Book Work

If you ask the kids they'll tell you how much they love Fun Project Mom and that she really doesn't come around nearly enough. They usually have Sit Down and Do Your Work Mom instead.

This is what she presided over this week:

Harry:
Tales of Ancient Egypt for CHOLL. He finished the book and we're off to the Bible next week.
Singapore Math: I can't remember the lesson numbers but the big deal was learning negative numbers. I even looked up negative numbers on Khan Academy for him to watch. (It's a big deal because I usually forget to have them watch extra things.)
Life of Fred: Chapter 5. Another big deal, he did the "Your Turn to Play" and got the problems all correct the first time he did them.
Science: Human Reproduction. It's interesting. I won't be googling videos for him on this one.
History: You kind of already saw it. We also read the chapter in SOTW on Sargon I. Oh and I had him outline from Kingfisher Encyclopedia for the first time. It's been on his list of things to do since the beginning of the year and we finally did it. For some reason I thought it would take hours because again I was projecting myself on him. Eventually I'll learn not to do that, I hope.
Grammar Town: We finally got the Teacher Edition and I'm really excited about it. Harry isn't quite as excited.
Writing With Skill: I had to go buy a thesaurus but after that things moved swimmingly along. I am having to make sure he actually reads the directions and finishes the assignments. But when he actually works and finishes what he's supposed to his work is really good.
Spelling: He did some at some point.

Sam:
Sam runs through his work really, really fast. I'm trying to figure out what to do for him. He is so smart but he freezes when he gets to something hard. Sam is by far my most challenging kid--challenging because he's so smart but sometimes can't let out what's in his head.
Anyway, for right now, this is what Sam is doing:
Writing With Ease: We finally go the books we needed, so this started on Tuesday. Things are going fine.
First Language Lessons: Fine. We have a fun, goofy time with this. I would love to do Grammar Island with Sam--he's smart enough that he'd get it easily, but the scripted work of WWE and FLL is more his style. He has a really hard time with open-ended questions. Anyway, back to the goofiness. We make up stories and fun things to go with the scriptedness of FLL.
Spelling: fine. Spelling Workout is nothing to get excited over, but hey, he can spell.
Science: Umm...I thought we did some, but I can't find any evidence of it. We'll do better next week.
History: Check Harry's list, but he didn't outline anything.
MathUSee: He finished two lessons for real and a bit of Singapore Math 1B for fun. 
Tales from Ancient Egypt: I started Sam with the Grammar Stage lessons of CHOLL because he's in third grade and that's Grammar stage. Duh. He's been reading since he was three. So I bumped him up to the Logic Stage lessons so he and Harry are reading the same books. But I'm also having Sam read Annika's books to her because I want him to read the picture books too.

My one brilliant idea this week: Sam was having a really hard time narrating one day--I knew he'd read the book and understood it, but the words weren't coming out. So instead I grabbed a piece of paper and drew a web on it with the story title in the middle and then things I wanted him to tell me about around it. He actually had fun doing it and it opened him up enough to be able to tell me about the story.

Annika:
WWE and FLL: We did the next lessons, Annika thought it was fun to call Jason and I by our first, proper, special names instead of Mom and Dad for a day (I thought it would be fun for her).
Science: We made pumpkin playdough together. Does that count? We also talked about the different things we were putting into the chicken and why.
History: See chicken mummy. (I think if people ask me about history from now on, I'll just point to the chicken mummy and not say a word.)
Singapore Math: Addition. We're plugging along. She's remembering more and more and we're still using manipulatives and number lines. It's all good. She really likes math I think partly because it really reminds her of the structure of school. Math is math whether you are in a school building or at home.
Spelling: Kind of the same thing as math. Plugging along, going fine.
OPGTR: She's reading pretty well already, but I thought it would be a good idea to go through OPGTR anyway. I don't want her to get stuck later on and it's good practice for her speech issues. She's doing fine, I did find a place that she needs more help with, so we're going back through it again. But that's pretty much why we're doing the book.
CHOLL: Temple Cat and The Egyptian Cinderella. Complete with narrations and copywork.

And that's it. Sometime soon I'll post about Emma's preschool and some questions/problems I'm having. Maybe the five of you that read this will have some answers for me. Hopefully.