Weekly Roundup - Weeks 1 and 2

We finished our second week of homeschooling yesterday, and it has been a lot of fun and a lot of work!  I have spent countless hours planning and going over everything, and so far the curriculum choices I have made have worked out well.  I asked the boys about their favorite subject and they both said history.  We are using Story of the World 1: Ancient Times as our spine for history.  When I asked them about their least favorite, they both said they like everything!  Here is a summary of what we have done so far:

Math: (Singapore Standards) - Isaac has been working on place value to the hundreds place, grouping objects by hundreds, tens, and ones, and adding and subtracting within 20.  He has also used money to represent numbers within 1000.  Ethan started with reviewing numbers 0 to 10, understanding "more" and "less" and arranging numbers in order/finding missing numbers.  He just finished the unit on number bonds, which was a new concept to me.  I can really see how thinking about math in this way makes mental math so much easier!  Both of the boys have made perfect scores on their math tests so far!

Spelling: (Rod & Staff) - We are using R&S 2 for spelling.  The word lists are extremely easy for Isaac, but I've read that the power in the R&S program comes not from the lists but from the activities that the children do with the words.  It is a phonics-based spelling program and since I am not doing formal phonics with Isaac this year I thought this would be a good program to use.  I'm just not sure if I should accelerate him a grade level or just go with it as is.

Language Arts: Isaac is using Primary Language Lessons and has done really well so far with this program.  His memory amazes me.  He has had no trouble with the two poems he has memorized.  I was a little surprised when, after only reading the poem to him twice (once Monday and once Tuesday, along with reading it on his own once each day), he was able to recite it from memory on Wednesday.  We are using Grammarland for grammar, but I have to admit this is the one thing I have let slip in these first 2 weeks.  I'm not concerned about it because it is a relatively short book and we are on chapter 7.  We have covered nouns, pronouns, articles, and adjectives.  Ethan is on lesson 44 in his reading program (A Beka Reading 1).  We skipped to where his ability level was and started there.  We are doing a lot of review of dipthongs and learning some new ones.  He loves the A Beka readers and begs to read them.  I don't think he feels the same way about the Handbook for Reading though.

Literature: Isaac has finished The Treasure, The Giving Tree,  and The Chalk Box Kid.  He is currently reading Farmer Boy by Laura Ingalls Wilder.
Ethan quickly read through the beginning readers we had at home, which are mostly Dr. Seuss books.  I am going to the library today to pick up a couple more books for him to read next week. 

History: As I said before, both boys have said that history is their favorite subject.  The first week we studied archaeology.  We read out of Story of the World and The Usborne Encyclopedia of Ancient History.  Isaac also read the book Digging Up History.  This week we focused on nomads and the first farmers, and we learned about the Fertile Crescent and why people started settling there.  The boys got a kick out of thinking of living in that time and going hunting for lizards to make stew.  Another book Isaac enjoyed was   It's Disgusting and We Ate It.  We did mapwork, coloring the Tigris and Euphrates rivers and the Fertile Crescent, as well as identifying the cities of Jericho and Catal Hayuk.    We read The First Dog and colored a picture of a farmer using a shaduf.  The boys went outside and tried to make a shelter from materials they could gather, but they had a hard time with that, so we watched a video from BBC about a man creating a shelter for a group in the woods.  It was very interesting to watch!

Cave Paintings

Science: This week in science we were studying the states of matter.  We classified different substances as solid, liquid, or gas.  We did a few investigations including timing how long it took the scent of air freshener to get from one side of the room to another and watching my Scentsy go from solid to liquid to being able to smell it as a gas.  Then we melted butter so show that temperature can cause a solid to change to a liquid and put an ice cube in a pot on the stove and watched it change from solid to liquid to gas.  I also placed a glass with ice cubes in it to the side so we could see that the cold glass caused the water vapor in the air to condense and droplets of water could be seen on the outside of the glass.  The boys then made booklets about the states of matter.

Foreign Language: We have learned several new Latin words in the last 2 weeks, and the boys think Song School Latin is a lot of fun!  We listen to our CD and sing the songs.  Isaac does the workbook and Ethan colors coloring pages to go along with the chapter we are on.  We have also watched a couple of episodes of Salsa Spanish.  I'm interested to see how much they pick up from watching those.

Hopefully next week I will be able to post pictures and my roundup won't be so wordy!