Last day of swim lessons

Last Wednesday was Emma's last swim class for this session.  A couple weeks off and she will start again but this time in level 3!  She was so excited to pass out of level 2.  They played games for most of the last lesson, but at the end, I asked one of the teachers if I could get some video and she hopped back in.

Emma's creative writing

One of her assignments yesterday was to tell me a story and then I was to write it down for her. I decided to up it a little and handed her a piece of paper and pencil. I read some of the first sentance suggestions that were suggested and she was not happy with any of them. I asked that it not be about anyone she knows or something that happened to her recently. She did pipe up occasionally asking for spelling help. Typed the way she wrote it.

Lilly is six years old. One day Lilly went out to play at the park. And she saw a wet and muddy cat. Lilly went home with the muddy cat in her arms. When Lilly got home she showed her parents the cat. She asked if she could keep the cat. Her parents said yes. They cleaned the cat. Lilly let the cat sleep in her room. Lilly named the cat Goldy.

Emma then asked if she could write another story. Who am I to say no? I asked that she not ask for spelling help however so that I could see how she was doing. We did start out with help on the first word because she was having such a hard time with it. Typed the way she wrote it.

once upon a time thare was a dog names ben. He had a nise famuly. But one day he got lost. He fownd a nice home in a rock to live in for a litil bit. One day He went out to find sum food. But in sted he fownd sum more dogs that asked if he wanted to play with them. But he did not want to play and he said no. And the next day he fownd a home.

We did talk about misspellings and forgetting to capitalize but she did a great job! I donot think any of the misspellings are rules we have covered in spelling yet.

How should I parent my kid?

I had an experience at the rec center that really rubbed me the wrong way yesterday. Emma and I had just finished swimming and she asked if she could shoot some hoops. Why not? We were waiting for friends of ours to finish getting ready to go and seeing we had driven with them, we had some free time. I had remembered to bring my camera to get some video of her swimming so I figured I would get some video/pics of her shooting baskets. Normally I am right out there with her, usually giving her a pointer or two and letting her have fun.

I was fiddling with teh camera and some guy set his bag down near me and then I saw him grab a basketball and walk over to Emma. I started watching and listening and I realized he was giving her pointers on where to aim and how to throw/push the ball better. Not a problem. I do not mind her learning from others. It was what happened next. He came over to me, explained what he did... again, ok... then he puts the ball down on the counter enxt to me and tells me she will learn better is I am out there with her, shooting and showing her... Excuse me?! Sorry you do not know me from Jack... you have no clue what I usually do, or how I interact with my daughter. Maybe there are parents out there who may not jump right in, but the kids do fine. It is about having fun. Plus I kind of thought my daughter might just like some pictures/videos of herself once in a while....

Weekly Review

This week was off a little due to me returning to work for 3 days.  If, and when, I go full time, there will be adjustments to be made again, but for now we are making due. 

Writing With Ease- Completed 4 lessons

First Language Lessons-  Finished 4 lessons this week, ending with 70.

Cursive-  Covered ‘m’ and ‘n’ (both normal and as attached to a ‘tow truck’ letter), two reviews and learned ‘x.’  She has ‘q’ and ‘z’ left and then lots of review (and some capitals) and practice and she will be done.  I guess about 2-3 weeks left!  Time to order the next book!

Memorization-  Continued with her new ‘The Months’ poem.  Has 2 months left to memorize!  Continued to review the western states and work on the mid-west states.  She has memorized (location and spelling) Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, North Dakota, South Dakota, Kansas, Nebraska, and Iowa.  She is doing great!

Spelling-  Did two lessons this week.  Both 100%!  Also we started testing on the 140 words she has already learned in this book.  We did about 1/3 of them so far with only 4 mistakes!  She also rewrote her two weekly spelling words in cursive.

Math-  Emma continued to work on her 2’, 3’s, and 4’s in multiplication drill.  Both on her flash master and Tuxmath.  Continues to do well.  She also proved that she has figured out how to do her 6’s so I will be adding that to her basic drill so she can start memorizing them.  Since the drill has been going so well, we started in on 3A and she almost finished the first unit this week. She has 2 pages of review left.  Unit 1 consists of numbers to 1000 and rounding numbers.  It was her first experience with rounding and she picked it up quick.  Helps that we did a quick preview into how rounding numbers worked and then did a practice inside Home Depot with price tags.  When asked she rounded to the nearest 10cents or to the nearest dollar. 

History-  Dave and Emma completed the next chapter.

Science-  Nothing scheduled.  She did stumble across an episode of Curious George that had to do with germs and the human body.  Fits right in.  Checked back in with the owls to see how the owlets are growing! 

Art-  Made a dog out of clay in art class.  Metal work got pushed to this next week.

Violin-  Passed off on Minuet II and continues to work on Minuet III.

Extra-  Went to Home Depot for the kids workshop. Put together a race car.  Read the directions carefully

PE-  Swim lessons and shooting baskets.

The call I was waiting for finally came…

This past Wednesday my phone rang and when I glanced at who it was, I realized it was finally work calling.  When we finished in October, what I understood was that around mid-February, the calls would come to be asked back.  I had no doubt I would be asked back based on my review, however, I was not full time and there was no guarantee that there would be a full time opening for an English speaking teacher this year. 

And, when the call came, I learned that at this time, I do not have a full time position.  However, when they need to open a 4th room, I am slated for that position.  That was not the news I wanted, however, I am more than happy with it!  I had heard last year, that all the rooms do not open at once if they do not have enough kids, so each year, not all the teachers start at once.

I am also planning on talking with the director to see where I stand to apply to be director qualified.  She seems to think I might have all the classes, I think I might be a couple short.  It would be a benefit to them for me to become qualified because other than the director, there is only 1 other staff member qualified and there has to be one person on location that is qualified.  From what I understand, if I do need classes, they will be paid for by work so it is in my best interest to get those done.

So, I took CPR/First Aid yesterday and Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday have beginning of the season training.  And then I wait to see what happens.  Time will tell.

Weekly Review

Another abnormal week.  I ended up not feeling to great for a good part of the week, so we took it easy.  I just could not get motivated especially between not feeling good and having taken an easy week the week before.

Language Arts:

The main thing we did not cover this week was Writing With Ease and First Language Lessons.  We are on track with both of these, so I was not concerned with missing a couple weeks.

She did two lessons in spelling and had 100% on both tests.  Worked with “ee" and plurals.  She also added the word “been” to her jail (something designed to help with rule breakers).  This was good timing because we had been talking about “been” since she had misspelled it in a couple letters.  I was about to add it to her word wall when I saw it was coming up in spelling.  On the second lesson, after her test, I also asked her to rewrite her spelling words in cursive, which she enjoyed!

She worked through more of her cursive book.  Learned how to connect letters to “b,” “w,” “v,”  and “o”.  Tow truck letters, her book calls them.

Wrote a few more letters and received some in the mail!  She was really excited about that!  She has a couple people to reply to now.

For memory work, we passed a poem and her pronoun list from everyday review to a couple times a week.  She also passed the western states to a couple times a week and started working on the mid west states.  The first three she memorized were:  Indiana, Ohio and Michigan.  We then added North Dakota, South Dakota and Iowa.  I think she will have these down next week.

Math

This was another area we took light just because.  We played around with multiplication tables for 2’s and 3’s.  We timed her with flipping over and answering her two facts (1-12).  Her fastest time was 14.5 seconds to go through all 12!  We started working on her threes this was as well.  She can figured her tables up to 5 and also table 10, but we are now working on speed.  Also started a little bit into her new book, but did not do any in her workbook, it was all oral.  For instance “How many 10s are in 10,000”  “How many 100s are in 3,000”

History

Continued with Story of the World learning about the Israelites in Egypt and about the Exodus from Egypt.

Science

Nothing from her curriculum this week.  We did watch the shuttle launch and talked about the rockets and speed.  She was glued to the computer screen and just amazed.  We are hoping for a clear night when it will pass over, attached to the space station would be neat too.

Emma also free read through a few books on the human body that we checked out from the library and is reading through the companion guide for a Magic Tree House about the Antarctic.  She was telling me all about icebergs.

PE

Lots of swimming this week.  She had her two lessons and we also went twice for free swimming so she could practice what she is learning in class.  She is now able to float on her back and kick across the pool! 

Art

Art class went well.  They finished up a project from the previous week and started to learn about working with metal which they will do this coming week.

Violin

Getting ready to pass off on Minuet 2 (maybe this coming week) and working on Minuet 3.

Slight unexpected turn to our week.

I got a call from a friend of ours yesterday morning.  They were planning on coming into town to swim at the rec center and did Emma and I want to join them.  This is one of Emma’s best friends and we has been planning on going anyways, so we said yes! 

Last night Emma makes a slight comment, “My ear hurts.”  I filed that information away.  This morning “my ear hurts a little when I do this” (puts her hand over her ear) “and when I hiccup and I can’t hear as well out of it”  I glanced at Dave, hopped online and what she was saying fit with swimmer’s ear.  I called the clinic and they could not get her in before we were supposed to meet for swimming and they agreed with what I was thinking, that she should not go back into the pool before being checked out.  Emma was not a happy camper to find out she would miss swimming with her friends, and the friends thankfully understood why we had to bail out.  The clinic gave me a choice of a late morning appt  at the farther away clinic or a 330 at the closer clinic in town.  Went with the earlier appt in case we needed to get her on meds.

The nurse practitioner had a student working with her.  Went through Emma’s symptoms and told them I was leaning towards swimmer’s ear due to the fact that we had been at the pool a lot and it did not pattern Emma’s typical ear infection which is a high fever of around 103 that can barely be kept down with pain reliever until the antibiotics kick in.   She ran a fever Sat night and one dose of Ibuprofen took care of it.  The student took one look and said there was something definitely going on in her ear.  I felt better (not that I wanted her to have an infection but that my instinct was correct).  The NP came in and agreed but said it was actually a middle ear infection and was really surprised that she was not running a fever.  So, she is on 10 days antibiotic and cleared to return to swimming on Monday.  I think that is the silver lining actually…  If it had been swimmer’s ear, everything I am reading says she would have been out of the pool about 10 days.  Right now I am just hoping the antibiotics kick in before it starts getting more painful.  Thankfully she has never had to deal with the pain from an ear infection (not sure how).  I remember that pain all too well.

As a side note, we can add some human body studies to this week’s science.  She will be looking at what the ear looks like with an ear infection and without.  That is the bummer about being the patient, you can not always look in the neat tools!

Weekly Update

We took a mini break this week.  Emma was sick over the weekend and while feeling better Monday I wanted to mix things up a bit but not completely take the week off.  So for a good part of it, she did “real life” school.  She wrote a letter each day and went to the post office to mail it. 

On Monday, she threw together a little package to mail to her friend in Denver, complete with some Valentine’s candy and a letter.  We went to buy the envelope to mail it and she was to count the money out.  The place was empty and even though I mentioned what we were doing to the gal running the place (this was a shipping store), she was all to happy to help Emma out.  It was pretty funny because the total came to $1.07 and Emma had the quarters counted out and the lady is there counting out 7 pennies.  After we left Emma tells me, “What if I wanted to give her a nickel and two pennies instead?  Or if I gave her a dime, she would have had to give me 3 cents back.”  Next stop, Walgreens to pick up some photos to mail along with the package.  The clerk was more than happy to let Emma count out the money.  Then off to the post office to buy postage.  Again, very patient while she counted out the money and impressed when the clerk found out Emma was just in first grade. 

Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday she wrote more letters.  Often more than one considering she mailed one each day as well as hand delivering one two of those days!  I might continue this through the weekend/early next week until our beginning list is complete.  I told her she might get something in return!

She really impressed me with how far she has come with her writing.  We talked about what she could write about but she was more than happy to write quite a bit, in fact even mentioning that if she ran out of room, she could go onto the next page!   Her spelling has improved so much!  I did not correct everything, but we did talk and correct a lot of things.  What I did not worry about were words that would be cleared up easily in the future such as “playd.”  We did talk and correct some things that we may not have covered yet in spelling but that I did not want bad habits forming.  Some of the more common words have or will be added to her word wall.  It was amazing to see her mind working through some of the rules she has learned. 

We did continue with memorization and she learned 1/2 of a new poem about the months.  She is almost done with her pronoun definition and pronoun list as well.  Continues to nail the western states and we are polishing up on Nevada’s spelling.  Not sure yet which region will be introduced next.

We did not touch history or science at all this week.  She continues to be interested in pirates and wants her room theme to be pirates.  Once done, she will have a built in loft bed that she wants to be fashioned after a pirate’s ship.  She went as far as to ask for a poop deck.  Yesterday she tells me she wants a barrel that has a pluggable hole and two cups.  She wants it filled with apple juice because apple juice is the closest to… and then she had to grab Treasure Island to look up what the apple juice represented…. Rum! 

I stand corrected.  For science we watched barn owls a lot throughout the week waiting for the first owlet to hatch!  She got to see fresh kill brought in as well as the female eating!  She had already gone to be when Matilda (what the owlet was named) was born but came running when I called out to her!

Emma did a few more lessons in her cursive book and we might continue that through the weekend since she loves it so much!  She is realizing how close she is to being able to really write in cursive!

Aside from money, in math she finished up the unit on weight for CWP.  I also installed (through many trials and errors) Timez Attack and she started working her way through that.  I am not sure how it will go but it is a video game that helps kids learn their multiplication facts.  She can figure them out through 5, but they are not memorized.  She is liking the program now that I have the kinks worked out.

PE- swim lessons started this week and she is loving them.  Not being challenged yet but according to her teacher she thinks Emma will move up next session.  What Emma needs to work on, is what they will get to next week.  However, I have seen a huge improvement in her swimming when she was playing around before and after class.  She actually started moving when trying the front crawl instead of only going a foot or two.  They say in order to move up she has to go 5 lengths of her body which is close on her front, just need to work on the back. 

Violin-  We canceled her lesson Monday and had a make-up today.  I forgot the bag with her book in it, so she got even more practice at sight reading today.  Her teacher completely understood.  She had a spare book but it did not have the fingers written in, so Emma had to really work at the part she had not memorized yet.  Her teacher says she will probably pass off on it next week and started her working on the next song as well.

Extra stuff-  We stopped in at Lowe’s (and Home Depot the week before) for their kid’s clinic which was fun.  She made a music box (and a heart shelf at HD),  We will be checking to see what project is and try to go when we can.  Lowe’s is every other week and Home Depot is one time a month.

Weekly review

Another really good week.  I am really liking the groove we have been in, and Emma seems to as well. 

We had been writing everything as a schedule for each day and I took it a step further this week, just to make it easier.  Much easier to just switch labels each day.  I found the schedule REALLY has helped Emma know what to expect each day as well as give her a sense of completion as she crosses something of.  It is a work in progress, but so far, so good!

I have been playing around with letting her choose the order, but that has been hard to give up that control!   Been doing ok with me choosing one, her choosing one, etc.

Language Arts

Memorization-  Started working on a new poem about the different months.  Passed off a few poems to be reviewed less frequently.  Almost done with the Western States on remembering and writing which state is which.   Almost ready to pass off her pronoun definition and the list of pronouns to every other day!

All About Spelling-  Finished two steps this week.  Both focused on vowel-consonant-silent E words and she nailed both tests with 100%

Writing With Ease-  Finished another week.

First Language Lessons-  Finished 8 lessons this week ending on Lesson 66.

Cursive-  She is doing so well with this.   She was challenged this week with “k”, “r”, and “s”.  (well, “r” she learned in California when she learned to write her last name in cursive).  Did the first page of two for review.  Is now up to 17 letters!  Is it neat to see her eyes light up when she realizes words she can now write in cursive!

Reading-  She continues to devour books.  We were at Border’s this week and I grabbed Ramona the Pest off the shelf and had her read the first 3 pages out loud.  One mistake was all she made.  So it is time to unpack the Beverly Cleary books she got for Christmas and let her go at it.  I did start something new this week.  I am having her read 1/2 hour min of something I assign.  She gets so much more than this each day but this way I can bring in books related to what she is learning in school (or books she may not pick up first given the choice).  This week (or the past two day) she read through the Magic Tree House Research Guide about Pirates.  We also finished Mr. Popper’s Penguins and Dave and Emma started reading Treasure Island tonight.  She picked up right away that it was written by Robert Louis Stevenson, who is the author of a few of the poems she has memorized!

Math-  Emma finished Singapore Math 2B this week!  Her review went really well.  A couple mistakes were on newer concepts that we will go back and touch on (putting fractions in order from small to biggest).  She also completed the practice problems for the unit on weight and did the first 4 challenging word problems.  Still have not come up with a definite plan for math the next couple weeks, but one thing we will cover is Roman numerals.  A couple of the books recently have had the chapters marked by Roman numerals so she has been curious.  She picked out a book on Roman numerals when we were in California as well, so we will see where it takes us.  She is already understanding the basics up to 20. 

History-  We learned about the New Kingdom of Egypt and she was happy to have finally reached King Tut!

Science-  We still have one lab to do but this week we learned about the nervous system.

P.E.-  Went to the rec center a few times to shoot hoops.   Every time we have been there, one of the hoops (out of five or six) has been at a lower level.  Emma practiced shooting proper shooting vs granny style and made 9 baskets!  Swim lessons start on Monday!  We had plans to go swimming today but Emma has not been feeling 100% so we are waiting.

Violin-  Practice continues to go well.  At her lesson, they worked on sight reading and she was able to sight read her way through 2 short songs!  Her teacher was thrilled!

Art-  Emma finished her landscape.  This ended this session but she will start the next session next Tuesday.

 

Games/life skills- We broke open one of the family Christmas presents this week.  Settlers of Catan.  It took a while to figure out how the game was played but we slowly settled in…

  Emma also learned to play solitaire (with actual cards) and King’s Corner.   She was a huge help at the market as well.  She checked us out completely (minus paying) by scanning everything and looking up the produce (by picture and by spelling the names).  She has also been helping in the kitchen… tonight she helped make doughnuts.

Weekly review

Another really good week. I think getting into a good routine has helped Emma a lot and she is realizing if we start right away in the morning, she has a larger chunk of free time later in the day!

Our days pretty much follow the same pattern, at least for the core subjects (language arts and math). We start the day with her memorization folder. Part of this is Emma writing the date on the dry erase board.... She writes it three ways. "Today is Friday, February 4, 2011. 2-4-11, Feb. 4, 2011." Then onto her map work. Still working on getting Nevada and Oregon down. If given the first letter, she nails it. After map work, it is onto the poems. She currently has seven poems in rotation. She will be adding a new one within the next couple weeks depending how quickly she completes the one she is rememorizing.

Next comes LA. This week she completed another week in Writing With Ease and seven lessons in First Language Lessons. Cursive is going really well. She learned 4 more letters this week and completed another review section. She completed 2 steps in All About Spelling. Both of which covered VCE words (vowel-consonant-silent E). She nailed both her spelling tests!

For math Emma finished up the review as well as the next unit (on graphs) and the review that follows that. She then begged to start on the last unit about geometry (especially when she realized she only has 20 pages left in this book!) We were getting ready to go so I agreed she could do the first two pages. She also worked in her Challenging Word Problem book. Finished up the last few in addition and subtraction as well and the next section on length. I have noticed through the problems she has been doing that her addition and subtration facts are really close to being nailed. She is not having to think too hard and her mistakes (the few there are) are more careless than anything! In the next couple weeks I think we will take some time to have fun with the multiplication/division facts that have been introduced so far and maybe introduce some more.

History and Science have not made it into a schedule yet. We are hitting them 2x a week but the days are still hit and miss depending on what else is going on.

History this week covered the Middle Kingdom of Egypt. I am finding it interesting to go back and read all this especially with what is happening right now in Egypt.

Science, continues to be Emma's favorite and she is loving it. We covered the digestive system this week and we still have 1 lab to do. This lab will give her a better idea about how long the digestive tract really is!

Violin went well this week. She has been practicing hard and playing some simple songs (here and at her lesson) by sight reading the notes! The song she has been working on at home is only on the A string and she admitted tonight that she has pretty much memorized it lol! The song she is working on with her teacher is a duet.

PE... we took a hike, went swimming and shot some hoops. Waiting for warmer weather to realy get back outside!

Reading - Aside from the stack of books she takes in her room each night, she is working her way through Little House in the Big Woods on her own. I have not had her read it outloud to me, but am curious to! For our read-a-loud that I read to her, we are 1/2 way through Mr Popper's Penguins! She is loving it! Have The Reluctant Dragon waiting to be read next. Parts of it came up in Writing With Ease and she wanted to hear more of it.

Art- Art class this week was painting landscapes. She does great at this and had fun again this week. They will finish it up next week.

Community service/volunteer work: Once a month she helps out with a reading program at the library. My understanding is she helps our friend set up and makes sure kids sign up for their tuen. Then she is able to relax and enjoy the program. The woman who does it is a local "grandma" to Emma and I think they both enjoy the time together.

Inspiration from a friend's house...

Something I have been lacking for a while in the kitchen is a bowl to keep the fruit and veggies in that stay on our counter. Back in Montana and in Denver we used a hanging fruit basket and that was wonderful! With our ceilings here, that just will not work, at least not without some clever engineering. I have keep my eyes open and nothing has been something I wanted to buy.

This past weekend, Emma was at a birthday party and a few moms were gathered in the kitchen and I saw this 2 tiered stand that had fruit on it. I asked where she got it and she told me her dad had put it together from two plates and a candlestick holder... really!?! To Goodwill we went tonight and I had planned on just finding a couple plates as similar as possible and hopefully finding a candlestick holder that matched. By the time we left, we had spent $8 and Dave was on board. What we ended up buying, cost a little more than what we could have bought but everything matched!

The finished project... Can't wait to get it loaded up with some fruit!

Weekly review...

We had a pretty good school week. It has helped getting back into some sort of routine. Still tweaking things but each time I get a better idea of what works best for Emma. Would have a few more pics but the camera battery died and the spare/charger are still packed.


Math: her new math books came in the mail. We are still a few weeks from diving into the next book (and that is assuming I go straight into 3A). With the next year's book was also Singapore Math's Challenging Word Problem (CWP) books. I was eyeing these last year but they had been discontinued because they were creating newer versions. Now that I have my hands on one, I think it is going to challenge Emma some. It is suggested you use them a year behind where the child is working so I got book 2 since that is what she is finishing up. Emma says they are challenging and a little frustrating, but they are really fun, usually. As for math this week... We worked in CWP and completed the practice problems for section 1 (addition and subtraction) as well as 7 problems in the challenging problem set. I say we since she is needing some guidance still about setting the problems up, but she is cathing on quick! (We are talking 2-3 step additon and subtraction word problems!) She also started on her second to last unit in SM2B which is volume. I was hoping she would do the first section since I had planned on working with the CWP too, but she flew through the entire unit and will finish up that unit's review next week!


Language Arts:


Memory Work: I am working on setting up her memory work folder. My goal is to implement a good review system that I have seen others use. Each piece she is working on will be reviewed daily, every other day, 1x a week and then finally 1x a month, depending on the piece and how solid it is memorized. I am finding other things to add other than poems. She is also working on memorizing the western states and is doing an aweseme job at it. She has California, Washington, Montana, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, Wyoming and Alaska memorized! She just added
Nevada and Oregon. So she is almost there! Will also be adding items from her grammer book to her rotation to help cement them.








FLL: Not sure how many we worked through but she finished up with pronouns and narrated a story back to me. Moving on to verbs next week!


WWE: Finished out week 12. At her requested, I am working on typing out the copywork to use with a similar paper that her handwriting curric uses. She is finding it much easier to write smaller now.











Cursive: She is now finished with 10 letters! (she knows a few more but has not officially learned them in her book).








Science: We played catch up with week and ended up taking two weeks on the respiratory system. She now knows how the lungs work with the heart to carry oxygen to all the cells in the body and carry carbin dioxide out. Onto the digestive system next!

History. We traveled back to Africa to learn about Ancient Africa. Did not get to the project yet so maybe this weekend.


P.E. The rec center is now open! We went swimming twice and she worked on her front and back float and practiced using her arms and kicking. Also practiced shooting baskets on the basketball court!


Art: Art class where they made a watercolor collage.


Violin: She is getting more consisten (rather we are) about practice and we are two weeks stong now with practice. Last week was 1 shy due to her being sick, this week, we are on track for the correct amount.

Recent science lesson

Emma learned about the circulatory system last week. They had a neat little lab that she loved doing and even enjoyed showing it to her resource consultant today and telling her all about it.







Filling out her worksheet about what blood is composed of. She was surprised to learn blood is not really red!











Getting her ingredients ready for her lab.



















We have plasma (karo syrup), red blood cells (red hots), platelets (split peas or lentils) and white blood cells (lima beans). She wrote out what each stood for so she would remember when she added them to the jar!















Adding the red blood cells which she learned carries oxygen to the rest of the body. She learned platelets help plug up cuts, white blood cells fight disease and that the plasma helps move everything along and carries food.















Stirring up her blood!

I came across these...

Toaward teh end of our trip, I can across this "conversation" between Emma and my dad (PopPop)

Dear PoPop I hope we can play uno. I like playing with you. Love Emma Coulter

Emma,

I like playing with you! Uno is a nice game. I wish I could win once!

Love,

PopPop

popop I hope you win to. I thank I wil let you win maby.

Love

Emma

Updates...

Random updates seem to be where I am at right now, but at least it is something to remember when I go back and read in years to come.

We are home and have been back for a couple weeks now. I think we were gone around 50 days and it was an amazing trip. Our exploring part was cut short due to the sorry state of California's finances but we were able to crash at my parent's for the next month and help out with some small projects there... What happened? We had about 5-7 days left before we had planned on going back to LA and the state park we pulled into, to stay at for about 4-5 nights, had just found out, that as of December 1st, they were closing. The problem? We arrived November 30th. Oh well...

We are settling back in nicely. First couple days were spent doing a massive rearrangement of our front living area. For those who have been to our house, about the only thing we could not change was the kitchen. Everything else moved clockwise one living area. That meant unpacking and moving four full bookcases of school books and supplies. It did give me a chance to start sorting through and further organizing them. I realized Emma had a few dulpicates of books so those were taken down to the local used book store to add to our credit.

Seeing as we are at the mid-ish way point of the "school" year, I wanted to document where we are in her subjects.

Math- She is 2 units from finishing Singapore 2B. 3A and 3B (the next year's worth) are on their way but I am not sure if we will start them right away or just focus on reviewing a few of her "weaker" areas. She is ahead of where she should be but mental having trouble with subtracting with regrouping. If written vertically, she does good, but struggles horizontally unless we have worked through a couple problems. Will take a look at what 3A works on and go from there. Also want to spend some time cementing math facts that she had learned through the end of 2A which would be addition/subration and multiplication/division 1,2,3,4,5 and 10s. I am also toying with the idea of trying Teaching Textbooks in addition to Singapore to expand vs push forward as fast. It is hard because we touch on things long before they come up in math, because they come up in real life (money, time, real life math problems) so when they come up in math, she has a strong foundation and blows through quick.

Language Arts- This is going well and on target, especially considering we took a bit of time off on the trip. We did some here and there but not like we would have had we been home. ***Writing with Ease: She just finished week 17 (out of 36 I believe) so we are right on track there. One change I think I will make is have her do her writing on paper that she uses for her handwriting programs. The lines are closer together and she has agreed it is easier to write on. Right now we have been using the preprinted pages from the workbook.

***First Language Lessons: completed 47 out of 100 lessons. We did not touch this at all on the trip so we did lose some ground. On par of the year.

***Handwriting Without Tears: Just now start Emma with the cursive book. She has been writing her first name in cursive on her work for a while now and on the trip, she learned how to write her last name in cursive and is loving it! At this time we are doing about 4 letters a week. I also have the 2nd grade printing book and have not decided whether to alternate with the cursive (she is asking to start that also) or I might just wait until the cursive book is done.

***Memory work: Just made Emma a memory binder. The goal is to make a more consistent review cycle so she is not forgetting poems. We ran through ones she has memorized and she has only forgotten one, the others need polishing. Going to slowly move those back to a less often review and add back in the one she forgot and then work the way through others.

***All About Spelling: She just finished lesson 5 in AAS book 2 today. She is starting to learn how to break words into syllables.

Science: As of right now, she says science is her favorite and she is just eating everything up. We did not even take her science curriculum with us on the trip because there was going to be so much other science for her to explore and we were not disappointed! She learned a lot about marine mammals. As for her life science we are in the middle of unit 6 of 24. I am guessing the last 3rd will be more of a hands on lessons this spring as we start our gardens. It is plants so nothing better than seeing it with your own eyes.

History: While we took it with us, it never saw the light of day. We are "behind" here but that is tough not to be seeing it is 42 chapters long... and that is a chapter a week. So I think we just finished chapter 10 this week, which was studying Ancient China. We will probably double up chapters a couple times.

Violin: She is back in lessons after having a couple months off. The ball was dropped here with very few practices on the trip. She is doing great considering... Her teacher has also expressed an interest in having Emma start to learn how to read music. So on the trip I printed out some flash cards and then stared at them with no clue where to start. So those are put away and at the suggestion of her teacher she is learning FACE and EGBDF and is doing great at that. We have also started showing her which of FACE (A and E) are her open strings (A and E, imagine that!) and I wrote out her first 8 notes of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, which incoporates A and E and 2 notes of F which she soon realized which finger on E it was. She really started getting excited about learning to read music then! I am curious to see how this progresses!

So, we are hanging in there are trudging through. She is where I want, if not further ahead with Math and Language Arts and that has been and remains my main goal for early elementary. I believe if she can read and especially if she has a love of reading, she will learn. In fact, on of her favorite books she read on the trip was a biography of Helen Kellar. Also read lots of books about marine life to Oma and PopPop. She is blowing me away with her reading. She just started with the Boxcar Children and is liking that series and still love The Magic Treehouse books. She will go in at night with a pile of books and get through a MTH in about an hour- hour and a half now.

Mummy v.1

So this morning went a bit rougher than I had imagined when it came to wrapping Emma. All was pretty good.... until she moved and then gaps opened up and things shitted and I got VERY frustrated. Dave stepped in and we made it work enough to get through the Truck or Treat. Plan for v.2 is to buy white tights (she had grey underneath and she is due for the next size up) and to buy another sheet so we have double the fabric. Tighter wrap underneath and then follow up with looser wrap... also a TON of safety pins. The safety pins were added at the last minute today just to help hold things together.

One more thing...

Something I wanted to mention and forgot is to talk about Emma's reading. She is LOVING the Magic Tree House (MTH) series. Also loving, Cam Jansen. Last night, she grabbed a MTH book and told me she was going to lay down to read... mostly since it was quiet in her room and she could get under the covers and stay warm. It was only 6:30 pm! A couple trips out to tell me about the book, and 1.5 hours later she comes walking out "Hey Mom, I finished the book so I am going to put my MP3 player on now, ok?" I think it is going to be time to start utilizing the library more for MTH books since she will go through what we have QUICK! I need to make a list of books at the same level for her as well so we can look at other series... she has read Junie B Jones and likes those too.

Small updates of sorts....

Had a very long post typed up but decided to just focus on a few things instead....

Emma finished Singapore Math 2A (actually she has the unit on length and weight left that we skipped). Had her attempt to do the two final reviews on her own and that went ok. I am usually pretty close when she does her work so it was a struggle for her to get through without asking questions or checking answers with me like she is used to. That is something to start working on. My goal was to see where she stood on what was covered in this book. The only weak area was subtraction with borrowing. Easy fix. Found some worksheets and over a few days she did them. The last 3 she got 2 100%'s and missed 1 problem on the last one. Not bad and I feel safe saying she understands when to borrow and how to. She had understood the process but was not seeing when it was time to do it. So she is now adding and subtracting numbers up to 1000, multiplication and division with 1s, 2s, and 3s. Her next book covers multiplication and division of 4s, 5s, and 10s, and by the time we reach it, she will have those facts down since we have been working on her 4s now.... she understands that her 4s are her 2s doubled.

Spelling - we are reaching the end of All About Spelling 1. She has 2 lesson left so I took a break to test her on her spelling words up to that point (150 of them) to see where the weak areas were. Somehow we misplaced 5 of the cards so she was tested on 145 and got a 90%. A couple of mistakes were careless and one I went back and forth about even including in her percentage. The word was "an" and she wrote "anne" which makes sense with me as her mom! Although she did forget to capitalize "anne" and we are covering proper nouns right now. Weak areas to touch on: when to use "k" and when to use "ck" at the end of word, and "ink" and "ing" sounds since "e" is never used with "nk" and rarely ever used with "ng." I will say that I have seen a slight improvement in her spelling for free writing. Some of it comes when she writes, other times it is when we are reviewing what she wrote and I ask her to look at the word, she will catch the error.

I am hoping she is getting more confident in her free writing. I just came across a book she wrote about the life cycle of the butterfly. We jsut talked about it and she wants to go through and correct the spelling and rewrite it or as I guess they say in the schools "publish it." I struggle with the writing aspect because the curriculum I use approached differently that I think schools do. It focuses a lot on copying correct writing and not as much on creative writing. I am trying to compromise in the fact that if she wants to write, I am not stopping her, I am going to give her the opportunities (blank books, etc at her reach), but I want to go over the spelling with each writing so she can see the correct way. The author of the curriculum we are using, if I recall correctly, says it is better to give the correct spelling upfront instead of creative spelling. For me it is hard to gauge where her spelling is if I spell everything for her. This way I can see where we need to work or if something is not sticking. It will probably be a combination of both, if I am present, when she writes.

Will update on grammer/writing (formal)/memorization later on this weekend I hope.

It's coming!!

WooHoo!! Halloween is coming! And there are only 3 days of work left so I will be able to enjoy being back home with Emma!

I did not get done on her costume what I wanted to and I was panicking a little. We have the 1st of 3 events in which she gets to wear a costume tomorrow. She wants to be a mummy and I had the white sheet to be torn up and I had bought a pair of sweats. I had seen a tutorial about sewing the strips to sweats (or other clothing) for ease of dressing and bathrooms runs. However, that was as far as I got. I ended up tearing the sheet up last night and figured, if she is in it at most 2 hours at a time, we can hopefully work around bathroom runs and just wrap her up.... So we did a trial run tonight, and it appears I have just enough strips to wrap her. It took about 20 mins so I am guessing 30 tomorrow since I did not wrap both legs and I rushed... but I am hoping by the 3rd event... Halloween night, I can get that time a bit quicker.

Am proud of being able to keep the cost down this year. Goodwill for the sheet $3... So I splurged and bought black nail polish today $1 and then Em and I ran back out and bought black lipstick too $2... Total of $6!

Will get pictures tomorrow if I can pull the final product off!

Emma's recital

Here is video from Emma's recital a couple weeks back.