Grade three and grade one - 2018 - first semester

I'm taking this blog post to record what the two oldest children worked on since September *something* when I started our school year.  A lot of this post will likely be of minimal interest to general homeschooling since it is very specific to our family needs and education plan, but I'm always nosy about other people's school stuff, so I'm sharing anyway.

The 8 Year Old

Math

The sole purpose of this year's math curriculum is to prepare the 8 year old to begin working with the Saxon 5/4 material next year.  To that end, rather than focusing on any particular resource, I've sort of pieced together the odds and ends he needs to know in order to get to that level.

From September to October we covered multiplication - the distributive property, commutativity and associativity, single with single digit multiplication, single with multiple digit multiplication, and multi digit with multi digit multiplication.  We worked through pages 53-64 of Dr. Wright's Kitchen Table Math volume 2 and pages 290, 291, 293 and 299 of the textbook Journeys In Math 3 (published in a similar style to Saxon).  We practiced skills with the workbook Kumon's Multiplication - pages 10-11, 22-23, 26-27, 30-31, 36-37 and 40-41.

Next we used this kit for a week:

It gave us a little mental break before launching into our next session.

Session 2 (the second half of our first semester) was devoted to measurement.  We focused on metric system measurements, not imperial, although at some point he will learn both, and conversion between the two.  We learned about millimetres, centimetres, metres, kilometres, grams and kilograms.  Our primary goal in this was reading scales and measuring devices, and converting measurements up or down - eg. how many millimetres in a centimetre, etc.  For this work we used the Kumon workbook Geometry and Measurement.

Spelling

The 8yo is working on Spelling Workout B.  This semester he finished lessons 19-30.  His handwriting improved noticeably over the course of the lessons and mistakes with basic punctuation are non-existent at this point.

Literature

In the first half of the semester the 8yo read four books for his literature study, and one poem.  He also listened to and discussed five stories read aloud to him.  In the first session I included a list of topics relating to the books read aloud/listened to.  In the second session I let that take its own form.  The second half of the semester the 8yo read five books and one poem and listened to and discussed two poems, one book, and four articles.

We attempted, with little success, to keep track of additional books read as 'free reading'.  I have seven titles listed that he read in that category but I know that number is very inaccurate.

Music and Physical Education

In the summer the 8yo graduated from the piano book his instructor is using with him and progressed to book two.  I can't speak to what specific techniques he is using because I don't play the piano myself, but his playing does seem to be smoother this semester.  This is the course he uses:

The 8yo was enrolled in twelve weeks of swimming lessons.  He worked through the Swim Kids 1 level and has passed into Swim Kids 2, which will start in the new year.  I've noticed smoother movements in his swimming and more confidence in using the flutter board.

History, etc.

I finished reading The Story Of The World Volume 1 aloud to the children and began A Child's History of the World.



The 6 Year Old

Math

For kindergarten and grade one I do as Memoria Press and use the Beginning Arithmetic program from Rod and Staff publishers.  It covers all the basics and one workbook functions for each of those two years.  The 6yo is working through the second workbook in Rod and Staff's level one curriculum.  In the first semester she completed lessons 86-109.  Topics covered were addition and subtraction review, reading a thermometer, reading an analog clock to the quarter hour, coin values, simple fractions, etc.

Spelling

The 6yo uses Spelling Workout A and this past semester she completed lessons 1-14.  Her handwriting is readable but we are focusing on proper use of capital/lowercase letters.  She still reverses some numerals.

Literature

This semester she read aloud three Frog and Toad chapter books to me.  She listened in on many of the read aloud/discussion books used with the 8yo.  I neglected to keep track of the books she read independently, but she spends much of her free time with her nose in a book so I assume several of those were finished over the months.

Physical Education

This semester the 6yo (and her 4yo sister) were both enrolled in an early swimmers program.  I believe their level was Sea Otter at the onset.  The 6yo finished two levels in the 12 weeks and is now a Starfish and gets to progress to the deeper lap pool in the new year.