Summer Daze

We are on the verge of hitting summer vacation...and we know it.  I think we are all having just a little extra trouble concentrating on the work at hand because we know we are just a hands breadth away from having our school year complete. Technically the kids will be done with school on Friday, but we are playing Jeopardy next week for a year-long review of each of our subjects.  As we complete a subject we will have the glorious opportunity of removing all traces of that subject from our classroom and transferring our supplies to the attic (where we will hopefully be doing school next year) and reclaiming our dining room.

This week we are learning the basics of Multiplication in Math, which is going fairly well.  As usual, Asher is catching on slightly faster than Savannah, but they are both quickly grasping the concept.  I thought it might be a struggle, but the format the kids are learning it in, really seems to be clicking for them, so I'm very happy and excited that what I thought would be a bump in the road at the end of our year is actually a fairly smooth lesson.

In Social Studies we are finishing up our three week study of communication.  This has been an interesting section, though short, and the kids are enjoying learning about something that they already know a little more about. It's making for a nice slower pace as we close out our school year, and providing us with a lot of good opportunities to discuss people with differing abilities. 

I have been evaluating the kids' Language Arts abilities, and while I am confident they are both on track for completing Second Grade, there is definitely a gap between Asher and Savannah's skill sets.  Asher seems to have a bigger imagination and is more confident in creating his own story, but Savannah has better sentence structure and grammar.  Where Asher often skips words while he is writing because he doesn't want to take the time to spell/sound them out, Savannah has an almost uncanny ability to spell and make long, flowing sentences. When I am proofreading with Asher, he will often read the four or five words he has in the sentence, adding words throughout to form a complete sentence that he never actually wrote down on his draft.  It is something I think we will keep working on throughout the summer.  Savannah, unfortunately, gets to a certain point with her stories and simply ends them because she doesn't want to write more than two pages.  

 Reading is another subject where Asher and Savannah are finding themselves gapped slightly.  Asher is an average reader, there are words he struggles with and other words that he just misreads without looking at them (reading "what" for "when") because he isn't actually focused or paying attention to what he is reading and only thinks he knows what the book is going to say.  He does better reading new books than ones he's familiar with, because new stories he is more likely to pay close attention to, whereas stories he is already very familiar with, he will often just read by rote, filling in the blanks without truly concentrating.  Savannah is turning into an amazing reader.  It's nothing for her to sit down and read an entire chapter book from the Magic Tree House series in her spare time throughout the day.  Our last trip to the library found her reading the chapter books before I was able to get through them during school because she is such an avid reader. My plan for the summer is to have Asher review some of his phonics rules and to revisit Hooked on Phonics (levels 3 and up) to help him gain confidence in his reading ability. My goal is to close the ability gaps between the two before we start Grade Three at the end of the summer.

Science this year has been a lot of fun, and we have more fun coming! We try to do a lot of hands-on outdoorsy science during the summer, and now that we are all more mobile (being quite pregnant last summer made hiking a bit difficult) we will be out and about whenever possible this summer. We have waterfall hiking excursions planned, rainy day science experiment kits, rock exploration, bird watching, and a host of other activities that the kids are anxious to start.  Our pets are also proving a valuable tool in our scientific studies.  Learning about Max, Asher's Red Eared Slider/Painted Turtle has truly been educational. Asher LOVES feeding Max, and I had to admit, watching him eat is definitely interesting.  Max has finally started getting used to our busy family, and is rarely startled by little faces starting at him behind the glass. Butterscotch and Max are both teaching the kids about responsibility.
 

We have had a wonderful year, and while we have a few areas we need to work on, the kids have made amazing progress this year.

Many thanks to all the kids' pen pals (and their parents) for such a great experience! The kids have been enjoying writing everyone. If you haven't received a letter recently, it is coming, we are just taking our time as we end our school year.  Letters will continue throughout the summer, though it will probably take the kids a bit longer to respond. Thank you to everyone for making this such a special activity and learning experience.

Two Weeks Left...And a Few Days

We are gearing down for the end of the year...only two weeks left and three days of review!

Last week we studied several new topics.  In Math, our focus was on measurements, including studying volumes.  Fortunately for the kids, they help Daddy with a lot of projects, so they've had quite a bit of practice measuring various items.  We practiced measuring body parts, things we use daily (pencils, crayons, ect), and random items around the house.

For Grammar and Writing we were working on the writing process, and the kids are learning how to put the stories inside their heads down on paper. This is difficult for Asher, because he thinks so quickly that his writing can't keep up, and when I go over the story with him, he often adds/explains quite a bit more than what he has written down.  Savannah on the other hand, has an image in her head, but doesn't want to write "too much" so if she starts reaching a point where she thinks the story is supposed to be done (usually around 2 pages double spaced), she quickly ends her story.

In Reading last week we learned about synonyms, homonyms, and antonyms and this lesson will carry over into this week. The kids have synonyms and antonyms down fairly well, since it's a favorite car/store game we play.  I think they will do pretty well with the homonyms. They already know a few of them from our spelling lessons, so I'm curious to see which ones they will remember and what ones they might just know from reading books and Hooked on Phonics.

Our focus in Social Studies last week was Communication. The kids are doing a really good job making advertisements and discussing the different forms of communication.  One of their assignments was to design a product and advertise it.  Asher designed a snake cage.  His slogan was "Afraid of Snakes? Git Snake be Gone! It holds one snake." His illustration to go with the ad, was the image of a barred cage with a green snake inside, and a person outside the cage with a BIG smile on his face.  Savannah's advertisement was for "Chocolate Peanut Butter Pretzel Craisins because they're healthy and delicious!"  Her illustration was a group of girls going gaga while eating her CPBPC, which she made from construction paper. The girls have comment bubbles above their heads with exclamations of how great the snack tastes.

In science last week and this next week the kids are learning about Electricity.  Daddy skipped into our class on Monday and taught a short lesson on circuits, and then we tried a few experiments throughout the rest of the week. We used static electricity to "unpepper" the salt, which was a lot of fun. Using a comb, brush, and balloon, we were able to remove pepper that we'd stirred into salt.  The kids really enjoyed this experiment, especially since they got to make their hair wild from static electricity.

As we are ending the school year, writing our pen pals has, unfortunately, slowed down. We will respond to all our accumulated letters before our last day of school and continue to write throughout the summer, though our response time may slow down over the summer. The kids have really been enjoying writing all their friends and family and look forward to the letters in the mail, so thank you to everyone that has been participating in their pen-pal activities.

I am looking forward to the next few weeks as we start looking at our progress and comparing our skills and knowledge from the beginning of the year to the end of the year. I am really impressed with the kids and how wonderful this year has gone.