1st Grade: Week 28 Highlights

Bible: We've really been enjoying the daily devotions at kids4truth.com They have been such a blessing for us. Check them out! "Rupert" has also been reading his children's Bible for phonics this week.

Grammar: We were introduced to three more sentence types this week- the command, the question and the exclamation. "Rupert" practiced writing a sample of each of the four types of sentences.

Science: This week we talked about our sense of touch. We also did a fun little activity where I put miscellaneous items into a paper bag, and "Rupert" had to put his hand in the bag, and determine what was in there by using his sense of touch. We also talked about how sensitive our fingers are to touch, and did the activity again, but this time wearing a mitten on his hand.

Some of the things in our touch bag:

History: We read about the Greeks (Sparta and Athens) coming together to fight off the Persians, the origin of the Marathon run, and finally, the Peloponnesian war. We also played a Peloponnesian war board game that was in our Story of the World Vol.1 Activity Book.

Math: We reviewed our skip counting songs and double and triple digit addition with carrying. After doing a great job on that, "Rupert" asked for a challenge: a 10-digit problem! My little math master did his challenge problem perfectly! We called it our "monster problem", so when he was done solving it, he drew in a monster face around it. :-)

Kung fu: "Rupert" learned more of his double stick form this week. I finished learning it, and I'm here to say, it is tough! Keeping track of what your body is doing is tricky enough sometimes, then adding a stick in each hand and trying to make those do what you want them to...I don't know how any kid would be coordinated enough to get it down. But they do...and he is.

Social Opportunities: We took it easy this week and just had kung fu class, a baking/crafting playdate for St. Patrick's Day, and PE class.

Our St. Patrick's Day craft will grow parsley "hair"

Our cupcakes had rainbow colors inside!

1st Grade: Week 26 Highlights

Math: I made a little math memory game for us to play this week. The object is to find two cards that make 10 when added together. This went over really well, and we played several times on two different days.

History: We read about the differences in values and way of life between Sparta and Athens this week. We also made a "wax tablet" to write on like the schoolboys in Athens had.

Social: This week we had the usual play practice, kung fu, playdate with his buddy, Seth, homeschool PE and art day. We also had a special Caterpillar Cupcake Playdate with a couple of homeschool buddies. We had lots of fun things going this week!

Spelling: This week's words were a bit tricky with double "l"s and silent "l"s as in the words talk, walk and chalk. I thought for sure we'd be spending two weeks with this list, but "Rupert" did fine with them.

Grammar: This week we talked about writing dates, and I showed him how to write some of the special dates we know.

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 15 Highlights

After a nice long Thanksgiving break, we got back to work this week, and things went very smoothly. I'm becoming more flexible, especially in math, and things are just flowing better. Isn't that what always happens after a nice break?

Math: "Rupert" is in love with math worksheets. Who knew? I printed up a few for this week and he is asking for more. I see a math workbook in his future. This week we worked some more on carrying and also did some greater than or less than exercises. He LOVES those!

We have all but abandoned our Math-U-See curriculum, well...really we HAVE abandoned it. I was sad to see it go because I love it so much. I love how it makes math make sense. But it just doesn't fit "Rupert" right now, and it was causing him to dread math. I'm not exactly sure why, but that's the effect it has had at this time. I'll definitely keep it in mind for later though. He could grow into it.

History: This week we learned about the rise and fall of the Middle Kingdom of Egypt, and how eventually, Egypt became strong once again and the New Kingdom began.

ASL: We had a lot of fun this week learning birthday signs! Now I can sign my favorite treat, "cake"! :-)

Grammar: We finished up pronouns and started on verbs this week.

Spelling: This week "Rupert" caught the spelling bug. I gave him his list and, granted, his lists are only 6 words long, but he kept asking for more and more until I finally stopped him at 4 lists. Yes, he did about a month's worth of spelling this week. Out of 24 words, there were only 4 that he needs more work on. We added them to his list of trouble words.

Music: We began our annual listening to Tchaikovsky music this week. It's just a little something special we do at Christmas time. "Rupert" gets to fall asleep at night listening to Tchaikovsky. It's funny to see him making connections and recognizing pieces that he has heard before. The other night, he raced down the stairs after we had put him to bed. He HAD to tell us something! He was so excited to find that a song that was used on a Spongebob episode was a piece written by Tchaikovsky!

Science: This week we learned about peacocks and flamingos, and of course, "Rupert" fashioned a peacock costume out of construction paper and tape...lots of tape. I also see a case of tape in his future. :-)

Art: We finished up a painting that we started last week (thanks again for hosting art day, Morgan). Here's "Rupert's" watercolor fish:

And here's the one I did:

We had a lot of fun with this and I've resolved to do more art in the future.

1st Grade: Week 13 Highlights

History: This week we learned about the early civilizations of Ancient China. The people there (much like the people in Mesopotamia and India) settled near a river so they could use the readily available water for drinking and farming. In China, this area was between the Yellow River and the Yangtze River and was called the Yellow River Valley.

We learned about the first Ancient Chinese writing, pictograms, and "Rupert" had a lot of fun trying his hand at drawing some.

We also read about the Shang dynasty, the farming of rice, and the discovery of silkworm cocoons which led to the invention of silk fabric.

We're currently in the middle of making a Ming bowl. Here's what we've done so far:

This week we said good-bye to our dearly departed Chicken Mummy. We made a non-traditional sarcophagus out of a shoe box and buried him.

Science: This week we learned about penguins and chickens. We found and tried a couple of science projects relating to chicken eggs. In one, we learned about how the weight of the hen is spread over the surface of the egg so that it will not break when she sits on it. "Rupert" squeezed an egg in his hand as hard as he could to see how strong the shell is.

We also cracked an egg open to see the parts that are inside and talked about how each of these parts helps the baby chick to grow and hatch.

We made a bird feeder this week to go along with our bird studies. It'll be interesting to see if we get any visitors.

Math: This week we practiced double and triple digit addition and carrying, greater than and less than, and introduced the skip counting by 4s song.

Kung Fu: We worked mostly on his new forms and grab arts this week, but also practiced all his old stuff in an attempt to keep him from forgetting it. There really is quite a bit that he knows now.

Spelling: We finally ran up against a challenging list this week, and we will continue to work on this list next week. His lists are usually only 6 words, which I think is a good amount for a beginner. It won't burn him out, but he's still learning new things. This week we worked on words like: going, seeing, feeling, and keeping.

Grammar: I originally scheduled grammar twice a week, but "Rupert" seems to really like it and is requesting that we do it daily. I just may honor his request. Then, if he wants to slow it down later, we can do that too. This week we finished up our discussion on nouns and introduced pronouns.

ASL: I'm trying to use signs as often as possible as I speak, so "Rupert" can see it more than just at ASL time during school.

Writing: This week's writing consisted of making a birthday card for "Rupert's" great uncle, and we also did two lessons in his Writing with Ease book.

Reading: We're currently listening to The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe on CD in the truck, and Daddy started reading The Indian in the Cupboard this week as a bedtime story.

1st Grade: Week 12 Highlights

Hey, look at me! I'm actually on time with this post! Wooohooo! We had a great week this week.

Math: This week we worked on adding triple digits, and "Rupert" did wonderfully with that, so I introduced carrying. He wasn't terribly excited about carrying, and fought it at first. But toward the end, he claimed that it was "easy". We'll see if he remembers it next week. I'm planning on slowing down and just letting it all sink in for a while.

I also introduced rounding to the nearest 10 (which he didn't really understand the point of), and greater than and less than (which he LOVED, especially after I told him that the "alligator" wants to eat the biggest number and I let him draw teeth in the "alligator's mouth"). "Rupert" also enjoyed singing the skip counting by 3s song to the tune of Jingle Bells. It was just another reminder to me that I need to find more musical learning opportunities for him. If something is put to music, he's got it down in no time!

Phonics: We learned about the soft C sound this week.

ASL: Reviewed last week's farm signs, and learned some daily routine signs.

History: We talked about the Indus Valley in India and the people who lived there. Our history project was to make a Mohenjo-Daro dwelling using clay bricks. We also completed our Chicken mummy project.

Cutting the bricks:

Constructing the Mohenjo-Daro dwelling

The finished project

Chicken Pharaoh project:

Rubbing in the spices and oil:

Wrapping the hands and feet first:

Half wrapped:

Our finished Mummy!

Science: We started on the bird section in our animal studies, and learned about parrots, eagles, and owls.

Writing: "Rupert" practiced his writing skills while writing letters to two friends this week.

Grammar: "Rupert" almost has his 4th poem memorized! Now to practice public speaking. He seems to use baby talk for some reason when he is reciting his poems. It's very strange because we have never used baby talk with him, nor he with us. I think it's part of this new feeling of embarrassment he is experiencing. I've noticed that when he gets embarrassed, he clams up, becomes less active and more quiet.

We unexpectedly had some home-ec time this week when "Rupert" cooked French toast for breakfast two days this week. He loves to cook, and I, for one, am so excited about that! :-)

1st Grade: Week 8 Highlights

We took this week a little easier than usual because we had a lot to do to prepare for "Rupert's" birthday party. "Rupert" wanted to make his own pinata this year instead of buying one, and we managed to finish our masterpiece in time for the party on Thursday. It worked perfectly!

Science: We studied kangaroos and beavers this week. Oooh, that reminds me: we still need to watch the video on beavers that I got from the library.

ASL: We learned the ASL alphabet and reviewed counting to 10. "Rupert" even taught it to his grandma and practiced it with his cousin.

History: This is the subject we dropped this week. We'll pick it back up next week when we have more time and attention for it. We did change the "natron" salt on our chicken mummy though. Here's a peek at what he looks like this week.

Grammar: "Rupert" is currently memorizing his 3rd poem. We are also continuing to learn about nouns and proper nouns. We are moving fairly slowly through this but he enjoys it because the lessons are quick and easy.

Math: I'm trying to decide what to do for math. "Rupert" knows how to add single digits. The problem is that he gets his answers by counting. He almost always gets the correct answers, but he doesn't have his addition facts down cold. I'm not sure if I should keep him here until he learns them (and risk math boredom, which he is already showing signs of), or move on and experiment with the next concept. He loves math, and I don't want to kill that by drilling him to death. Still thinking on this one...

Kung Fu: "Rupert" learned the last half of his new form this week, and it looked so cool, I had him teach it to me. I can't wait until we can take lessons together!

Phonics: We've started working with the silent e. We've been here before, but when we started first grade, I decided to back up and start with quite a bit of review. I think this has been beneficial to him, helping him to gain more confidence in reading.

Music: We finally got a piano back in the house last weekend, thanks to a wonderful friend of mine! I wasn't the only one to be excited about this. "Rupert" loves playing with the piano, and has been really impressed with my playing. For now, I am just answering his questions and teaching little tidbits. It will be interesting to see if this excitement for the piano will last or if it is just the newness of it that he loves. It sure is fun to watch him learn and get excited about it though. :-)

1st Grade: Week 5 Highlights

Phonics: This week we played a racing game with phonics. I had the book open to the lesson we were working on so that we both could see it, and we raced to see if I could write it on the white board before he could read it out of the book. It was so good for me to see that he actually CAN read fast, he just usually chooses not to, and that is something we are working on in all aspects of life.

Grammar: Rupert has memorized the first poem in his grammar book, "The Butterfly". This week he started memorizing the second poem, "Work". He's really quite good at memorization.

Math: We worked more on adding 9 this week, and did a little review of all the adding we've learned so far this year.

History: The time has finally come! This week we started the project I've been waiting for for over a year, Mummifying a Chicken! We decided to use a Cornish game hen for this 6-week project. Rupert was a little disappointed that we weren't wrapping our mummy yet, and I had to remind him that mummification is a long process. There are so many great resources on mummies that we're going to stay with this topic for another week.

Here are the things we used: Baking Soda, Salt, Baking powder, All Spice, and a Cornish game hen.

And here is our chicken pharaoh sealed up in his salt mixture:

Science: I've decided to modify our science curriculum and study one (maybe two) animal(s) per week instead of three. I think we'll have a lot more fun with it if we take our time instead of feeling rushed through basic information on each animal. I'm looking forward to viewing nature videos together and witnessing animal behavior in their natural habitat.

Spelling: This week Rupert was stumped by "is" and "his". He wanted to spell them with a z instead of an s. Understandable.

Kung Fu: With just one week until the tournament, Rupert is practicing the forms that he will be performing there. For the most part, he seems to be taking direction better now, and his forms are looking pretty good! I think I've also found the secret to great sparring. He spars very lightly with the kids in his class, because he is worried about hurting them. They are all geared up and he's really not going to hurt them, it's just a mental block he has to get over. Last week I offered him ice cream if he fights "fast and hard like a wild animal". That did the trick! The next time he sparred, he was a different kid! It'll be interesting to see if this transfers to tournament.

Field Trip: This week we joined the homeschool co-op on a field trip to the cucumber farm to learn how to cold pack pickles. It was a fun activity and they will be ready for us to eat in one month. We can't wait to try them!!

1st Grade: Week 3 Highlights

Another great week in the first grade! The lines of communication are open, and we've made a couple adjustments. I am so happy to have that freedom! One day this week we even grabbed a couple of books and did some of our school work at Starbucks. I love that we have that flexibility. Here's what we've been up to:

Bible: We didn't have any homework from his Sunday School class this week since the kids are moving up to their new classes on Sunday, so we decided to just have fun reading stories from his children's Bible. One night this week, I went upstairs and heard him talking in his room. I couldn't make out what he was saying, but his voice was very alive and animated. I was sure he was talking to his cousin. I went in to check on him and didn't see anyone, so I asked who he was talking to. He told me he was praying. :-)

Writing and Grammar: These subjects aren't the most exciting, but Rupert is learning. There's a lot of repetition so he's really going to know the definition of a noun, what you do to a proper noun, and how to punctuate the end of a sentence.

Phonics: We've invented a couple of games that help keep Rupert's interest when we are doing phonics. Instead of reading straight out of the phonics lesson book (which tends to overwhelm him because there are SO many words to read), I write his sentences one by one on the white board. Then I start slowly erasing the sentence letter by letter, and he has to read it before I get to it with the eraser. It's amazing how much of a difference this makes in the speed of his reading.

Another game we invented is where I write a sentence on the white board and I tell him it is SO HARD. "You'll never get THIS!", I say. He reads it, and I act like I'm so amazed I don't know what to do. We played this over and over again for about 40 minutes yesterday before I said, "Ok, we're done with phonics!", and he was disappointed that we had to stop. :-)

Math: This is another subject where we have made adjustments. We'd been working with the Math-U-See manipulative blocks quite a bit. Rupert said to me, "All we do for math is play with blocks. I don't like that! I thought we would be doing math problems!" So, as requested, the next day he got to do a printout of addition problems. Ahhhh, that's what he'd been waiting for!

History: We learned about the annual flooding of the Nile River and how the early farmers there used it to their advantage. We also made a model of the Nile which we will "flood" weekly in hopes of growing a nice, lush crop of grass on the banks.

Science: We studied lions and cheetahs and did a project to show how a cat's eye works to reflect light in the dark. We also studied elephants this week.

ASL: We learned all the signs on the Signing Time video we got at the library. The signs we learned were relating to family, fun and feelings. There were about 40 signs in all, so Rupert knows somewhere around 60-70 signs altogether now.

Spelling and Reading: We had another easy spelling week. Rupert got all this words correct on the first try, so we took the rest of the week off for spelling. We've been reading Homer Price by Robert McCloskey this week, and Rupert has been enjoying that. We've also been listening to audio recordings of the Ramona books by Beverly Cleary while we're driving in the truck. So far, we've heard Beezus and Ramona, Ramona the Pest, Ramona the Brave, and Ramona and her Father. We have really been enjoying these stories!