Timelines & Maps

We discovered this website: On the Trail of Captain John Smith: A Jamestown Adventure when we were talking about Jamestown the other day. You remember that we had been rowing Down, Down the Mountain, right? And Down, Down the Mountain is set in the Blue Ridge Mountains, which cut through Virginia. So, that's why we were talking about early Virginia.

Today we'll put that first English colony, Jamestown, on the timeline we started LAST YEAR! We haven't done anything with the timeline this year. It's been hard to know where to put things in the new house and where we can spread out and work. I also need to get the big map back up on the wall, though Mane does very well with all the small maps we have. She's kind of a map nut. I like them, too. There's something adventurous about a map.

Silly Sentences

I got this idea...and the sentences...from Games for Reading by Peggy Kaye. We have 20 sentence beginnings, middles, and ends. Mix up the stacks & read the silly sentences!



The bear catches fish with milk.


The brown chair ran through the woods to keep warm.

Trying hard to get things done...

Mane invented a new way to read...



And here she is working on that school notebook I keep talking about all the time:


We're trying hard to get a lot done this week before Christmas. Mane started lesson 18 in MUS and will take the test tomorrow.

We read about Jamestown, Virginia, the first English colony and talked a bunch about relations between the early colonists and the Native American people...related that to Vespera's immigration story.

We also started making Silly Sentences...but I'll post about that (with pictures) tomorrow...

More math on-line

I found another website with fun math games called Primary Games. I haven't looked around yet at the other games they have, but Mane played several of the math games. It was fun to watch BECAUSE I saw that she has a firm grasp on basic fractions, basic money, and basic telling time. You know, it's interesting the difference it makes when I can sit back & see what she can do, rather than just be the one constantly passing along information.

Symbolic Butterflies - Photo Edition

Here are the butterflies that we sent to Mexico for the Symbolic Migration:

From Peregrin House

From Peregrin House

From Peregrin House

And the envelope we sent them in:

From Peregrin House

Fishing for Words - Photo Edition

Here are photos from the fishing for words game previously mentioned here:

Fishing For Words

Math Games

Today we played a math game with dice. The game is played with 2 dice. The person whose turn it is rolls the dice & adds the numbers together. The scorekeepers writes down the number. Then it's the next person's turn. When play returns to the first person, their addition answer is added to their previous answer. The first player to reach 100 wins. I used this game to introduce Mane to simple 2-digit addition today. Though I did all the 2-digit addition myself, I showed her how it was done and had her help me with some of the sums.

Then I found a website called Gamequarium that has some simple math games. Mane played games while I got the bread machine working on a gluten free loaf of bread.

After some math games, Mane read 2 more Bob Books to me (level B, set 1, books 6 & 7). I continue to see her fluency improving. I'm so relieved. Later this week I'm going to take out the magnet letters and work with some of the new blends and sight words introduced by the last few Bob Books.

Then Mane played with some magnetic poetry for a while. This seems to be a good way to get her to play around with words and sound out those that she might know. She was happily surprised to find words that she had just become familiar with in the Bob Books today.

I seem to have lost Five in a Row Volume 2. I have no idea where I might have left it, but it isn't anywhere in this house. I could just cry. My plan is to call the library today to see if I might have left it there. Otherwise, I can't think of where it might be. *sniffle*

I took a look at What Your First Grader Needs to Know. We seem pretty well on track, which is nice. It's also nice to have the book around for when I start wondering what we should work on next.

Chickadees

Oh, and I almost forgot, we spent a chunk of yesterday figuring out that the little birds in the back yard are Black-Capped Chickadees! We used Mane's Reader's Digest Birds of North America book and google images. Then we listened to chickadee songs on the internet & figured out how those little birds stay warm in the winter.

The rest of the week...

We spent the rest of the week practicing math facts, playing math war, and reading Bob Books. I also read the first half of The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe to Mane while she worked on puzzles and whatnot. We read it last year, too, but Mane was begging for a second reading. So, that's what we're doing. I'm attempting to establish some afternoon time for reading chapter books aloud.

That's all.

Whippoorwills & Turnips

That's what Mane has been learning about these past few days as we read Down, Down The Mountain. We also reviewed Onomatapoiea and learned about Alliteration. Mane made pages in her notebook for those literary devices, some new vocabulary words, a map of the Blue Ridge Mountains, whippoorwills, and turnips! It's been a busy few days.

We've been working our way through set B of the Bob Books...leaning about "ar," "or," "aw," and "ed." Mane told Mango last week that she didn't used to be able to read, but she has "had a change" in her life, and now she can read. I've been noticing her reading signs and books covers.

And we continue to practice math addition facts. I've been telling Mane 3 part problems out loud (4+4+1=___) and having her figure the answers in her head. She's also been using more of the drills on the Math U See website. I'm looking for some new websites for math games and hoping to get her quick enough with addition facts to move on to subtraction in a week or two.