Learning Notes::Wk 3::2010

This week was horrible for John's belly, it hurt so bad that he actually threw up for the first time in a long long time. It did get better as the week went on, thanks to new medicine and a change in meds. School was pretty much on the back burner, somewhat because John just hurt so much, but also because he had the opportunity to play with friends, that doesn't happen nearly enough, and Mark had his first on-call this week, which is going to happen more frequently but we should also adjust to it after a while.

Learning Our Faith:

• We continued to learn the catechism by heart with the 1st through 6th commandments.
  
• We read aloud Abraham and the Angels and The Offering of Isaac from A Child's Garden of Bible Stories.

Language Arts:

• We finished the third Magic Tree House book Mummies in the Morning, continued Stuart Little, Favorite Poems Old and New, Aesop's Fables, Ben Hur (Illustrated Children's Edition) and had a delightful time sharing Mercy Watson Thinks Like a Pig with our friends.
  

Music

• We continued reading Bach by Wheeler and Deucher and listening to Bach's music.
  

Learning Notes::Wk 2::2010

Learning Our Faith:

• Actually started morning devotions again this week. We use Morning Prayer from the Lutheran Service Book and read through the Bible readings for next Sunday and sing one verse of whichever hymn I can manage to carry the tune on by myself. The Word is always efficacious but I sometimes wonder how much John gets from these things and this week was treated to several times when he signed to us about what was being read. We are still working on signing The Lord's Prayers, but it will come.
  
• We continued to learn the catechism by heart. The 6th is finally starting to stick, if he can't get 'commit' right he is sure to get 'adultery' right each time, somehow that figures.
  
• We read aloud The Promised Savior, The Children of Adam and Eve, The Flood, and Abraham's Faith in God from A Child's Garden of Bible Stories.

Learning to Read

• Phonics from Ordinary Parents Guide to Teaching Reading we added M, N, and P.
• Phonemic Awareness - we are reading Rhyming books and while working on the poem Twinkle Twinkle Little Star we are emphasizing the rhyming words.
• Dolch List - John is working on the green list and was able to actually read 11 words this week.
• Teaching Reading with Children's Books - we have been rereading Here Comes the Cat and John has been working on spelling out 'here', 'comes' and 'cat' with his magnetic letters. This week John was delighted to read Hug to me all by himself, this is the second book that he can read all the words (hug, mommy, Bobo) to without help and in contexts other than just the book. The first was Tall, also by Jez Asborough, and it has tall, small and fall, along with mommy and Bobo. Learning that words that are capitalized have to be fingerspelled is nearly as big of a deal as learning a new word, but he is handling it well.
  

Language Arts:

• We did the lessons 3 & 4 in First Language Lessons and John did great with all the new signs and the concepts, well there is plenty of time to work on them. This continued work on the new poem The Caterpillar and also specification of common and proper nouns. Again the hardest part of this was remembering the signs for 'common' and 'proper', this is going to take time for the mommy brain but I might finally understand it learning it at John's pace.
  
• John continues to enjoy doing a page in his Handwriting Without Tears workbook and also likes to trace a few words on lined paper. He is especially proud of these pages and loves to get them to show dad the moment he comes in the house.
  
• Poetry Memorization, we continue with Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, BINGO, and have enjoyed adding The Caterpillar from John's grammar book.
  
• Reading Aloud Literature: Magic Tree House book Mummies in the Morning, continued Stuart Little, and continued reading poems from Favorite Poems Old and New along with other books that John enjoys picking from his shelves. We also started Aesop's Fables this week with the intention of reading 1 or 2 a day until we finish the book. We also started reading the Illustrated Children's Edition of Ben Hur. I actually tried to talk John out of this book once, but nothing doing, he was intent on us reading it to him.
  

Math:

• We are still working on counting and this week worked especially on 1 through 5 with a new game, a Toy Story 3 version of Yahtzee Jr., John loves it and it's one the adults like too.
  

Music

• This week we continued reading Bach by Wheeler and Deucher and listening to Bach's music.
  

Art

• In addition to trying the art test again, we played with thumbprint people together one day and John played with them off and on through the rest of the week.
  

Therapy At Home

• John worked on cutting some things with his scissors, things he was allowed to cut, and he continued to work on his walking. He also likes to play on his little trampoline and see how much stuff he can reach.
  

Learning Notes::Wk1:2010

It took us a while to get over summer and vacation and such and get back to school. Most of the summer we have played with school now and then but come fall it seems like it's time to get down to the business of 1st grade.

Learning Our Faith:

• We continued to learn the catechism by heart. John is pretty good at the 1st through 5th commandments and this week we added the 6th, there were some interesting signs to learn.
• We read aloud First House and First Sin from A Child's Garden of Bible Stories.

Learning to Read - John is perhaps more interested in this than any other subject at this point and can often be found riding around in his chair with a book, looking through the pages and if asked tells us that he wants to learn to read big books like this, lately it's been Canterbury Tales.

• Phonics from Ordinary Parents Guide to Teaching Reading we added K and L. Vowel recognition continues to be a struggle but he is getting better every time.
• Phonemic Awareness - we are reading Rhyming books and while working on the poem Twinkle Twinkle Little Star we are emphasizing the rhyming words.
• Dolch List - John is working on the green list and was able to actually read 7 words this week.
• Teaching Reading with Children's Books - we have been rereading Here Comes the Cat and John has been working on spelling out 'here', 'comes' and 'cat' with his magnetic letters. John has also enjoyed Fox on the Box and I Want a Pet. We've repeated these enough though that we were both ready to see them go back to the library and as he progresses in Phonics I'm guessing that the importance of this aspect of his reading education will decrease.

Language Arts:

• We did the first 2 lessons in First Language Lessons and John did great with all the new signs and the concepts, well there is plenty of time to work on them.
• John continues to enjoy doing a page in his Handwriting Without Tears workbook. Writing is a huge challenge for him, but he continues to try and he loves doing it.
• John is working on memorizing poems, he has Twinkle Twinkle Little Star pretty much down and he is getting better with BINGO.
  
• Reading aloud is perhaps the biggest part of our school day and the part that all of us enjoy the most. This week we finished the third Magic Tree House book Knights at Dawn, started Stuart Little, and continued reading poems from Favorite Poems Old and New

Math:

• I want to use Singapore Math 1st Grade and we will get there, but I realized that John has a problem with the concept of counting. This is frustrating because I have counted to him over and over through the years because I love math, then it dawned on me that I have counted to him and that he has not been counting. So right now we are working very hard on the concept of counting. This has some challenges as John is currently unable to make the signs for 6, 7 and 8 but by the end of the week he was rock solid on the amounts 1 through 3, with 4 and 5 being better, these are also the signs that he does the best and I think that goes hand in hand, no pun intended.

Music

• John LOVES music, loves it! So we have decided to start with some music appreciation and will eventually move into piano lessons too, but that has difficulties of it's own. This week we started reading Bach by Wheeler and Deucher and listening to Bach's music. John has enjoyed both the story and the music.

Art

• We will eventually move into Drawing With Children for this week John took the introductory art test again. The first time he took it several months back he had no understanding of putting a copy of the drawing in each block, this time the concept is there and a few of them he even got pretty well. We will continue to do the art test from time to time, at least once a week, until he has a little better mastery over it and then dive into this book. He loves to draw and draws for me all the time and his drawing is getting to be more and more understandable so this is something that we are both looking forward to.

Therapy At Home

• This is done all the time, John walks off and on through out the day and everything he does is helping to train and strengthen his fine and gross motor skills. This week we played with playdoh and clothespins intentionally, the rest just comes as a consequence of life.