Random goodness in the form of playdough

Just because they are SOOO cute! Ariel let me put her hair in pigtails!


As you can see, Ariel is thrilled with playdough!!!


Rachael kneading the dough to make it more playdoughy. It's pretty sticky until they knead it a bit. It's also pretty hot.


This is Trevor building a chain of dominoes. We just got the dominoes recently and they have been endlessly amusing for all the kids. We play the game TONS, but Trevor quickly realized you could stack them like he is in the video and knock them down. Much to his dismay, we don't have enough to build long elaborate designs to knock over. I think I need to get more dominoes! I lost my voice last week and it was still all hoarse. I was also a bit grumpy because I kept having to start the video again because Trevor shows off for the camera. He just won't act NORMAL! He will build so nicely and carry on a meaningful conversation until I start filming then he gets all silly. So you'll hear me whisper "Act normal!". heh.

Other than that, we've been busy! More pictures will be up later. No more time now. But we went to the Natural history museum yesterday without Ray! I was proud that direction challenged me made it in on the Metro and everything. We met Ray afterwards to go to the Caps game, which was loads of fun, too. Trekking into DC will be something we definitely do more often.

Math, math, math

I have always been a bit mathphobic. I struggled to understand concepts in school and, even now, if someone says something that might even hint at being a word problem, I get all twitchy. I purchased k12's math program because it was all scripted, provided the math book, lessons online and all the manipulatives. But, wow. OK.. Trevor placed out of K-level math. But the grade one math moves so fast! And that crazy wording! In the last, oh, five or so lessons we have covered counting forwards and backwards on a number line, we have used counters to make groups of addition sentences from word problems, we have learned words like addend, sum, addition sentence, increasing by "x" number, vertical math sentences and horizontal math sentences. It's enough to make my head spin. Isn't this supposed to be elementary math adding single numbers?

Because of the curriculum's speed, Trevor wasn't getting it. He would get it enough to pass an assessment (and mainly because I provide help and discussion during assessments, else he would have a test at the end of every lesson), but the next day he couldn't remember what he had learned. I also was having issues with him understanding the key concept of the lesson- ie: seeing that if you add 1 to a number, the number jumps one up the number line like you're counting. So we would struggle through our math lessons, Trevor pouting and hating it, me feeling like an utter failure because I couldn't explain it, even with a script. Our lessons would take an hour- k12 assumes we will sit for an hour for every lesson (making my school day take 4 hours just in seat work!) but I generally spend much less time than that working. It's a big reason why I homeschool. So our hour of struggling over math would end with Trevor, head hanging, whole body drooping, slouching out of the room to sit by himself in the playroom, feeling like a failure. It was tough to watch and I spent much time hugging him and assuring him that he was fine, we just needed to find a better way to get it.

Today we started our "better way". One, I only spent roughly 15 minutes on math. Two, I made sure it was something he would succeed at so he wouldn't think math was really all that horrible. I found a site that would allow me to print my own math worksheets and printed him a sheet of vertical equations adding numbers less than 10 with numbers no more than 1. Then I drew him a number line from 0-10. We took one frog counter. I love counters and manipulatives, but I think he was being distracted by them while we worked problems. So we used one frog to make hopping up the number line easier. Then I talked about how the frog hopped ONE up the number line. I didn't talk about more than one, I didn't jump backwards on the line like the k12 lesson did. First we wrote our own addition sentences based on what number he put the frog on. I explained that when we jumped up the number line it was like say "plus". So when we moved one up the number line we were saying "plus one". So he understood that. After I was sure he could write his own equations, we did the quick and easy worksheet. He understands the concept of zero as not moving on the number line so he breezed through those.

Tomorrow we'll move on two jumping two places on the number line. I'll stop there until I'm sure he understands it. I'm also contemplating getting him a math computer game like Math Blasters or something to supplement. I have some math board games tagged on amazon, too. He's very analytical, so I know he could be much better at math than I am, but I need to give him that starting point so he gets it. Today was wonderful in that we ended our lesson on a positive note, with Trevor beaming and saying "That was EASY, mommy!"

Other than that, our day was very good, very busy. Trevor continued on his reading and, of his own accord, read me his entire level 3 phonics reader. Which was awesome! We've slowed phonics down a little, too, because we caught up with his curve. We still don't have to do the whole lesson, but he needs time to absorb the sight words before we can take assessments but he is picking up sight words very quickly. Today we did the lesson on the United States for history and tomorrow we will cover some of the native people. Then next week we'll explore this site and look at the first Thanksgiving before celebrating it ourselves!

Tired and busy!

We did phonics and math today. Trevor is really struggling with math but continuing well with phonics. He read his third reader today and was really proud of himself! We also had homeschool group and that was fun, as usual. I didn't see Trevor until it was time to leave but Rachael and Ariel hung pretty close to me. Anyway, here's a random picture and another attempt to put video on the site:


Ariel playing on starfall.com. She LOVES starfall, and she can use the mouse and everything.




Ariel and Rachael doing forward rolls without hands. Ariel started the trend and does them all day long. "Clap, mommy!" She exclaims whenever she is done. heh.

Making a leaf book

Today we decided to learn about autumn leaves. All the leaves here are turning colours and we've noticed lots of gorgeous reds and yellows, along with many acorns and squirrels. Nothing thrills Rachael as much as seeing squirrels along the back fence. She will be sitting at the table, eating lunch and we'll all be chatting when Rachael will suddenly whisper "SHHHHH!!! See that squirrel on the fence? He's SOO cute!"


Rachael eating onion grass we found on the trail. Tasty! heh.


These are all our leaves laid out on the table.


This is the beginning of his leaf book. I just cut regular white paper in half and took a few sheets and stapled them at the fold to make the book. Trevor spelled his title phonetically. The leaf pictured is a "Holly Leaf" (Hole lef)


Rachael showing off her book. She pretty much coloured leaf drawings she did in any pretty colour she had. One leaf she coloured blue. heehee.


I drew the leaf, Trevor coloured it exactly as he saw it- green veins with orangey-red leaf.


While they coloured I looked up WHY leaves are so pretty in the fall. We learned they are always that colour, but the Chloryfyll (hm, I am misspelling that, I know) covers up the autumn colors. Trevor was amazed to know the plant makes glucose for food (he knows glucose is sugar). We found out that the reason for the red in maple leaves is excess glucose the tree doesn't need. This glucose turns red, while other maple leaves are yellow because they don't have this build up of glucose. Quite interesting, really. We discovered oak leaves are brown from excess waste in the leaves (we equated it to waste that leaves our bodies. So brown oak leaf has waste like we have poop. Don't know if it is the same, but it amused us!).

So, all in all, an interesting day!

Oh, and just because she is cute, Ariel doing her "handwriting" while the kids were doing it this morning.

New Haircut and Rachael dancing

A Pterasaur Trevor made from blocks. The part with the teeny toy on it is the head. He said the back part is a tail, but from what we learned watching the Nat'l Geographic show about them, they didn't have tails, which made the way the flew different and hard to replicate. But Trevor wanted his pterasaur to have a tail. :)



Trevor finally has a haircut! Doesn't he look cute!



Rachael dancing to Juno Reactor. Yes, it's sideways, sorry. She looked cute, though I don't know why part of her dancing involves wonking herself in the head! lol.

Busy days!

It is cool and crisp outside, perfect weather.

Today we didn't get up until 8am. 8am! That's really late for us. The kids are usually up at 7 (Ray and I drag ourselves out of bed around 7:30). So we got a late start and were consequently late for Rachael's gymnastics. She loves gymnastics and it's cute to watch her! This isn't a *real* expensive class. This is just through the parks n rec center. It's taught by the daughter of dance class teacher who Rachael had for dance last session. Right now Rachael is walking backwards and forwards on the balance beam, doing forward rolls, backwards rolls (aparently there is a proper way to do them and the teacher helps with form), they jump on the trampoline, and do some sort of little mini type vault over a low soft mat. When they are done their round of gymnastics moves, they hold their little arms up like "tah-dah!" It's way cute.

Friday's are always busy mornings because after Rachael's gymnastics comes a quick stop at home for lunch and then we rush out to Trevor's old school for his speech therapy. Normally the girls and I take a walk for the half hour Trevor is in speech, but everyone has colds right now so we opted to stay inside and work in little Target workbooks. Since it's lunch time at the school while we're there, we saw Trevor's old K teacher who got all excited to see Trevor and gave him a hug, then we saw his old K classmates filing by for lunch (they all waved at me), then saw his old friend from K who he still plays with sometimes, then his neighbourhood friend. We saw lots of kids we knew in our 30 minutes there!

Sometimes I skip school on Fridays just because everyone is tired by the afternoon. But I felt like we missed a lot this week, or I'm a little stressed or something. So we "did school" this afternoon. Learned about Ireland today in our quick tour of Europe. So far he's learned about Spain, England, France and Ireland. It's all been very brief so I don't know how well he will retain this knowledge. At least he knows Europe is full of countries and, with some clues and help, he can point to the countries we have done on the map. In math he is learning addition facts. I KNOW he knows these, but he wasn't keen on math today and so struggled to write the addition sentences down. Basically he had, for instance, 3 frog counters (Thanks MOM!!!) and he groups them into various groups and writes the addition sentence based on the groups- like 1+2=3. I think he mainly struggles with it because he has so few counters to begin with and it would be easier if he had larger groups to work with. Trevor tends to THINK about his problem too much and reads way too much into the answer. He ends up making it harder than it is. We did phonics and he continued reading in phonics and is making good progress there. He read me his phonics reader again today and then yesterday read me a little of "Hop on Pop".

Once we finish Europe in history, I am going to skip to America (rather than head through just about every other continent listed in the lessons between Europe and North America) so we can do a unit on Native Americans, Thanksgiving, etc. K12 does not have seasonal aspects to its curriculum, so I'll be supplementing this month so we can learn about Thanksgiving.

And that's about it from us for this week! Next week everyone should hopefully be over their colds so we can quit feeling so run down!