1st Grade: Week 21 Highlights

Bible: We are really enjoying the Kids 4 Truth devotions online.

Sunday was "Rupert's" first play practice with the children's drama team at our church. They will be performing the musical, J-Force to the Rescue. He will have practice once a week for about 3 months, then there will be one intensive practice week where they will have practice 4 days, and finally, they will have several performances for the children in our church (6 different services, I believe), and a couple of outreach performances for other churches. It's a big commitment, but I think he will get a lot out of it.

Phonics: This week we took a break from The Ordinary Parents Guide to Teaching Reading (OPG). With the success we had in reading Green Eggs and Ham last week, I decided to pick up some easy readers at the library, and give them a try. It was wonderful! "Rupert" gets overwhelmed with his OPG phonics lessons. It is a plain book with no pictures. When he sees only words and a lot of them, he gets overwhelmed with how much work there is to do. It doesn't matter if the words are easy or hard, all he sees is a lot of work! The pictures in the easy readers are a bit distracting at first, but after he spends a minute enjoying the pictures, he seems more focused and ready to read. This week he was reading words that I didn't know he could! And he was actually enjoying it! Needless to say, we're sticking with the early readers for a while (though I will probably throw some sight word study in there too).

Spelling: We finished up 1st grade spelling this week. Next week we will move to 2nd grade spelling which will have more difficult words and more of them. I have every intention of taking it slow and not letting "Rupert" get too crazy with it (like doing 4 spelling lists at a time, as he did a couple of times with the 1st grade set).

Writing: We took a break from our regular writing curriculum this week to write thank you notes for Christmas gifts. I still have to get those in the mail!

Grammar: We learned that the word "I" is always capitalized, and "Rupert" made up a story about waking up as a bunny. I wrote it down on paper as he told it/acted out the action verbs, then he went back through the written story and circled all the occurrences of the word "I" (with a capital letter). He enjoyed this creative activity.

Math: "Rupert" is still going strong with his math workbook, and averages about 4 pages a day. Since most of the concepts are familiar to him, I let him choose any page in the whole book to do, but I've already warned him that next year we will be working through the book from beginning to end. This week he worked on fractions, time, addition and subtraction.

History: We read about the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, one of the 7 wonders of the ancient world.

Science: We read about worms and Octopi, and watched videos of worm dissections and an octopus taking down a shark! Very cool!

Cookbook Pick of the Week: Cream cheese and jam stuffed French toast. It was fun to make and pretty yummy too!

Social Activity: This week we participated in a homeschool group show and tell. "Rupert" had really been looking forward to it, and had a good time showing off his stuffed bunny, Flopsy.

Of course, we had kung fu class and storytime at the library as social opportunities as well.

1st Grade: Week 20 Highlights

Holy Moly, I'm late in posting this! I have not had the time to upload the photos I took from week 20 until now. I blame it on my broken-toed, computer hogging husband! Most late posts are nobody's fault but my own, but this week was different...really.

Phonics: "Rupert" read Green Eggs and Ham all by himself for the first time this week! I think I'll get more easy readers from the library for him to try.

History: This week we read about the Assyrian Empire and Ashurbanipal, who collected writings for the first library which was in Nineveh. We also used Legos to construct an Assyrian siege tower. We made a wall so that "Rupert" could see how a siege tower was used. In our model, the Assyrians are taking over a city of frogs. :-)

Science: We are growing more crystals from a crystal kit "Rupert" got for Christmas. Thanks, Aunt Michelle!!

We also got an impromptu mini lesson on constellations this week from a man who trains at our kung fu school. He pointed Orion out to us and told "Rupert" that Ursa Major and Ursa Minor (the big and little dippers) are also know as big bear and little bear.

Spelling: This week we did the last two first grade spelling lists. "Rupert" got them all right! We'll take a week to review all the words he missed through the first grade lists, then we'll start on 2nd grade spelling.

"Rupert" cooked pancakes for breakfast one morning, and of course, he got creative with it. :-)

1st Grade: Week 19 Highlights

History: This week we learned about the Phoenicians who were famous for making purple dye, and we made some purple dye of our own. We dyed a pair of socks purple and then some pasta to make a "Phoenician" macaroni necklace.

Science: We let our crystal flowers continue to grow this week and they were pretty crazy overgrown by the time we got rid of them.

1st Grade: Week 18 Highlights

We eased into this week, and had a great one. It helped that our history, Bible and reading all coincided this week, and we were able to kill 3 birds with one stone, thereby shortening our school day and allowing us to be done by noon every day (not bad at all considering we start working between 9 and 10am). Woo hoo!! We were also able to do a couple of fun projects to go along with our studies. We finally finished our Egyptian burial mask this week:

We also weaved a Moses basket to go along with our history and Bible lesson for this week:

"Rupert" took on two spelling lists this week and got them all right on his test. We practiced spelling the words out loud during practice times, and that seems to really work for him. Again, I don't know why I didn't figure this out before. He is an AUDITORY learner. Gotta get that through my head! :-)

Math: We started on one of his new workbooks this week, and so far he has done 16 pages! He loves it! It's mostly below his level, but there are some things that are fairly new to him (like telling time), and some that are just good review (like counting money and using tally marks). I've been giving him a sticker to put on each completed page, and he seems to really like that. I also think I'm going to reward him with an ice cream trip or something when he finishes the workbook. What? I like ice cream! Ahhhhh...keeping math fun...for both of us! :-)

Science: This week we talked about turtles and crocodiles and watched a Bill Nye video on reptiles. I've also resolved to do more science experiments. This kid LOVES experiments and I've been slacking. I've decided to do experiments even if they have nothing to do with what we're studying at the moment...just for the pure fun of it! This week we grew crystal flowers!

Social: Another resolution of mine is to put more effort into setting up regular playdates for "Rupert". Being an only child, he is desperate for someone to play with, and the brutal reality is that mommy just doesn't WANT to pretend she's a kitty all day. There really are some things that kids are just better at than adults. We have one regular playdate set up, and have plans in the works for at least one more. Two playdates a week and the flexibility to join in on other miscellaneous social activities should fill the need just fine.

Free Educational Games

We've been trying the zoodles browser for a couple of days now and I think it it pretty cool! It has tons of great games all in one place and is customizable for different ages/grades. Just thought I'd share!

Skip Counting

In a quest to find more learning set to music, I found these skip counting songs that are set to the tune of well-known children's songs. I think "Rupert" will like these.