Lots of review this week. We tried some creative reading and handwriting ideas, and for grammar, we used Goldilocks felt pieces to introduce the adverb.
But before we get to that…
Pencil sharpening is practical life work, but I thought I’d sneak it in our Language post since it deals with writing. I found little sharpen please / ready to write printables online, attached them to jars and made homes for our pencils that were in much need of sharpening.
Am I silly to be excited about that? Probably. But whatever — its cute.
We got a new pencil sharpener, so we had a lesson on using it and all that entails on our first day back. I intentionally do not sharpen pencils now because they enjoy using it so much.
All of the kids reviewed the red Waseca Reading program drawers. Michael’s the only one who did his handwriting work pages. I’m going to encourage the girls to try theirs this week. We’ll see what gentle nudging accomplishes. Maybe if I tell them they can assemble the pages into a book when they finish. They’re suckers for assembling books — especially if there’s a chance to illustrate. 😉
Mary spent a good couple hours this past week on Language Works. She’s mainly reviewing vowel sounds with them — long i, short i.
Gosh I have learned so much about teaching reading over the past several years. I know more reading rules than I knew even existed prior to homeschooling.
Josie practiced reading with the Waseca Readers. Just the red version. I will continue to encourage more reading practice with them as the month progresses. They’re cute and involve sequencing the story.
Mary’s been reading a little pirate chapter book from Usborne before bed aloud to Brian. It’s slow progress, but it’s practice that she’s happy to do which is wonderful.
I need to get Michael doing the same. He’s really not far off from reading well. He’s so bright, so silly, and has SO MUCH ENERGY.
Mike did some animal matching work. That was definitely one and done. A little too easy.
We introduced adverb this week. Mary’s doing great with grammar work. Mike and Josie are more observing for now. If we really drilled it, they’d be doing better with it, but it’s not a priority for either of them right now.
Michael really enjoys retelling stories with props, so we have a Goldilocks work out. We used our grammar shapes to tell the story.
The kids wrote about food. That was fun. I loved seeing the combos the kids came up with. Tacos and french fries? Yes please. Josie continues to want to repeat this work, so I’ve printed a small stack of these sheets. They’re from a bundle on TPT that I definitely recommend.
I put out scripture cards for tracing work. They’re just verses I printed off that happen to have a Seeds Family Worship song match. Josie and Mary both did some and drew pictures for their verses. What’s fun is when they work at tracing the Bible verse, I play the song that matches.
Doubles as memory work.
Oh and this was fun… I have labels for our materials and Mary cut them out and placed them around the room. Reading practice in disguise. You can have the kids copy these first if wanted for extra handwriting practice.
What’s left? The kids made acrostic poems with their names to go into their work journals. Silly work.
There’s quite a few lessons on our shelves the kids haven’t discovered that I need to present. Hopefully we will get to them this week. I also need to get some better sight word work for Josie — something fun — maybe with an Autumn theme?
If anyone has any ideas pleeease share — thank you.
