Day one done, & nobody got hurt. I’d call that a success.
Actually, it wasn’t that bad. Math-U-See is a big hit. The kids love the blocks, and the video. It’s a great help for me, because I really have no clue how to use all these blocks and stuff with math. I was never taught with manipulatives. I was taught using the old flash card memory idea. BigBoy blew threw lesson 3 in Primer, and is well on his way to catching up to thePinkDiva, who started on Primer lesson 9. thePinkDiva loved Decimal Street and “-ty”. Mr. Demme’s explanation of adding the “-ty” to all who live in the Tens house really helped her figure out how to say the double digit numbers. GeekBoy, who started on lesson 18 in Alpha, has had trouble with the concept of subtraction in the past. But after watching the video and playing with the blocks, the concept seems to have finally clicked.
thePinkDiva is still working on the Hooked on Phonics yellow book (aka Kindergarten). We got about halfway through it last year before life overwhelmed our “school” year. So today we just did a quick review of what we had already done. It would seem that the 6 months or so we took off have actually helped her. She had no trouble at all reading the different sections we choose to go over as our review.
BigBoy decided he wants to learn to read. So he is starting the Hooked on Phonics yellow book this year. Yes, both kids are using the same book.Today we went over the alphabet and letter sounds. He only missed a handful of letters, and already knows most of the sounds. So, we’ll see how quickly he catches up to thePinkDiva.
The only hiccup of the day came when I asked GeekBoy to do his Grammar pages about prepositional phrases. See, he was under the mistaken impression that when I said he was done with math that I meant he was done with school. But he changed his tune when he learned that his latest Lego Brickmaster magazine had come in, and that I wouldn’t give it to him ’til he finished both Language and Science. Mean rotten momma. 😉
Science is one of two classes that we are doing together this year (the other being History). We are going to finish the Astronomy course we started last year. We’re using Apologia’s Exploring Creation with Astronomy. Last year year, we got all the way through the solar system to Mercury! Yea, that far. So… today we reviewed what we did last year.
The funny part – it has taken me longer to write up our school day today, then it took to teach 3 children 3 different subjects.