Two weeks....

First big news from the week is that Milo lost his first two teeth! 5 years (nearly to the day) after they first came in, when he was not quite 3 months old. He's growing up! This picture is from before he lost the second one.

We're less than 2 weeks away from leaving for Disney World! I need to start packing this week.

The run down...

Math: Ari's working on multiplication in Singapore:



He has the concept down (including the multi-digit stuff) no problem, but doesn't have most of his multiplication facts memorized, so I'm thinking we'll probably be taking a break to work on that for a little while. He did learn a cool trick with his fingers for doing the nine times table last week, though.

Milo has finally gotten the hang of counting to 20 without forgetting about 14 or 15, and he can count by 10s to 100. Singapore has him working with grouping things into 10s and 1s this week:
















Reading: Milo's definitely getting better every week with the reading. He's trying to sound out harder and harder words, and has no problem at all with the CVC words he's doing in Explode the Code. I think I need to start doing some work on sight words with him. For read alouds, Milo and I are reading Ramona the Pest and Ari is listening in, because he adores Ramona. Ari and I just tonight started The Mysterious Benedict Society. We are intrigued thus far, though I'm a little worried about starting in on another really long book right after we spent half the summer on The Wheel on the School.

Writing: We started Writing with Ease a little big ago (still waiting on the workbook), and I can say tentatively that I think it's going to work out well. I started him on level two, even though we're doing level three in FLL, because he has such a lack of confidence about narrations. The dictation and copywork is no problem for him, and he's catching on to the narrations quickly. The first week getting him to do one was like pulling teeth, but the next week he just immediately came up with this one:

"A lion tries to catch bulls, but the bulls make a circle and point out their horns. The bulls had a quarrel and went to separate parts of the field to graze, and the lion caught them easily."

So we'll see what happens this coming week.

History: We're in week 10 of American Story. We got a bit behind next week, so we'll probably mostly be catching up this week. Here are some of the books we're reading right now:

I really like the "If You Lived..." series. I've already ordered a few of them from Paperbackswap to use next year (when I will bravely attempt to go it alone without Winterpromise for the second half of American History). The Time for Kids Ben Franklin bio is going over well, too. And everyone likes The Sign of the Beaver, too. The Colonial Life book? eh.

The kids are kind of weary of endless 3D maps and other papercraft stuff, so we didn't do anything in that department this week. I made a few pages myself for them to work on while I do the readings...nothing particularly intellectually rigorous, but it lets them be creative and, I hope, kind of makes some of the ideas we're reading about stick in their heads a bit. Here's one about Benjamin Franklin. The top reads, "Imagine you are a colonial inventor like Benjamin Franklin. Design an invention to make life easier for your fellow colonists":


Science: We're doing science one day a week, which is working well. I have a hard time getting my stuff together for science, so only needing to get organized once a week is good for me. Our usual format is to read about an element in Elements with Style, read some of How to Think Like a Scientist, do an experiment, then do some of the Ellen McHenry The Elements stuff--usually some reading, an activity, a game or two. This week's experiment was the fabulously simple melting ice cubes on the stove. All three states of matter, right before our eyes!

This all reminds me that tomorrow is supposed to be science day. The long weekend threw me off. Hmm....I better go do some planning!