Letters From the Homefront

If an unclear picture bothers you, I apologize in advance. I definitely never started blogging because I wanted to showcase my perfect picture taking abilities.  Here recently we have started something a little new. We are going to try it out over the next couple of months and see if it works well. You may have read in this post before about our expectation cards. They do work very well, but right now we are working with a little less space and a busy schedule - baseball, summer coming up, and I'm still the only adult here to get all the other non-school things done. So in an effort to streamline each day of school and be able to add in all the summer fun that is coming in a few weeks, we are going to one subject a day. For their expectation cards right now, I printed out a card for each day except Friday. Monday is math, Tuesday is grammar, Wednesday is language/spelling, and Thursday is history. I listed every thing that might apply to them now or in the future, and their jo...

*a little late in posting, but it's better late than never!* Week 6&7 Grammar seems to be showing up everywhere here lately - at least, in the pictures it is! LM (not pictured - at all) is finishing up the review of parts of speech. Many of them she - brace yourself - hasn't had the formal first presentations for. That doesn't mean she doesn't know what they are - she just hasn't gotten every presentation that some of the younger ones have. I want to get to the advanced grammar that she is really ready for, so we are having some fast review lessons so she can get the notes down in her binder and be ready to move on.  Hoss worked on reviewing verbs these last couple of weeks. He has a hard time keeping track of the name of the pos AND what each one does, and being able to tell me both. Example: He can sort the phrase "the little boy sings" in to article, adjective, noun, verb if I give the sentence, but then can't quickly tell me what...

I had some fun with some 'real-life' grammar application a few days ago with one of the munchkins (and no, I don't mean this particular incident :) ) Miss Priss has been working on the noun family - Article, Adjective, Noun - and we played a little game the other day to get some practice seeing them in order, and concretely. I would write a 'secret message' on a slip of paper, fold it, and hand it to her. She had to read it quietly (or get help from a big brother or sister if it was a new word) and go find exactly what I wrote, and bring it back.  Then, she labeled the phrase with our printable grammar symbols.  We did this 8 or 9 times, and I tried to make sure that I reinforced the rules of singular/plural articles indirectly throughout our 'game', sometimes giving her nouns that I knew we only had one of in the house. I also was specific in the adjective, such as: RED plate, SMALL brush, PURPLE binder. (Please ignore ...

That pretty much says it all.......

I haven't taken as many pictures as I'd like the last couple of weeks, but here are a few that I managed to get during our work time.  Bug was intrigued by cleaning the brown stair one day, and decided she would clean each piece while putting it together.  She enjoyed it a little more than I expected. Here she is, checking her work a final time before putting it away. This is the history that LM is divulging herself in lately. I had the CD's, but they weren't captivating enough for our children for some reason. The books, though, are LM's current favorites to read. As of right now, she's made it through this one entirely, and is working on Volume 1 (kind of taking a step backwards, I guess :) ). Hoss is even enjoying reading more than he used to, which is good to see. He does still have a 'shut down' mode, however. When he *shuts down* he can read the words, have no comprehension whatsoever, and quickly gets frustrated. I have ...

I was browsing through my pictures and realized I have a few that were taken with the intent of a school days post, and just never shared. So I thought I would pull some together, and shove them all in the same post. This is just a smorgasbord of things we have done over the last month or so :) Letter/Number Matching Buddy Boy really enjoyed this game that Miss Priss created for him! She would go and hide the numbers/letters, and he would have to go 'seek' them and put them back in the right place. Sensorial I ordered a little  something new for our shelves - *reminder to self*- check the dimension size of puzzles when you order them. As small as it is, they have actually really enjoyed working with this geometric shapes puzzle.  Math Miss Priss is working through the subtraction memorization charts, although she isn't moving through them quite as fast as she did with the addition charts. She is beginning to get her hands in a few things all ...