What Charlotte is Reading These Days

Charlotte has just turned 7.

This is the level/ability and where she is in her reading:

She is almost finished with this book, which will bring us to the end of the Grade 1 course particularly soon, and well before the end of the year - so that we'll actually have a couple of months free.  We'll probably detour a little after that before jumping to the Grade 2 materials, but I dunno, we'll see what she thinks when we get there, and what she might want to do.

Grade 1 Rod and Staff Reading and Phonics Unit 5

When you make school work a form of currency, you can bet that you are going to finish sooner rather than later.  In our case Charlotte finished quite a bit sooner - it helps when you have special chocolate available in your 'shop' for your child to earn money and purchase.

Today Charlotte { 6y9m } will begin the Grade 1, Unit 5 of the Rod and Staff Reading and Phonics.

Yep, they consider this to be Grade 1 work....  I am quite impressed by their ambition, but I'm pretty confident that Charlotte will be able to do the work just fine.  It is a step up from the previous book but now we'll be reading full on stories each and every day.

The first phonics lesson for unit 5.  It actually goes over to a second double page set up as well.  So 4 pages are devoted to some sort of phonics each day.

And the reading workbook - which is just 2 pages for each lesson and compliments the reading text.

And that brings us to only 60 more days before Grade 1 will be entirely done and dusted in the reading and phonics departments.

These early years just go by so quickly.

Charlotte Started a New Book

Today Charlotte started reading a new book.

I love how they separate the syllables for easy sounding.

and she also started a new lapbook on Penguins.

Before we got to the cloze there was a passage that I read to her.

Week 35

Another week down my friends.  I've also made the decision to finish the school year at the end of the month.  The girls have worked hard this year, and made some awesome gains academically, so I'd like to give them a full month off { 4 weeks } before we begin Dec 31st for the new year.

A recent sample of Chloe's History.  From The Mystery of History.

One of the books that Hannah is currently reading; reading very well I might add too.

A sample Maths lesson from Hannah.

Phebe and Hannah are now up to lesson 143 for their grade 2 book.  Chloe is up to 151 for her grade 3 book.  Their books have 170 lessons each.  We won't get to EVERY lesson, but they'll have had a pretty good go at most of them by the end of the month.

Phebe has started a new reading book.

Chloe started reading this:

Let's talk Science.  We are now finished in the Science department. No more bookwork required.  No more supplemental reading either.

This was an EXCELLENT book to read this year.  I am really looking forward to the next one in the series when school resumes.

Chloe also worked on another essay this week.  Then we had a go at making a craft to go with it.  I thought I'd keep all that separate for show and tell on a different post though.  Keep an eye out for our Pig Essay and Craft.  :o)

In the mean time here's a piece of clipart:

What We're Doing On Break

What do little girls do when they are on a school break?

Well, I found these two under the table in the school room reading.

The 4 year old did some colouring in her own spare time.

Mummy attempted to do a little video about Grade 2 math, but I got interrupted by 3 different children, so I gave up.

Mummy also worked on her spelling rule cards.  Today I got to number 44 - and there are still quite a few more that I want to add.  I am currently building it with an Indian theme, but will probably do a couple of versions when it's done, you know, with different themes.  Another thought is: should I number the cards or not?  I am currently numbering them.  When I finally get around to sharing them, they'll be free.

Week 30

We are now 3/4 of the way through the school year.  Only another 10 weeks to go.  Yay~!!  Another year almost come and gone.  I never thought that I'd get this far, in all honesty.  So happy to have been able to experience these years with the girls.  

It's been a little while since I did one of my weekly updates, so I thought it would be nice to get an overall view of where we are these days.  :o)

English:  Well, I decided to start driving all over the country side with a few other things.  Namely the McGuffey readers for copy work, and McGuffey Spelling for penmanship { cursive }.  We still occasionally dropped back in with the Christian Light Education light units.  I think we even had the odd Rod and Staff moment or two as well.

Spelling:  The two older girls continued on with Rod and Staff spelling.  Finishing up with lesson 26 this week.

Phonics:  We've managed to get quite a few worksheets done from the last book on phonics that I did a show and tell on recently.

Reading:  Chloe has been reading a heap of books.  I'm not overly confident in her comprehension skills, but at least she's giving it all a thorough try.  

Phebe is also doing pretty good with her reading.

Hannah, although reading, seems to derive much more pleasure from the maths department.

Maths:  This was the year that poor Chloe got multiplication and division.  Wow, is there a LOT of that~!  She has her days.  Some days go particularly well, whereas other days we see a struggle.   She's just about to officially hit her 8x tables - she was working on lesson 120 today.  The end is in sight though, so that is nice.  Each day when she opens her book she can see how far she is into the text - and how little is left to finish.  As a side note - that Australian Maths BLM that I also threw in - well, she loves it.  So that is a nice little bonus.  :o)

Phebe is doing great with her grade 2 maths.  Her last lesson was 77.  She's recently learnt to carry. Clocks are now to the 15 mins. She's also looking forward to jumping to grade 3 in the coming year.

Hannah is hot on Phebe's heels in the maths department.  She's up to lesson 60.  So there's only a handful of lessons separating them. A funny thing Hannah asked me a couple of weeks ago was { paraphrased because I can't remember the exact words }:  Can I just skip Grade 3 and start Grade 4 maths with Chloe next year? Ummm, nooo.  You have to do Grade 3, sorry.   I just asked Hannah what was the best thing in school this week, her reply: Maths.  ha ha ha ha.  I think we are on a winner there.

History:  Well, I started reading from MOH III, but have somehow ended up doing most of our reading from George Washington's World instead.  Both books are excellent.  I'm just running out of time though.

Science:  Chloe is currently working from Primary Science { BLM }. I've set them up as little packets / projects for her to work from. We did try her out with doing Rod and Staff science 3 on her own, but it didn't work out as well as I had hoped.  There is a bit of reading to do with questions to answer, and I figure that she's just not that ready - just yet.   So I've gone back to reading it as a family read aloud on Tuesdays and Thursdays.   We are now up to Unit 6, and there's only 7 units in the book, so the end is in sight with that as well.

Phebe and Hannah LOVE their current science work.  It's so easy. They've just finished another module.  It has a slow learning process { as in pretty much one concept at a time }, or rather a lack of depth, but they love it, so I don't mind. At least they are still doing science, and it isn't taxing me one single iota.

Latin:  How many false starts do you think we need?  ha ha ha ha. We've managed to get to lesson 2 in our new books.  It's just not a priority with us. Well, at this point in time at least.  To help combat the relaxed view I decided to give the girls their own workbooks { Latina Christiana I }.  So we've jumped from Prima Latina to that now.

Perhaps I also over program things as well.  I like to keep a lot of resources available.  

The girls still do a little Art, but ummm, not really share worthy.  I guess it's all about experimentation.  :o)

Yep, Chloe has taken to adding planes in all her pictures lately.

We'll be taking the next two weeks off school.  A nice little break with our 6 weeks on, 2 weeks off thing.

I was thinking to myself - WHAT - am I going to do for the next two weeks?  Then I remembered that I had a spelling rule project that I started and well, I may very well end up finally getting around to finishing it.  :o)

I also had a little second guess of myself this week, that may or may not have involved a little panic attack about my History selection for next year.  So, long story short, I spent a little time perusing some of my books in the line up - and decided that we'll probably use SOTW IV as the main spine { OR a Grade 4 Social Studies text by Christian Light Education that looks awesome all by itself }, but heavily accented with a LOT of Australian History thrown in.  I really want to spend a fair bit of time on Australian History - and I have a number of good books to do that, so we're actually all good to go.  My panic was that I didn't have enough main core books, but I can relax now, as it turns out I've got plenty.  Probably too much. Which leads me to my next problem, what to whittle out.  I've already whittled out the high school text that looks pretty inviting.   

I also have to confess that I went and bought some school stuff. Yep, just after I told you all how awesome I was at not spending.  I managed to get 6 weeks of spend free bliss, and then I fell.  Oh the shame of it all.  In all good defense, I only did it because it was a good deal.  

I got a brand NEW Dead Famous on Boudica for $3.00.  How could I pass that up?

I also scored 2 Doodle Design for $1.97 each.  Another handy bargain.  Perhaps our Art lessons might get some better focus and direction with those.  Chloe can't wait to actually start them.  :o)

Total spending spree - less than $ 7.00

And finally - if you have a kindergartner in your home { and other children that ooooh and ahhh over the littles projects, feel free to add them in }.

{ A Calendar Activity }

Take an A3 coloured piece of cardstock as the base, add a slightly cut down A4 - landscape blank numbers calendar page.  Have the children freestyle a cut out apple, and fill in all those missing numbers for the month of September.

I actually picked up this FREE printable { monthly calendars number practice } HERE.

Yeah, so there you go.  A quick little update.  Am I the only one to second guess, and have little panic attacks over curriculum choices?

Thanks for visiting.

Strawberry Themed Reading Logs { freebie }

One of my goals for next year is to make sure that the girls can keep reading logs.  We've been particularly slack on doing it in the past.  Very slack.  So recently I put together a set of reading logs, in a strawberry theme, non the less, to encourage the girls to start using them regularly.  So far, so good.

I'd also like to share them with you, my readers.

Just click on any picture to go and pick them up.

Thanks for visiting.

Current Reader for Chloe {8}

Chloe has just recently finished reading these two books:

Grade 2 reading.

We've been reading them at a much faster pace than would otherwise be expected.

Now she is currently reading:

Quite a little step up in how many words appear on a page.

Grade 3 reading.

Includes poems throughout as well.

What are your children reading?

Week 11

This week we did a LOT on life cycles.  We finished up butterflies, did some work on frogs, and a little work on chicks too.

 We also read this lovely book with our little laminated pictures { from kidzclub.com }

until he got so big.....

He went off to make a cocoon called a chrysalis.....

with which the caterpillar used "metamorphosis" to turn into a butterfly.

I printed out little books for the girls on frogs and we spent about an hour in the morning working on those.

I think overall that the girls are starting to get tired of coloring in.  They've done so much of it. 

Phebe who has just very recently turned 6 read this and a few other pages to me this morning.  

Music continues to be fun for them though. :o)