time at swimming, Zak swam 8 laps of the 25m pool. He is so determined to learn butterfly that he even attempted 2 laps without having even been taught yet!
After lunch, he completed pages 90 (3-digit subtraction with trading) and 91 (Fractions of a collection) from Maths Plus 4 Stage 2. He tends to work well with subtraction, even to the point of completing them without showing any working! He also works well in fractions, for the most part, although he makes the occasional mistake, but it's not so much that he doesn't understand it, as that he is rushing to complete his work.
Kaliah
Today, Kaliah had a companion in her swimming lesson, which hopefully will encourage her to improve. She still struggles a bit with her kicking in freestyle and backstroke, but her overall performance in the water has improved.
After lunch, she worked from Targeting Maths Year 2, pages 6 (Estimation), 7 (Problem solving), 8 (Shapes and right angles) and 9 (Sides and corners). Whilst she is quite competent at estimating the number of objects in a group, she struggles to then circle groups of 10. We need to do alot of work on problem solving. Today's exercise showed $50 notes, $20 notes, $10 notes and $5 notes and asked to show as many answers as possible for which notes would make $100. Kaliah had difficulties in working out how many of the same notes would equal 100 (even when referring back to the hundreds chart), and did not even attempt to put different notes together. However, she competently worked through shapes and right angles, and easily recognises a right angle within a shape, and had no problems working out that most shapes have the same number of sides as they do corners.
Kaliah then chose to read Our Stripy Baby by Gillian Shields, writing a one and a half page summary of the book afterwards. I like to get her to write about the books she reads so that she gains an understanding of what she has read and also to practice her handwriting and spelling. From today's effort, all of these things need to be worked on and improved.
Khaemon
Khaemon is getting alot of individual attention in swimming - the joys of being the only class member! Steph was working on his freestyle stroke and breathing, his backstroke, and his ability to dive under water to retrieve objects from the bottom of the pool.
He worked from My First Maths Book, pages 8 (Order and Colour) and 9 (Count and Colour). Khaemon is starting to associate colours with their words - I was showing him how the first object in group needed to be red, the second, blue .... and then he told me the third, fourth and fifth colours! And then he successfully coloured the three groups of objects on the page. On the next page, we counted groups of objects (eg. how many dogs, how many cats, etc) and then coloured each group in a different colour as we counted.
Veygas
Veygas was one of four in his swimming lesson today, and in true Vevo style, was as cheeky as ever. Kate has taken to putting a back bubble on him when he is sitting on the side, as he has a tendency to slide in the water and play around instead of waiting his turn. He is not too fond of floating on his back, but will usually kick when instructed. Kate worked with him alone a little at the end of the lesson, getting him ready for learning to dive.
Saffryn
She is becoming alot more confident in the water, kicking her legs and splashing her arms, even if it is mostly involuntary excited splashing at this point in time ... I am hoping that by the time she is required to be paddling and kicking that this splashing has been good practice for her! With a relief instructor today, our lesson was a bit different, and we even used arm floaties and back bubbles (which Saff wasn't too sure about). At least she is not resisting being in the water anymore.
Practice time at swimming, Zak swam 8 laps of the 25m pool. He is so determined to learn butterfly that he even attempted 2 laps without having even been taught yet!
After lunch, he completed pages 90 (3-digit subtraction with trading) and 91 (Fractions of a collection) from Maths Plus 4 Stage 2. He tends to work well with subtraction, even to the point of completing them without showing any working! He also works well in fractions, for the most part, although he makes the occasional mistake, but it's not so much that he doesn't understand it, as that he is rushing to complete his work.
Kaliah
Today, Kaliah had a companion in her swimming lesson, which hopefully will encourage her to improve. She still struggles a bit with her kicking in freestyle and backstroke, but her overall performance in the water has improved.
After lunch, she worked from Targeting Maths Year 2, pages 6 (Estimation), 7 (Problem solving), 8 (Shapes and right angles) and 9 (Sides and corners). Whilst she is quite competent at estimating the number of objects in a group, she struggles to then circle groups of 10. We need to do alot of work on problem solving. Today's exercise showed $50 notes, $20 notes, $10 notes and $5 notes and asked to show as many answers as possible for which notes would make $100. Kaliah had difficulties in working out how many of the same notes would equal 100 (even when referring back to the hundreds chart), and did not even attempt to put different notes together. However, she competently worked through shapes and right angles, and easily recognises a right angle within a shape, and had no problems working out that most shapes have the same number of sides as they do corners.
Kaliah then chose to read Our Stripy Baby by Gillian Shields, writing a one and a half page summary of the book afterwards. I like to get her to write about the books she reads so that she gains an understanding of what she has read and also to practice her handwriting and spelling. From today's effort, all of these things need to be worked on and improved.
Khaemon
Khaemon is getting alot of individual attention in swimming - the joys of being the only class member! Steph was working on his freestyle stroke and breathing, his backstroke, and his ability to dive under water to retrieve objects from the bottom of the pool.
He worked from My First Maths Book, pages 8 (Order and Colour) and 9 (Count and Colour). Khaemon is starting to associate colours with their words - I was showing him how the first object in group needed to be red, the second, blue .... and then he told me the third, fourth and fifth colours! And then he successfully coloured the three groups of objects on the page. On the next page, we counted groups of objects (eg. how many dogs, how many cats, etc) and then coloured each group in a different colour as we counted.
Veygas
Veygas was one of four in his swimming lesson today, and in true Vevo style, was as cheeky as ever. Kate has taken to putting a back bubble on him when he is sitting on the side, as he has a tendency to slide in the water and play around instead of waiting his turn. He is not too fond of floating on his back, but will usually kick when instructed. Kate worked with him alone a little at the end of the lesson, getting him ready for learning to dive.
Saffryn
She is becoming alot more confident in the water, kicking her legs and splashing her arms, even if it is mostly involuntary excited splashing at this point in time ... I am hoping that by the time she is required to be paddling and kicking that this splashing has been good practice for her! With a relief instructor today, our lesson was a bit different, and we even used arm floaties and back bubbles (which Saff wasn't too sure about). At least she is not resisting being in the water anymore.
Semester 1, Week 2, Weekend
Zakari had his swimming lesson on Saturday, and in his new class, there are children who are really going to challenge him to improve his strokes! He is excited that he is now at a level where he will start to learn butterfly.
We spent a great deal of the weekend cleaning the house - it is amazing how much mess can be created and accumulated. I think it is good for the children to take responsibility for their belongings and their space, and by cleaning (especially their rooms!) I believe that this is what they are learning.
We spent a great deal of the weekend cleaning the house - it is amazing how much mess can be created and accumulated. I think it is good for the children to take responsibility for their belongings and their space, and by cleaning (especially their rooms!) I believe that this is what they are learning.
Friday, February 11, 2011
Semester 1, Week 2, Friday
We had a day out today. Even though it was warm, it was good to be in the air conditioned car! We met up with friends at the park and the kids had a good play. Zak seemed to take charge and look out for the little boys, while Kaliah kept on eye on the girls.
It was great to get them out, they had sensory stimulation, development of gross motor skills (especially for the little ones) and a lesson in responsibility for the older two! So when we got home, I actually gave them the afternoon off from any formal work cause they had expended so much energy at the park. They played S games instead ... Zak is really getting into The Legend of Zelda, it seems to be teaching him how to read maps (amongst other things!). Today he learned that drawing a line between two points vertically and another line between to points horizontally on a map created an intersection, which is where he found a secret entrance! Problem solving skills!! Well done!
It was great to get them out, they had sensory stimulation, development of gross motor skills (especially for the little ones) and a lesson in responsibility for the older two! So when we got home, I actually gave them the afternoon off from any formal work cause they had expended so much energy at the park. They played S games instead ... Zak is really getting into The Legend of Zelda, it seems to be teaching him how to read maps (amongst other things!). Today he learned that drawing a line between two points vertically and another line between to points horizontally on a map created an intersection, which is where he found a secret entrance! Problem solving skills!! Well done!
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Semester 1, Week 2, Thursday
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.
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.
Semester 1, Week 2, Wednesday
Shopping day today, and with the cooler weather, we all went. It's getting to the point where I could probably send Zak and Kaliah in by themselves and they'd be able to do our weeks' shopping!! They are really helpful around the supermarket, getting things that I can't necessarily reach down to get (not with Saffy in the carrier and attached to me anyway!) Plus they know what we usually get and ask if we need things this week - it's great!
When we got home from shopping, the kids put everything away, even being careful to note the dates on the milk and put the earliest dates first!
After lunch, they did school work.
Zakari
Today, Zak continued working from last years Writing Matters 3, just so that we can concentrate on maintaining his handwriting. He completed pages 22 - 25, all work on practicing and revising diagonal joins. He admitted to me that he doesn't like cursive writing because he can't keep it neat, and I can understand that. His printed writing is beautiful, but once he tries joining letters, his style becomes awkward. We can only hope that practice makes perfect!
Kaliah
Kaliah's maths book of choice for this year is Targeting Maths Year 2, and today, she completed pages 2 (The hundred chart), 3 (Patterns in the hundred square) and 4 - 5 (Numbers to 100). She was able to competently count by 2's, 3's and 5's up to 20, and answer questions based on theses counting patterns. She was able to look at a group of numbers and work out which ones were more than 80 and which ones were less than 50, and also correctly put all of the numbers in order from smallest to largest.
While Kaliah doesn't seem to have a problem with working out numbers that are one more than or one less than a particular number, she does appear to struggle a little bit when asked for the number before and after a given number at the same time. It took her a while to realise that they were actually three consecutive numbers.
For the most part, she also does well with ten more than and ten less than a given number, in theory, but when asked to verbalise it, or to explain how she got the (correct) answer, she fumbles - I don't know if it's because she is afraid to give the wrong answer, or that she thinks she might get into trouble because it's wrong, but she goes about then guessing answers (which are inevitably wrong!) even though she has the right answer on paper. So I think it's a confidence thing that we have to work on with her.
Khaemon
My First Maths Book is the book that Khaemon is working through at the moment. It is a large quarto sized book with pictures to colour and help reinforce the number concepts. Today, he completed pages 2 - 5 (numbers 1 - 4) by tracing each number then repeating it many times on his own. I like this because there is very little pressure on him to get it "right the first time" and he is rewarded for hard work by being able to colour in afterwards!
Veygas
Not wanting to be left out, Veygas has a Letterland First alphabet activity book which will help him with letter recognition and keep him occupied with pictures to colour.
When we got home from shopping, the kids put everything away, even being careful to note the dates on the milk and put the earliest dates first!
After lunch, they did school work.
Zakari
Today, Zak continued working from last years Writing Matters 3, just so that we can concentrate on maintaining his handwriting. He completed pages 22 - 25, all work on practicing and revising diagonal joins. He admitted to me that he doesn't like cursive writing because he can't keep it neat, and I can understand that. His printed writing is beautiful, but once he tries joining letters, his style becomes awkward. We can only hope that practice makes perfect!
Kaliah
Kaliah's maths book of choice for this year is Targeting Maths Year 2, and today, she completed pages 2 (The hundred chart), 3 (Patterns in the hundred square) and 4 - 5 (Numbers to 100). She was able to competently count by 2's, 3's and 5's up to 20, and answer questions based on theses counting patterns. She was able to look at a group of numbers and work out which ones were more than 80 and which ones were less than 50, and also correctly put all of the numbers in order from smallest to largest.
While Kaliah doesn't seem to have a problem with working out numbers that are one more than or one less than a particular number, she does appear to struggle a little bit when asked for the number before and after a given number at the same time. It took her a while to realise that they were actually three consecutive numbers.
For the most part, she also does well with ten more than and ten less than a given number, in theory, but when asked to verbalise it, or to explain how she got the (correct) answer, she fumbles - I don't know if it's because she is afraid to give the wrong answer, or that she thinks she might get into trouble because it's wrong, but she goes about then guessing answers (which are inevitably wrong!) even though she has the right answer on paper. So I think it's a confidence thing that we have to work on with her.
Khaemon
My First Maths Book is the book that Khaemon is working through at the moment. It is a large quarto sized book with pictures to colour and help reinforce the number concepts. Today, he completed pages 2 - 5 (numbers 1 - 4) by tracing each number then repeating it many times on his own. I like this because there is very little pressure on him to get it "right the first time" and he is rewarded for hard work by being able to colour in afterwards!
Veygas
Not wanting to be left out, Veygas has a Letterland First alphabet activity book which will help him with letter recognition and keep him occupied with pictures to colour.
Semester 1, Week 2, Tuesday
Zak and Kaliah continued with some self taught, self paced sign language today. Kaliah has really taken to it - she sat and read and learned the signs in alphabetical order!!
We spent the afternoon at the Nepean Educational Supplies bookstore, looking at books, and I let the kids choose their own work books this year (of course, I still had the final say, but for the most part, they seem to know what they want!) Besides, the little ones picked theirs by me offering them a choice. We also invested in some Base 10 blocks, as we discovered many maths exercises last year that couldn't be completed without them), some jumbo coloured pencils (easier for the little kids to grip too!) and other essential stationery supplies.
We spent the afternoon at the Nepean Educational Supplies bookstore, looking at books, and I let the kids choose their own work books this year (of course, I still had the final say, but for the most part, they seem to know what they want!) Besides, the little ones picked theirs by me offering them a choice. We also invested in some Base 10 blocks, as we discovered many maths exercises last year that couldn't be completed without them), some jumbo coloured pencils (easier for the little kids to grip too!) and other essential stationery supplies.
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