Art Show!

The studio where Emma has been taking art classes had their grand opening on Nov 20th. She had each of her students bring in 3 pieces of art that she could hang. We went and of course I had to take pictures! Signed Emma up for two more sessions - Dec and Jan. They were offering 10% off so it was worth doing then. Emma was very interested in the polymar clay that some kids were doing so we also signed up for the Christmas ornament class that is in a couple weeks. Since she is under 8 (I think that was the age) they require I come along (darn!) and so I will get to watch and maybe play for free!

Anyways onto the art work!

Misc....

No weekly review this week. We kind of took the week of Thanksgiving off, but at the same time did some stuff. Will just include that all with next weeks review. It was all fun stuff, lots of reading outloud, hikes and geocaching!

A couple funnies I want to document:

First, we were in the car heading somewhere and Emma pulled out a copy of "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" and started trying to read through it. Part of it she did by sounding it out, other parts she stumbled through because we have not learned all the vowel sounds (those she got some guidance from me if I could tell her what the rule was), the rest she did by memory. She got to one part and I hear "and he turned into a racoon..." Dave and I tried but we burst out laughing and she sheepishly says "What?! Oh I mean cocoon!"

Second, same day but in the evening, we stopped by McDonalds to grab a movie from Redbox. Dave grabbed Angels and Demons and Star Trek. Emma pips up and asks "Is Star Trek the one with the life savers?"

Christmas shopping is pretty much done. I ended up going out Black Friday to look around. The neighbor's granddaughter was visiting so Emma went over to play so I was able to pick up some more stuff. Emma still has to shop for me and Dave and I need to pick some fabric up and do a little sewing and that is about it until wrapping! That and make the photo gifts, but I am waiting for my external hard drive to arrive first! Much easier than searching through way too many DVDs of photos.

weekly review November 15-21, 2009

Weekly review November 15-21. 2009

Math:
-Worked on math facts 1-10
-Played card games to work on the above.
-Played Skipping to Oregon - skip counting 2’s, 5’s and 10’s
-Learned that you can break down number bonds all the way to 1’s. She had a blast doing that!
-Singapore Math PM 1A - textbook pages 23-31 and workbook pages 17-30
-Beginning Math (K-1) - pages 16-23

Language Arts:
-Continued reading On the Banks of Plum Creek. Read chapters 3-11
-Right Track Reading - lesson(s) 19, 20 21(started this lesson)
-Emma read out loud Sam and the Bag by Alison Jeffries
-Emma wrote words and sentences as I dictated. I wanted an idea of where she was at since we have not been doing it. For the most part, she did great. There are a few letters though, that while she knew the sound, could not write the letter down. Need to make sure to do this 2-3 times a week.

History:
-Read books about Pilgrims and the first Thanksgiving
…If You Sailed on the Mayflower in 1620 by Ann McGovern (most of it)
I can Read About the First Thanksgiving by J.I. Anderson
-Art craft about being thankful.

Science:
-Hike at Fruita Paleontology Area. She was able to use information that she has picked up from Dinosaur Train (PBS show) to talk about some of the dinosaurs that were on the info signed. We talked about whether they were herbivores, carnivores, or omnivores. She was able to tell us whether or not the dinosaur in the pictures were Theropods or not.

Extra curricular:
-Art: learned how to draw faces
-Art show with 3 of Emma’s pieces from class!
-Violin: 1 practice sessions, skipped lesson due to very little practice when sick.
-Hockey: game (skipped practice due to being sick)
-Geocaching 2x
-Hike x2

Song mystery solved!

For a while now Emma has been going around singing "She love a boy, she love a boy, she love a boy, senika henika!" She kept telling me it was Celtic Woman song and while it seemed familiar I could not figure out which one it was. She and I spent one night on the couch looking through their lyics. I found a site that had all the albums. We spent time on Amazon listening to clips of the songs. I even looked through solo albums even though we do not own any of them. I also plugged what she was singing into google in hopes of finding it. No luck. It was driving me crazy!

So tonight in the car, I have one of their albums on and we get to the last song and I hear "She love a boy, she love a boy..." Well, kind of, what I heard makes me understand what Emma was singing. What I failed to do when I looked through lyrics and listen to clips was to click on their songs in Gaelic!

Sí do Mhaimeo Í Video on YouTube

weekly review November 8th-14th

Math:
-Worked on math facts 1-10
-Played card games to work on the above.
-Played Monkey Money
-Learned most of the written words for numbers 0-10. Still working on one, two and eight.
-Singapore Math PM 1 - textbook pages 8-22 and workbook pages 7-16

Language Arts:
-Started reading On the Banks of Plum Creek. Finished chapters 1 and 2
-Right Track Reading - lessons 16, 17, 18
-In addition to RTR learned that words (cvcv) that end in “e” usually make the vowel say its name.
-Reading Master Skills K - pages 41-47

Extra curricular:
-Co-op: stories about time, made a clock, math games
-Art: learned how to draw bodies
-Violin: moved onto Allegretto and G-scale, lesson, 3 practice sessions
-Hockey: game (skipped practice due to being sick)

math games

I have been having fun finding simple math games and either introducing them to Emma or revamping them slightly.

She was playing one of them last night and kept having me shufle the cards so she could play again. We started with cards 2-9 and as I flipped them over she had to tell me what she needed to add to that card to make ten. Then I added the aces and she had to keep flipping them until she could make a sum of 10 with two cards. Had her tell me which card she needed to make the sum, which then combined both games. I think we are going to try this as a memory game soon too.

My find of the day was a pair of dice that are 20 sided. Still not sure what we will do with them but I am sure once we hit addition and subraction up to 20, they will come in handy!

Have you ever had your hand up a bison's rear end?!

Emma did end up sick. Nothing that bad though, not the flu thankfully. I am still not 100% sure what was going on since she had a slight sore throat and a low grade fever. I ended only giving medicine once because last night after in bed, she complained she had pain under her ears. So maybe she has a slight ear infection but if that is the case, this is a breeze. Once she hits 103 I usually call the doc because it is always an ear infection.

She woke up this morning singing at 6 am and came in to see us cheerfully and cool to touch at 7, so we decided to get out of the house today and walk around downtown Grand Junction (and geocache!).

All was nice, found some neat new shops and complete a few geocaches. All of them were quick ones... well, expect for one. We found it quck, well, Dave found it quick (he found all of them right away). I should have taken a picture of the location. Picture a metal sculpture of a bison, probably 10 feet high (total guess). Dave walks up, looks around it and says it must be in his butt. He was right. So we find the container which is attached with a strong magnent, that took some work to get out. Dave attempted and it slipped so I went in for it and got it out. Turned around to look for a place to write our name in it and this girl is sitting in her truck staring at us with the oddest expression! We ran around the corner out of sight and waited until her friend came out and they left. I could just imagine her calling the cops on us... Then I had to sneak back and put the cache back.

Violin and art...

Wednesdays are our busy days. She has violin at 930, art at 1030 and hockey at 5. Not intentional but that is when everything falls. I am still not sure if I like it or not. Makes for a busy day, and usually no other schooling but at the same time, the other days are not being taken up by a class here or there.


Violin went well. She moved one piece to review and started in on a new piece. The new piece, Allegretto is mainly on the D string including her 4th finger on D. Should be interesting since she has not played on the D string much and just started using her 4th finger on the A string with her current piece she is still working on.


Art is always fun. She looks forward to it each week. This week they learned how to draw the basic body using shapes. As we waited for class to start, the teacher told them to free draw. This is what Emma drew. She told me it was a person wearing a dress.



And this is what she drew in class, in the order she drew them.










Not sure hockey is going to happen today. She had a sore throat last night and just told me it still hurts. So I am going to give her the night off and hope that in a few hours she is still feeling "ok" and not feverish. Nothing has hit this household yet but I know it is a possibility still. Nothing that tells me I have to keep her home but going to play it safe and let her rest. Good night for a family movie! (although she is already asking when we are going to do math today so she can't be feeling too horrible!)

Music to my ears...

Today we were running errands and Emma tells me "Mom, I don't ever want to stop learning math!" She is pretty excited her new math curriculum is here and that I have put together a couple games for her. We did part of unit one for math today. It was linking up the numbers to their names. So before hand, I got the flash cards out and ran through them with her. I had not introduced them yet since I did not want them as sight words. She is able to read 7 out of 11 (0-10) so far and there is one or two that she will be able to read once we get to that point in her reading.

After that we played one of her new "games" - Monkey Math. It is a file folder game with 18 monkeys holding signs of different amounts of money from 12 cents to $1.75. It comes with print outs of money to match up to the monkies (for instance for 12 cents, the printout has a dime and two pennies). I decided instead to break out her fake money and let her figure it out. It was fun doing addition on paper, and even though we are not to that yet (adding two place values), she was picking up on some of it.

Another highlight for me was that she was able to read the directions to her math worksheet today! Had to introduce a new rule (s in has) and remind her that "e" makes the vowel say its name (we have not officially covered this yet, just introduced today for the number names), but she did it. The directions were "Check the set that has more." and "Check the set that has less."

Emma's art class - Week 1 and 2

As I mentioned last night Emma is taking an art class at a studio here in town.

Some of Emma's art from week 1:

She was taught how to draw using common shapes and going from there.

A monster truck (drawn by looking at a toy truck):



A cow (drawn by looking at a drawing of a cow):




Some of Emma's art from week 2:

Worked more on drawing by picking out key shapes

SpongeBob (drawn by looking at a picture of him)


This was made by drawing one line with marker and using a paintbrush with water over the drawn line. Then Emma would make another line and repeat the process.



Playing around with water color paint and learning that it does not take much to make a picture

semi update

I think this is going to take a few attempts to get going on a regular basis. Things have been chaotic since the last time I posted since Dave has been home most of the time. We are hoping that the job he applied for last week pans out and he will be back at work soon. It has been wonderful having him home but at the same time, there have been many days that I am unsure what day of the week it is. Thankfully, that is one of the joys of homeschooling. There have been quite a few weekends that we have done quite a bit of schooling to make up for a day of fun and games during the week. Dave spent most of the last month helping a former co-worker with a side project and was gone during the day most of those weekends which allowed Emma and I to get a lot done.

Since my last post Emma has started with a new violin teacher that has been wonderful! We are only 3 weeks in with her so it is still too early to tell how progression will be but I think she will be moving a littl slower. It seems that this teacher is going to ask for more from Emma before she allows her to move forward to a new song.

Emma has also started taking art classes here in town. A new studio opened up this month and she has two classes just for homeschoolers! I was so happy to see that! Emma was her only student in the younger class the first week, and the second week, one of Emma's friends had joined. The teacher allows the parents to sit in and draw as well, and she (the teacher) has been very pleased with how it is going that she is considering lowering the max number of students and encouraging more from the parents. Both Emma and I have learned a lot so far and I will be scanning in what she has done so far.

As I type this, I am scanning in the suggested pagesfrom the appendix of her new math curriculum. It just came in the mail today and she is eager to get going so I want to make sure I have things ready. I am curious to see how this one goes. Glancing through, I see many areas where we will probably move quickly, but I see some sections that will give her some challenge. I think we are finally getting to where she should be and can slow down. We have been doing a lot of math using her hundreds board and dice and graphing lately while we waited for her new curriculum (I was stalling on ordering it for some reason). The activity she has loved the most lately was rolling two dice and adding the numbers. It was numbers 0-5 (covered up the 6 with a sticker) and she had to roll enough times to make the facts of 0-10 and then see how 1+2=3 but 2+1=3. She picked up on that real quick. I think the only one we just could not roll was 2 4's. We also rolled 1 die 100x and graphed out how many times each number 1-6 was rolled. The next night rolled 5 dice 20 times to see how the numbers compared. I want to do this a couple more times. I picked up a book of math games for young kids at the local used book store so I am hoping to find some more to play. The educator's book for her math also has lots of games to help make the concepts she is learning stick.

Hockey is going well. She is still one of the youngest (but no longer the youngest!) on her team. However, many of the new older kids are new to skating so she has an advantage there. She has had a couple shots on goal but nothing has gone in yet (at least not in the actual game).

We just re-bought our National Parks Pass so I am hoping for some trips up to the Colorado National Monument soon. We just did a trip to Arches National Park yesterday and spent the day hiking and looking at the arches. What an amazing place! Depending on weather, we are hoping to go back to the area. First, Emma needs to turn in her Jr Ranger book and get her pin. Second, the Canyonlands are in the same general area so we would like to see them too.

That's enough for now, will try to at least keep up the weekly updates with tidbits and pictures inbetween!