Here is a quick update on last week's school...

School went well last week. All assignments got done and everyone had a great time. We are off this week. Doctors appointments and traveling. So, we are just cleaning and taking a short break.

Here are some pictures I took last week.

We made three corner hats

Charles working on his spelling.

Catlyn and Charles playing a game to help Colin with his sight words.

Play a Right Start solitaire game.

Charles working on a solitaire game.

Catlyn learning to cross stitch for history. It sparked a new passion.

Catlyn made this for one of her Grandmas for Valentines day.

Catlyn made this in just a couple hours.

Afghan I finished this week for our living room.

Two weeks in one...

I never got around to doing a weekly report last week. So, I guess I will make this one for both this week and last. We had a lot of fun. Lots of learning going on!:)

History- Last week and this week we have been learning about Benjamin Franklin and the 13 Colonies. Books we read are Ben and Me, Courage of Sarah Noble, a couple of Chapters from This Country of Ours, and Charles read Ben Franklin and the Magic Squares like 5 times. We watch 1 video on Ben Franklin from the library and another from Liberty Kids.

We did some mapwork on the 13 Colonies.

We learned about Southern Plantations in the southern colonies.

We made a picture of Roger Williams

We made Indian belts.Geography- Our geography tied into our History this week. We were learning about Pennsylvania. We found it on the map, learned about the state tree, bird, flag, and when it became as state. We also learned about chocolate and groundhogs!:) We took a tour of Hershey's online and they were just drooling over all the chocolate. They were so excited when I pulled a chocolate bar to share out of the cabinet!:)
Art- We started our study of American Artists. We are using the book Great American Artists for Kids. Our first artist is John Singleton Copley. He was famous for his Narrative paintings. So, the kids each drew a Narrative Drama of a dramatic event.

Catlyn's is of 911.

Charles's is of a shark attack. Those are sharks jumping out of the water.

Colin is of a firefighter.

Here are some pics of the rest of our week. All the kids are doing great in all of their subjects. Also, Catlyn started Tom Sawyer.

This is Colin handwriting. Both boys are getting extra practice writing numbers.
Working hard on some math.
One of Charles's math pages.
Working on a math puzzle.
Working hard on something.
Colin working on spelling.

Math, why does it always have to be math?

We have always had math woes at our house. We are still trying to find the perfect match. I have decided to take a little from a couple different programs.

What we have been trying out at our house has changed a little since my post on how we were doing living math.

We start our day with some mental math. I am trying to get the boys to do some of their calculations in their heads. We do this together so there is a little competition. I have been using some of the mental math exercises in MEP Yr. 1 and 2 plus some of First Lesson in Arithmetic.

With MEP Charles and Colin are working at their own levels with me each day. Then they work on some drill work 2 days a week with worksheets from Math U See's website for a little extra practice. I have noticed, especially with Charles, that the boys need constant review in some areas. So, doing drill work a couple days a week doesn't kill them and keeps those areas fresh.

We also mix in living books and Right Start games where they fit in with our lessons. Charles is also using Timez Attack a couple days a week to help memorized multiplication facts. He enjoys this and thinks he is just playing games. Also, we have a math game for the boys' Nintendo DS that actually is a good challenge for them.

This mixture seems to be working. We have been doing this since the first of the year. Seems to be working for now. I am keeping my fingers crossed.

In a great routine...

We have fallen into a great routine around here. Things are going so smoothly! All subjects are clicking. I am happy. Here is a look at how we are working our days now.

7:00 I get up and check email and plan my Sparkpeople.com meal plan and workout for the day(I should do this every Monday for the whole week but my moods change everyday so it is to hard for me to stick to a long term plan with food.)
7:15-7:30 Kiddos wake up and eat breakfast.
7:30-8:00 Kids get dressed, take vitamins, and brush teeth
8:00 We all do History and Geography together. This usually takes about an hour to a hour and a half.
9:30 I walk/run on treadmill (doing Couch to 5K) and all kids lay on my bed for free reading time.
10:00-11:30 Kids work on individual work or work done with me.
11:30 Lunch while I read Music History or we listen to Music History CD.
12:00 Finish up any left over work
12:30 I do my cardio or strength training for the day. I am currently working out with Power 90 DVDs. Kids have free play during this time.
1:00-When I am done working out all 3 kids and I deep clean one room of the house. One room a day gets the whole house deep cleaned each week. This usually only take 15-20 minutes.
When room is done I shower and dress.
Then our afternoon activities start. Catlyn dance, boys play outside, we go to park day one day, library, play dates, and work on Cub Scout projects....
I start making dinner at 5 or 5:30 depending on what I make.
6:00 Harper walks through the door and we eat dinner.
Tuesdays and Thursdays after dinner Harper does science with the kids around 7:30
8:00 Kids get ready for bed
Lights out at 8:30 for boys and 9:00 for Catlyn.

I think there are two things that have really aided us in our success. One is my attitude. Working out and eating right has really changed my outlook and has given me so much energy to get everything done. Two is that there is no electronics during the week except for 30 minutes a day. This has to be spent on one electronic device and used all at one time! Plus, that 30 minutes will be taken away with bad attitudes during school or chores.

Oh, I guess there is three things! Planning ahead for school and menus! I start this for the next week on Friday afternoon(our one day with no kid activities). Through out the weekend I print and file all papers and gather all supplies. Make my menu plans and library lists. I run ALL my errands on the weekend with Harper. We call it our sad but fun little dates!:) So, at 8:00 Monday morning I am ready to go!:) Also, doctors and dental appoints are almost always scheduled for Friday afternoon so they do not interrupt school, workouts, or chores!:)

Weekly Report

Wow, another week has flown by. We didn't get to everything this week but we did get to most of it. Which is better than nothing!:)

So, here is our weekly report.

History-We finished week 15 of Guest Hallow American History 1. This was our last week to study the pilgrims. The kids had a great time learning about the Pilgrims. Next week we move on to Ben Franklin and the 13 colonies. This should be a blast! Here are a couple pictures of some of our history lessons this week.

Colin doing some copywork

Charles' diorama of the Pilgrim's Keeping Room

One of Catlyn's Pilgrim puppets
Charles working on his Hornbook.
The inside of the Mayflower.
They got to choose what they would take with them on the Mayflower.
Colin's drawing of the Mayflower.
Charles' Stew of Good Manners.
Charles's Squanto(Squanto is hold an ear of corn, it isn't what it looks like!) :)
Catlyn's Pilgrim House.
Colin's

Geography-We started Cantering the Country this week. Our first state was Delaware since it was the first state. The kids did some mapwork, they learned about the flag, state flower, state bird, and state motto. They did some notebooking pages also. Our geography term for this week was bay.

Music History-We started learning about Mozart. We only got to the Music Master CD on Mozart. We listened to the first 13 tracks. We will continue on with him next week.

Math:
Catlyn-is still working her way through Life of Fred Fractions and Teaching Textbooks. She is still loving Fred and not loving TT!:) But she is learning and that is what counts!
Charles-did some review on adding and subtraction this week. He also did some greater than and less than lessons. Plus, he is learning his roman numerals 1-10. He has also started learning about measurements. Here are some shots of Charles in action.
Colin-Colin is working on greater than and less than, solving for the missing number, and ordinal numbers.

Grammar:
Catlyn- worked on editing
Charles-prepositional phrases and diagraming
Colin-narration, memorized a poem, and reviewed different kinds of sentences.

Literature:
Catlyn started her new literature program this week. She is reading Rikki Tikki Tavi and she also learned about plot and how to rewrite something in your own words.

Spelling-All is going great with spelling for all kids. We have purchased the cheap account on BigIQkids.com for each kids. With this account they get to have access to all the games and they get to have their own BigIQBuddy. They are so happy with this new program. They fight over who gets to do spelling first and they are all getting 100s on their tests! Got to LOVE it!

Phonics:
Colin-Colin did 5 pages of ETC and read 5 I See Sam books to me. He is doing great but still needs a lot of practice. I think it might be time to try Ordinary Parents guide to Reading again. I am hoping he likes it better this time.

Other than those subjects each kid read a free reading book each day , copywork, and handwriting.

My goals for next week are to add in art, Latin, and science for all kids. Plus, writing for Charles. We will see how it goes.

Our Weekly Report

We are wrapping up our week a little early this week. All three kiddos have dental appointments tomorrow morning. So, I am not thinking I will get them to do much school after that!:)

All I can say about this week is that it was AWESOME. We all had a great time and more than once I heard "Wow, school is kind of fun!"

History
We started our new American History program this week. We are using Guest Hollow American History. The kids are loving this. We started with the Pilgrims which is week 14 of the curriculum. This pretty much picked up where we left off with Tapestry of Grace.

This week we read about the Pilgrims, their trip on the Mayflower, William Bradford, and Squanto. We read the books Three Young Pilgrims, Sarah Morton's Day, Squanto and the First Thanksgiving, and from Treasury of Virtues Little Hero of Holland and The Pilgrims and the First Thanksgiving. The kids watched a dvd I got from the library that is a History Channel production called the Untold Story of the Mayflower.

This is the first time ever that I have heard my children talk about history outside of school. One day Colin said "As soon as school is over I am going to play Pilgrims!!" They were having so much fun having big adventures with the Pilgrims. They used one of their new Playmobil pirate ships as the Mayflower and Star Wars Legos guys as the pilgrims. At one point R2D2 was the Captian of the Mayflower and the Pilgrims had Han Solo in storage!:)

We also did Copywork from Draw Write Now and learned to draw Pilgrims and a windmill from Holland.

Math
Math was another subject that was a big hit.

Catlyn started Life of Fred Fractions. She LOVES it. She has been telling everyone about her new math. She even was talking about it to her friends at dance. I had a couple of her friends' moms call me to find out more about this wonderful math program!!:)

The boys both started MEP for math. Everyday they were actually fighting over who go to do math first!!:)

We started Colin out in Year 1. The first 10-15 lessons are very easy for him but I didn't want him to miss anything. So, we doubled and tripled up on lessons. We covered basic addition, subtraction, odd and even numbers, and greater than and less than.

We started Charles out in Year 2. The first couple of lesson were easy but they got harder as we went. It is not that he hasn't covered this material before but the way it is taught makes him have to think of math in a different way. It is not just a list of problems to solve. He has to figure out the puzzles to get the right answers.

Both boys think of this math as fun sheets but really they are very logic and critical thinking intense. They are having to think which I love! They get to color, use manipulatives, cut and paste,..... I hope that they continue to love it!:)

Spelling
Yet another hit! We start BigIQKids.com for spelling this week. I was just going to have the boys use this program but have decided to go ahead and let Catlyn play too. :) The kids' favorite feature is that they get to earn tokens to play games after each lesson. They thought this was awesome. My favorite thing? The kids had all of their words memorized by the second day. They all scored 100 on the test!!!:) I am ordering the full version tomorrow!:)

The rest of our week just consisted of handwriting, phonics, copywork, and reading.

Next week (hopefully) Catlyn will be starting Lighting Literature 7 and Jump in Writing. I am just waiting for these to arrive. We all will be starting Cantering the Country for US Geography. Plus, I will be adding grammar back into their days and probably Prima Latina with the boys.

So, next week will be even more exciting!:)

Success!

First day back from winter break was a SUCCESS! Oh my, what a great time. The kids were all in good moods. Which I didn't think was going to happen because Harper took the boys camping this past weekend and they were TIRED last night.

Catlyn absolutely LOVED her new math. She is in love with a boy named Fred!:) I just assigned her the first lesson and she begged to do the next. I even heard her on the phone with her friend telling her all about her new math!:)

Charles loved BigIQkids.com's spelling. He had a blast and I had to make him stop doing his spelling. He was doing his words over and over again to get game points. He has his words already memorized!

Colin also enjoyed his spelling time on BigIQkids but was having some trouble playing the games. He did like his new math. His lessons today in MEP year 1 were all review and he did mention that it was baby math but he liked it. We will see how he likes it after get through the next couple of lessons and they start getting harder.

All kids liked our new history. We read 3 books and did some copywork and drawing. The kids colored the cover of their new notebooks and Catlyn and Charles took turns reading out loud.

But I think their most favorite part of today was free reading time. After history this morning I annouced it was free reading time. That they all get to lay on my bed and read while I walk on the treadmill. Charles loved the Hank the Cowdog book I picked out for him. Catlyn continued with her Twilight book and Colin had a stack of his I See Sam readers to read. They all thought this was fun. It was my sneaky way of getting in my walking while they do something productive!:)

So, 2010 had a great start at the Carr house!:)

What I have been researching...

On my quest for the perfect way to teach my boys math has led me to find MEP (Mathematics Enhancement Programme). This is a program from Britain. I am loving what I see. We are going to be giving this program a try starting next week with both Charles and Colin. Charles will be doing Year 2 and Colin Year 1. From everything I have read MEP is almost 2 years ahead of most US math programs. I truly do not know if this is true. But looking at both years lesson books these are the best fit for my boys. For the first 30 lesson or so we will be doubling and tripling lessons because these will both be mostly review.

What I like most about this program is that we can still have a very relaxed approach to math. There is a lot of visual aids, manipulatives, and one on one time with mom. There are not pages and pages of drill work or problems to solve. With this program there is a lot of review which I have notice my kiddos need.

I am very excited to try this program out next week. Plus, did I mention the best part?? It is free!!:)

Here is an awesome post about what MEP is and how to use it. There is also a wonderful Yahoo group.

So, the plan is to work through years 1 and 2 of MEP and continue having a blast with our Right Start games.