Our week consisted mostly of time with family. The above picture is proof of why I could never be a professional photographer. I tried to get a decent family shot with no luck. This outtake is the best of the bunch. My parents are on the left. Tornado Boy and Tornado Dad are in the middle. My in-laws are on the right. I really don’t know how professional photographers are able to get everyone looking great at the same time. I’d be willing to imagine that their subjects aren’t a bunch of critics, either. grrr!
Tornado Boy got to celebrate Mother’s Day with both grandmothers this weekend. He was so darn excited to have them both around at the same time. Mammaw and Pappaw (my in-laws) live about an hour and a half away, so we see them fairly often; but my parents live in Maine so we don’t see them nearly as much. Tornado Boy and I crafted these suncatchers for the grandmothers. We had a good time making them. Anytime that TB gets to use glitter he is very excited. 
We had a very nice holiday with our family.
Language Arts:
We’re a little off-schedule with Five in a Row. I had originally planned to ‘Row the book Night of the Moonjellies this week, but once I figured out that it was set in New England I figured that it would be a better pick for a week where we’re visiting my parents and actually IN New England. I switched to Madeline since Tornado Boy is currently so excited about learning more about the human body. Madeline has her appendix out in the story. That prompted a ton of questions about surgery, scars and the like from TB. He was very sure that he did not want to have surgery of any kind. I can’t blame him for that one. I’ll do a separate post with more details about Madeline when we’re done all of our FIAR activities.
I’m also excited that we’re officially halfway through the Hooked On Phonics Master Reader program. We got the older, Windows XP version of the program for about $30 with the coupon code SLICK50 a while back. As best as I can tell, it’s the same as the $200 program without the support for Vista/Windows 7. If you can use the XP version, it’s a total steal. I am very pleased with Tornado Boy’s progress with the program. His fluency has improved greatly since we started using it. The computer game portion called “Chop it” has taught him how to deal with syllables. He can now successfully separate most 4+ syllable words. This has made him much more successful in sounding out long words. He is much less prone to guessing now when he encounters a large word. The story cards that come with the program tend to be a bit dated since they tend to feature older athletes and news stories. They are a good jumping off point for further investigation, though. We’ve looked up several of the topics on the Internet to learn more about them. At this price, the program gets two very enthusiastic thumbs up from me.
Math:
We’re finishing up Math-U-See Primer level this week. We probably should have started with Alpha, but live and learn, right? I’ll probably sell the Primer books and video. Alpha seems to cover all of the same topics, just in more depth. Tornado Boy is really catching on to addition and is now writing and solving his own problems (see photo). He’ll write his own number sentence and then use the blocks to solve the problem, then he writes the answer. We really love this program. TB totally sees it as a game and he loves for us to call out different addition problems with two or three addends for him to solve.
Art:
We didn’t do much art beyond the suncatchers at home this week due to our company. I wanted to share this collage that TB did at his art/music/gym class. Their theme of the week was “baseball” and he really loved making this craft. He even controlled himself enough not to eat the stale popcorn. Go, TB!
Science:
We didn’t do a specific science activity this week, but we did spend a lot of time observing our tomato plant this week. It finally sprouted flowers, so we had to shake the plant to help with pollination since there aren’t too many bees or other insects flying around inside our home. We can’t wait until it starts to bear fruit.
We also got a Venus Fly-Trap this week. It’s apparently had several meals, but none of which we have observed ourselves. Four of the five pods are now closed up tight; working on digestion. We hope to actually catch it in action sometime soon.
Music:
I walked into Tornado Boy’s bedroom the other day and found this set up. I asked him about it and he told me that the animals were watching his concert that he played on his keyboard and then they listened to an audiobook with him. I really wish that I’d been around to see the actual performance. Tornado Boy tends to pick out a new song every week or so that he gets totally fixated on and will listen to over and over again. This week’s selection is “Save the Ocean” from the Schoolhouse Rocks Earth DVD that we borrowed from the library. I’m not much for rap-type music, but this is pretty cute. I especially love to hear him sing the spelling parts.
Physical Fun:
We had a fun playdate at local ‘sprayground’ this week with some friends of ours. I don’t have any pictures of the running chaos of the sprayground, but I did take this shot at a sandbox that we visited afterwards. I’m posting this because I seriously thought that I would never take this picture. Tornado Boy has been very texture-averse for some time. Sand and grass were pretty much a big no-no on bare skin. It appears that he is working through that now. He sat here and played for quite a long time. I actually was able to sit and have a conversation with my girlfriend. What a nice change!
If you’d like to see what other pre-K/K kids are doing this week, head on over to Homeschool Creations.
This last picture is very nice. It’s always exciting when our children outgrew things that limited them in the past. We are very blessed not to have any allergies or sensory issues to deal with, but it always excites me when Anna goes for new foods, since she is a picky eater. I love the suncatchers that you made, and the “concert” must have been very nice.
I forgot to mention – we also read Madeline this week. I I really don’t like the books that don’t rhyme, and I was very disappointed. Illustrations are not mine either even though I enjoyed seeing Paris scenes. I think we are still going to use it for Paris, but I don’t quite see what the big fuss is about this book.
We’re looking at getting Math U See soon and probably starting in the fall. Would you reccommend just starting with the Alpha Level and not mess with the Primer if it covers the same things?
Linds – I think it really depends on what your child knows going in. Tornado Boy could already skip count, understood place value, could tell time and was familiar with tally marks. He still needed work on writing some of his numbers. I choose Primer specifically because addition was just not sinking in conceptually. I would think he had it, and then the next day he’d give me some random answer. We really had not covered subtraction at all.
I would say that if your child can count to 20, write the numbers 0-9, (maybe) understands place value and can read an analog clock (at least the hours) it’s fine to start with alpha.
We love Madeline! I love how she poo poos the tiger in the cage. We love all the illustrations of Paris but I love her feisty character the most! We used to say that JC was very similar to Madeline.
JC also would not go near grass or sand. Imagine going to Hawaii and being banned from the beach! Fortunately, she outgrew those sensitivities! Have you read The Highly Sensitive Child and The Spirited Child? Both are terrific!
What a great week!
Popping over from Natalie’s blog. It looks like our four year olds have a lot in common. I look forward to reading more of your posts.
Popping over from Natalie’s blog. It looks like our four year olds have a lot in common. I look forward to reading more of your posts.