Summer Home School Week 1

We had a great first week of summer home school with both girls motivated and interested in their work.  It was fun to teach them.

Ella and I had two themes last week. In science, we learned about the scientific method and did some experiments following it. For reading, we focused on biographies.  Ella even wrote her own.  We spelled way more than 26 words per day and did daily math.  Ella learned how to make noodles (chocolate ones at that), completed with ease pattern boards using shape blocks (when she first came home she had no patience for this kind of work), and started her time trials with her 51 jumbo piece USA puzzle.  She's already decreased her speed from 15 minutes to completion to 13 minutes to completion.  It's great practice for her visual skills.  After she puts together the puzzle, we study the map and talk about the 50 states.  I tested Ella on the Second 100 Fry Words and she read 82 fluently, so we are going to focus on the other 18 for now.  This will go so much faster than sight words last year since Ella can read now.

Ella's work wall

Homemade chocolate noodles with fresh mango, strawberry and whipped cream

Emilia did really well last week and is close to mastering already two of her new IEP objectives from May 2016: reading 20 Fry First Nouns and matching them to pictures (she can read and match 19).  She has so easily picked up this skill, I am impressed.  Unfortunately over the last school year her special ed teacher, her classroom teacher and I all worked with different sight word lists which has led to some confusion about how many words Emilia can read. Therefore, we have all agreed to use Fry's First 100 (I had used Dolch) from here on out.  Emilia is supposed to read 60 words from the list by the end of her IEP cycle in May 2017.  She has already mastered 20 at home.

With her increasing sight word knowledge, Emilia has also begun reading some very basic leveled books this week.  This is a first and super exciting that I am the one to witness it and help her with it.  We worked on counting and number recognition and I am seeing just enough progress to keep me motivated as a teacher.  Emilia also did the pattern boards and we talked about simple patterns.

Both girls made people from shapes and Emilia really seemed to enjoy it.  And after picking over four flats of local strawberries (which in and of itself was an educational experience) over the course of the week, Emilia and Ella each got a turn to help me make freezer jam.

We also visited the Newport Aquarium where all three kids had great fun.

This week is a shorter school week due to some medical appointments and fun family stuff, so we shall see how much we get done.  It's not supposed to be stressful and we all did a good job keeping it so for our first week.