First Day!!

 

Hell or high water we were starting school today but since we are home I actually had none of our normal schooling supplies/workbooks/etc. (they're all in N.C) So today we used what was available... the computer, my bananagrams game, and books.

AIDAN

Aidan read a few chapters out of a new book:  Tree House Trouble (Cul-De-Sac Kids series). I worked with her intonation and enunciation while she read.

Using my bananagrams game I practiced spelling with her. I'd tell her a word and she'd spell it. I also made up a game where I'd take a phonetic sound like "ble" and have her make as many words as she could think of that had "ble" in it.

For math, Aidan played on Dreambox for about an hour. She completed a full story line so was moving fairly fast through it. She also did a full phonics lesson on T4L.

As for writing... Aidan wrote this a few days ago but I love it so much I've added it on.

Happily playing in the rain!

AINSLEY

Ainsley played on T4L and completed 2 1/2 lessons. She's almost finished with all of PreK 1 and will soon start PreK 2. 

Again using the bananagrams I built simple words for her to read and we played games with them. For example.... I'd build "cat" "hat" "sat" "fat" "mat". I'd then ask her which word was "sat" and ask her to place something on top of her answer. The more active I make it... the more Ainsley enjoys it. She is such the opposite of Aidan. I'm thinking I'll be spending  more money on Ainsley because I'll need to buy her complete curriculum... (such as All about Spelling) and those that I already own will probably not work with her because they're not" hands on" enough. However, it's really fun to teach Ainsley because it's so much more interactive. I actually get to teach instead of just sitting there and only telling her about it.

As for my wondering about Ainsley's math knowledge... she definitely knows math equations. Aidan and I practice only randomly but apparently she has been listening carefully. Last night I caught her in a somewhat serious mood and asked her what 2 +1 was. She answered 3. I then continued another 4 equations (3+1, 3+2, 4+1, & 2+2) and she answered them all correctly. On the 6th equation (5+5) she became embarrassed and "cutesy" and started throwing out all sorts of numbers as an answer. Now, considering her age, I am assuming this is strict memorization. She can and does understand the concept of counting but I'm not sure she's actually counting in her head. She would look up to the ceiling and think a few seconds before answering which gave the impression of calculating but it was probably just memory retrieval. Regardless... I'm still impressed.