Weekly Wrap-Up

With Olivia's tot school having it's own link up, I'll do her and Brianna seperately unless their schooling actually combines.







We finally got some nice weather! The whole week was just gorgeous, beautiful sunshine! It *would* have been a move-school-outside kind of week if it hadn't been windy. Brianna tried a few times, but she ended up with papers all over the yard.

Monday - Worked on subtraction in math. Brianna hates it. I can't decided though if it's just cause she prefers adding, like me, or if it's cause she's still having problems with it. I know she has been having issues remembering to borrow, but for the most part her answers ARE correct.

Tuesday - Still plugging along in the Spell by Color program. Brianna doesn't get super excited when it gets pulled out, but she does complete it with no complaints, so I'm hoping that's a good sign. She does enjoy the fast that it uses different colors for each rule so it separates them.

Wednesday - Today we did word problems in math. She has come SO far in this! When we started HSing in Nov, she could barely tell if she was supposed to add or subtract, let alone *what* she was adding or subtracting. Now she flies through them. I think this has to do with the fact that I have her doing word problems daily in one of the little daily books I found. I think once we're done the current pack of word problem books I have, we'll be able to just do word problems in regular math, rather than needing the daily reinforcement.

Brianna made live art today in the driveway. Apparently she's been seeing me attempting my version of running a lot lately. She made a line of real grass and picked some dandelions to "plant" in the grass, then drew a stick mommy running through.

Thursday - Today's spelling words were mostly number words (fourteen, thirty, ect...). She's worried about these words. I don't often have reason to write out larger numbers like that in adult life, but she does at least need to be able to *read* the difference between them!

Friday - She did *ok* with her spelling words. We're gonna work a little more on spelling practice along with her Spell by Color program. I made up some letter tiles for her and am going to laminate them so she can get some practice forming words in, without it being writing a story or something.

We also did a food groups collage today. We looked up how many servings of each food group a child of her age needs in a day, then went to cutting up magazines! Brianna loves that part :) I was pretty happy with her choices (since each food item was up to her), the only thing really junky that she picked was Kraft Dinner in her grains group.

She did a math sheet today on turning written-out-in-words numbers into regular numbers. This worksheet went into the hundred millions. Brianna was *totally* lost. She said she had only learned to thousands in school. So we did a whole lesson on larger place value and will be working on it more in the coming week. She did pretty well after she got an understanding of how the hundreds, thousands and millions groups were broken up. Hopefully it won't take more than a few days to fully cement the idea.

Check out other weekly wrap-ups at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers!

52 Books in 52 Weeks - 15

I'm taking part in the 52 Books in 52 Weeks challenge (I'm a few weeks behind in my reviews!)

Week 15 was Overcoming ADHD by Stanley I. Greenspan, M.D.

My favorite part of this book is the excerpt - Helping your child become engaged and focused - WITHOUT A PILL.

I am not a pill hater, some kids need pills. However, I believe in trying everything you can before going the pill route. This book gives oodles of different activities and ideas to help your child without meds. It offered a lot of different ways to view a child's day and WHY they may act the way they do.

One thing I noticed about this book was that the author placed a lot of ADHD problems into a sensory issue. To me that translates that ADHD is the same thing as SPD or because of SPD. Slightly confusing.

I'm not sure I'd recommend this book to a family who doesn't see a possible diagnoses of SPD because there's a lot of focus on sensory issues in this book. But, for a family, like mine, who sees ADHD *and* SPD as issues it's a good mixing of the 2 problems and way to cope with them without medication.

52 Books in 52 Weeks - 16

I'm taking part in the 52 Books in 52 Weeks challenge (I'm a few weeks behind in my reviews!)

Week 16's book was The Darwin Awards by Wendy Northcutt

From the book: Commemorating those individuals who ensure the long-term survival of our species by removing themselves from the gene pool in a sublimely idiotic fashion.

***Warning, some very graphic descriptions of death in this book***

That said, I loooooved this book! Some of the stories in the book, you almost can't believe that someone could act so stupidly!

There are also Honorable Mentions, where the person didn't quite succeed in killing themselves, and also personal accounts, some deaths, some still living.

I think this (and the website) are where that show 1001 ways to die sort of stems from. Not for the faint of hearts, but if you have an odd sense of humour, you'll love the book!

52 Books in 52 Weeks - 17

I'm taking part in the 52 Books in 52 Weeks challenge.

Week 17's book was Raising a Sensory Smart Child by Lindsey Biel. From the book: the definitive handbook for helping your child with sensory integration issues.

This would be an *excellent* book for a parent of a toddler/preschooler with SPD. Very little in the book applied to older children. A disappointment for me. 


However, it IS a great book. It's very in depth with activities and tools for dealing with SPD. It has a great reference section for parents with websites and toll free numbers for therapeutic stores and programs where you can order numerous items to help with SPD therapy.

Wilderness Wednesday

FINALLY some nice weather! Apparently Mother Nature felt sorry for us after our week of rain, and is now giving us a week of sun.

Brianna spent a lot of time focusing on our flowers

Blooming Bleeding Heart

Weeds that Brianna thinks are great behind her swingset

Anyone know what they are?

She was also greeted by a mourning dove, a bird she hadn't seen before

We also got (from my sister) some really good robin's egg shells. I've never seen them in such large pieces (other than when still whole), since they break so easily!

Check out the guidelines and grab our button! Link up with us every Wednesday!

I Need More Color Ink!

In printing up some fun stuff for Olivia for Tot School I'm discovering how much color ink is needed for PreK! I mean I love that everything is so colorful but wow! Since starting to HS Brianna I've used 1.5 color cartridges to about 54464 black ones. Just in printing Letter A stuff for Olivia I've used the other half of the color cartridge!

I'm also going to need a LOT more clear contact paper for laminating (and need to find non-texture stuff this time!). Olivia's a fan of crumpling and ripping paper so I KNOW I use way less color ink if I laminate the long term use stuff!

Weekly Wrap-Up

We're re-vamping school a little right now, both to ease into a lighter summer schedule (we HS year-round) and because of the general stress going on right now because of Lee's layoff.





Monday -Continuing on with Spell By Color, we hit a review this week. There was a word search and crossword with word that fit the spelling words we'd be working on. Brianna had a rough time with the crossword. She doesn't do clues really well (something we'll be working on, logistic skills). I tried to explain to her that the trick to a crossword is looking at the words you've already got and figuring out what the new words are based on the letters already filled in, how many letters the answer is long, ect... also, in the case of the spelling rule review, all of the answers for the crossword fit into the 2 rules being reviewed, silent "e"s and short vowels followed by doubles ("ll", "ss", ect...)

Tuesday - Didn't get much done today other than our daily stuff (handwriting practice, math word problems, grammar and paragraph editing)

Wednesday - We introduced ecosystems with reading a selection from our science book. Brianna started working on labeling the provinces with their land types (Canadian Shield, St. Lawrence Lowlands, ect...) but then melted down for the day. She ended up putting herself to bed early. Obviously a bad day for her.

Thursday - We finally got around to starting our Gr. 3 reading comprehension book. The Gr. 2 one was much too easy. She has a great reading level, but with all the problems we've had with missing pieces from public school we went backwards in a lot of things. Then we had a 3 hour meltdown over math. *sigh*

I decided today to add a bit of Tot School into our days for Olivia. She's been very demanding interested in learning lately and I want to make sure she's not left behind cause I'm focusing on just Brianna's schooling.

Friday - We covered some more money stuff in math. She has a real issue with figuring out which coins will make a certain amount of money with a certain amount of coins. However, since this isn't really a real world issue, I'm not terribly concerned. (While you DO need to know how to make change, I have yet to have a cashier tell me I can only give them a certain amount of coins. As long as the amount of money is correct, they don't seem to care how many coins I hand over.)

Come check out other weekly wrap-ups at Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers!