School Update

Hi everyone!  It's been quite a while since I posted an update about what the kids are doing in school.  Grab a drink and settle in for a long read :)

The Professor:

Math:
We've covered:

• addition and subtraction of up to 4 places with borrowing and carrying to multiple places.
• measurements (inches, centimeters, liters, quarts, etc) actual and estimates
• rounding to the nearest one, five and ten
• perimeter
• a bit on areas
• temperatures
• we're now on multiplication and division to the power of 5.  We'll finish this before the end of the school year.
• money
• time, dates
• fractions

Spelling:  

We're just about done with the 3rd grade spelling book (we'll finish it before we break).
Fairly typical spelling book covering all the letter sounds, blends, signal e, etc.  We'll be doing plurals, suffixes, prefixes and homonyms before the break.
Honestly the book seems to bore him, so I'm hoping next year's book will hold his attention better and be more of a challenge.

Vocabulary:

We're using a book called 240 Vocabulary Words 3rd grade Kids Need to Know.  We've done synonyms, antonyms, compound words and homophones.  We'll get through irregular plurals (goose/geese) and some rhyming words before we break.  It's a really great book, they also have them for 4-6th grades too.

Grammar:

The 3rd grade book is more in depth into parts of speech, as well as plurals, possessives, contractions, titles, capitalization, prefixes, suffixes, past/future/present tenses, sentence parts (subject, predicate), building more interesting sentences and a bit of creative writing.  We'll finish the book before we break covering alphabetizing to the second letter, dictionary guide words, letter writing, envelope addressing, reading tables of contents, abbreviations, initials, titles,  pronouns, adjectives, syllables and rhyming.

Geography:

So far we've only covered Delaware.  The Professor is putting together a scrapbook of the states (I'll post a few pictures soon) as well as a notebook.  The "plan" is to cover a state every 2 weeks or so.  It took us a while to get into the swing of things what with changes with VB's schedule and changing our schooling around.  We'll cover the states in order of statehood.  We'll cover Pennsylvania and New Jersey before we break.

American History: 

We've covered the Pilgrims trip across the pond in depth, so we delved into the other nationalities that settled over here (Dutch, French, English).  Then we covered a bit about each of the colonies as they became states.  This was a great segue into Geography!  This naturally led into the American Revolution.  We've been on this for about 2 weeks now and we'll probably stay here until we break.  We'll move westward from there :)  As our evening read-aloud we're reading Johnny Tremain.  I read this when I was in school, I have no idea what grade, and really enjoyed it.  He is so far too.

World History:

We started with Creation and are finishing up Unit 2 ending with 1675 BC.  The Rise of Assyrian power, Sumerians, Jacob, Joseph and their move into Egypt.  We'll make our way through Unit 3 before we break and end up in 1275 BC ending with the Exodus.  We have a bunch of supplemental projects that we can work on (and most likely will do most of), I can't wait to post pictures as we do them.  We're also making a notebook of all our projects.

In addition, we'll be adding all the events we cover this year, and years to come, in a timeline notebook. 

Map Studies:

Basic map reading and using a globe.  Pretty basic stuff that The Professor knew most of to begin with.  It's hard to determine what you've already informally taught until you sit down with a book!

Religion: 

We've made out way through the second grade Image of God book.  We've covered Adam and Eve and original sin.  The Tower of Babel, Moses, Noah, the beginning of Jesus' ministry (baptism, temptation, Cana, Centurion's Servant) as well as the Passion.  We've learned how Jesus instituted the Church through Peter and the institution of baptism, reconciliation and the Eucharist as sacraments.  We'll be learning about some of the saints, Holy days and the Rosary before we finish.  Of course we've taken a healthy look at Christmas, Easter, Advent and Lent along the way :)

Science:

We stumbled around a bit the first half of the year.  We did some plants, water, the body and a few other things.  Since then we've found a few things he REALLY likes.

Physics:
My parents picked him up a physics course written on a 2-4th grade level.  Fairly deep stuff written on an understandable level.  It's a great course by real science 4 kids.  We just started delving into it with the intro chapter on "What is Physics?"  It covered the basic laws and the scientific method.  We'll be delving into:

• force
• energy
• work
• potential and kinetic energy
• motion
• atoms and molecules
• electrical energy and charge
• moving electric charges and heat
• magnets and electromagnets 
• light and sound
• conservation of energy

The Way Things Work:
This is a GREAT book!!!!  It's a "visual guide to the world of machines".  It looks at all the every day stuff we use (can openers, scales, cars, door locks, etc), sorts them by the type of action that they use and details how they work.  The Professor can't get enough.  I'm also supplementing with books from the library.  So far we've covered:

• the inclined plane
• the wedge
• locks and keys
• cutting machines
• the can opener
• the zipper
• levers
• scales, bottle openers, excavators, nail clippers
• pianos, parking meters

Next is wheels and axles and hydroelectric turbines :)(Dad, you wouldn't happen to have a spare one, would you ;)

Exploring Creation with Astronomy: 

We've just started this book.  We're working on the intro chapter "what is Astronomy?".  We'll be doing a notebook and doing several projects as we go along as well as creating a lapbook.  We'll be covering all the planets, the asteroid belt, the Kuiper Belt, galaxies and stars and space travel.

We'll be rotating between each of these texts over the next two years or so.  After we finish the physics book, I'm going to introduce Exploring Creation with Anatomy and Physiology (I'm really excited about this one!)

Our current plan is to finish up by the end of July, targeting July 31 roughly.  We'll take the first few weeks of August off and restart with third grade on or about August 23rd.

The next few months look to be fairly busy, when aren't they?!?

The Professor will be starting cub scouts in the fall.  There is an informational meeting on Aug 27th.
Velcro Boy will be starting soccer in mid August with games starting Sept 11th.  The season ends 11/20.
I found swimming lessons for all three of them for the month of July, every Saturday, for less then $100.  Plus we'll get a family membership to the YMCA.  Sign ups are June 27th.
Prof goes to see the allergist on the 9th.
August will see the kids at the dentist, all the kids at the doctor, VB's first day of school on the 17th, The Professor and Velcro Boy's birthday party (hubby too!).
The Professor and Doodlebug starting school. 
And of course soccer and cub scouts.
Busy, busy, busy!

Velcro Boy: 

It's amazing how much progress he's made in so many areas this past year.  We're just about done with the alphabet.  We just did an easy introduction to each letter, the plan is/was to start again and do more in-depth letter related unit studies, crafts, etc, but... {sigh}  He does several worksheets each day (3-4 days per week).  He traces the letter of the week, tracing numbers (he's identifying and counting well too), doing a few dot to dots (letters and numbers) as well as some others with following directions (write an x on this item, etc).  He really likes them.  We practice his words/sounds nearly every day (he has a lot now).  We're constantly modeling for him as well as correcting his speech as we go.  So we're really working with him constantly on it.  He knows his alphabet upper case and most of the lower case.  He can identify his numbers to 10, and can count well to 29.  He stumbles over 30 (twenty-ten), then fine to 40 (thirty-ten).  The eggs we had hanging helped a lot!  We counted them every day.  He knows his colors and some shapes.  I've neglected the shapes for some reason, guess we had other things to focus on :)

Of course, we do Image of God.  He's using workbook pre-school B, we'll use the Kindergarten book starting in fall.  If he's with us when I'm working with Prof, he knows most of the answers to the material.  Needless to say I like to keep him in the room while I work with The Professor.  Even though he's playing, he's still absorbing.

We also rotate days between puzzles, games, scissor practice, play-doh, coloring and various fine motor skills.

Doodlebug: 

Such a sweetie! He just kind of hangs out with us sometimes.  He loves to read and doesn't even let me sit down unless I'm going to read to him.  He sees me anywhere near the couch and he runs for a book!  We've been doing most of our school in the afternoon during his naps, so he's not getting the benefit like he did earlier in the year, but I know that will change with Jake going out to Kindergarten every day.  I'll have him reading before he's 3 ;)

When he is around, he colors or pretends to do a worksheet (I make an extra copy for him).  It's so cute!  He holds the crayon well for a 2 year-old (and does quite a decent job brushing his teeth too).  Like The Professor at his age, he likes to put things together, "help" me around the house (Velcro Boy did/does too), and soak in everything he sees.  He also loves to climb and is constantly sending me running.

That's about it (IT?!?)  I'm starting to work on material for next year, so I'll let you know what I come up with. :)