Homeschooling Update: February 2014

So, I'm way late on posting the February update and now I can't remember what all we did. I have the lesson plan outline to look back on at least. Here's a brief summary of some of the things we did. 

The first week of Feb. was 2/3-2/7:

• This week's book was Roxaboxen by Alice McLerran. It's a fun book about kids who created their own town. Arabelle and Bo both are so creative and had no trouble coming up with ways to build their own towns with boxes, blocks, little cars, etc. They also used mud, rocks, and sticks outside one afternoon to build a "house".
• We added the letter 'J' this week and continued on with new sight words and phonics games.
• For Social Studies, we talked about our town and key elements of living in a town. We also talked about the essentials of a town. 
• This is a painting Arabelle did of a town. I can't remember what was what, but the green circle was some part of the town and the blue and red were roads, etc. 

The second week of Feb. was 2/10-2/14:

• This week was the week of Valentine's day, so we had a Bible study on love, based on 1 Corinthians 13. Each day we took one of the attributes of love and found a Bible story to match, then discussed  what that attribute meant and how we could show love. 
• Arabelle painted some hearts with watercolors and she gave them out as Valentines. 
• For phonics, we added the short 'u' and made new words with that and she read some of her readers. 
• I wasn't at all pleased with the math curriculum. It was a 1st grade level (that came with the kindergarten stuff?) and was BORING us to death. So, I ordered the Singapore Math Kindergarten book B. She's a bit ahead of it already and is breezing through, but it's much more fun that the boring stuff we had! 
• We did do this activity one morning, mostly for Bo. I drew different colored circles on the paper, then they were supposed to paint matching watercolors in the circles. Arabelle thought it was fun and Bo kind of just ended up painting all over the page. ha! 

• One day we talked about John 3:16 and I asked Arabelle to draw a picture about the verse. I wasn't sure what she would do, but this is what she drew. I was impressed! 

The third week of Feb. was 2/17-2/21:

• The book of the week was Cactus Hotel by Brenda Guiberson. This was a really fun book and we had a lot of fun studying about the desert! 
• We also had several other books about animals found in the desert. Arabelle and Bo both say they never want to go to the desert because of the Gila monster. haha! 
• I really branched out and picked this art for Arabelle to make this week: 

• I colored the rice green with food coloring, then put sugar and food coloring in a ziplock bag and mixed it up for the 'sand'. Arabelle really liked this one! 
• We added the letter 'V' and 'W' this week with phonics. 
• Here's Bo doing a do-a-dot letter find game for the letter 'W'. He sits long enough to listen to the letter lesson (letter sound review and a game where they jump up and down if the word I say starts with the specific letter we're studying) and to do a do-a-dot sheet, then he's gone to play Legos, etc. 

• This week our character trait was being a peacemaker (can you tell they had been fussing a lot!?) and our Bible verse was Proverbs 15:1.

The fourth week was 2/24-2/28:

• Our book this week was about a fog rolling in a New England fishing town (can't remember the title), so we talked about what it's like in a fishing village and they watched a video on Discovery Kids about fog.
• Our letter was 'Z' this week and we continued with the sight word games, reading, etc. 
• Arabelle and Bo made 'fog art'. They both painted an ocean scene with fog, then used some shapes I cut out and made a ship. As I mentioned on an earlier post, Bo's ship experienced a storm. 

Each month keeps flying by! At this rate, it'll be summer soon. :)

One thing we did do this month (and I can't remember what day or even what week it was!), was have Arabelle's reading evaluated by a specialist. She came down to Douglas one day and had her sound out letters, read a list of CVC (consonant vowel consonant) words, read some simple sentences, etc. Our appt. was at 10:30, but they were way behind, so it was almost 12 before she started and the lady was really rushing her. She did well though, but kept reversing her 'b' and 'd' in nearly all the words. Otherwise, she got them all right. Then the lady says that Arabelle has some problems and missed a lot of words. Huh? Anyway, we were rushed out for someone else to come in and I just emailed her about it that night. She said Arabelle missed 10 out of 15 of the CVC words and most of the alphabet. I was really confused until I realized that Arabelle's speech was the issue. Her 'c' and 'k' comes out as a soft 't' still and there must be some other letters that I don't realize.

I ended up doing the same assessment that the teacher did and her reading is fine. I have a consult in for speech therapy, so we should be starting that soon. I guess I just didn't realize? I did know about the 'c' and 'k' coming out like a 't', but it's softer than her 't' sound, so I can just recognize that distinction, I guess.

In regards to the 'b' and 'd' reversal, I printed some lowercase 'b' and 'd' letters and a little bear and dog, then laminated the dog on the 'd' and the bear on the 'b' and we played a couple of different made up games with words containing 'b' and 'd'. After one day, she stopped reversing the letters! I was totally shocked that it was fixed so easily! She read an entire 20+ pg. primer book and did NO letter reversal! So proud of my girl!