2.15.10

Today Andrew did a few preschool sheets: patterns, matching baby animals to their mothers, tracing lines, and counting. After dinner, he picked up a little book I had put together, but we had not read yet, and sat down and read the whole thing! He was so proud of himself. He says its his favorite book. :-)

2.4.10

Today Andrew did lesson one in McGuffey's Pictorial Eclectic Primer. He did fairly well, but I think the time we spent on the lesson was a little long for him. He was laying upside down on the couch by the time we got done. :-) He also did two phonics pages (basically review), practiced writing the numbers 4, 5, 6, and 7, and wrote "The cat is in the hat" twice.

2.2.10

We already finished school today. Yay!
Today Andrew practiced writing some sight words: to, the, is, of. The handwriting definitely needs some work, but I realize his fine motor skills are still developing. He also practiced writing 1, 2, 3, and 4 in his Kumon workbook. Kumon does an excellent job of showing them how to write numbers. I may also get the book on letters eventually. I will definitely use it for Noah. We tried to do a phonics sheet identifying the short 'u' sound, but I think it was too advanced for him. I found a program online that quizzes you on the middle sounds of words so we will probably do that later. We also sang a few psalters and practiced his memory.
I showed Noah the letters A, B, and C. I also tried counting with him and I think he can count to five. Yay!

2.1.2010

Today Andrew reread some of his little books (which we haven't done in over a week!) and I was pleasantly surprised at how much he could read. I have another one we will start tomorrow. He also practiced some writing, wrote some numbers, did a page of phonics and did Click n kids. He is currently on lesson 22 of Click n kids. I noticed he is having trouble distinguishing the middle sound of 3 letter words so we will work on that. His handwriting is atrocious, but I realize he is a five year old boys so we will just have to practice, practice, practice! We also did some addition/subtraction using our fingers instead of pennies. I noticed he didn't always have to count my fingers, he could recognize how many are left just by glancing at my hand. When I worked with 1st graders, I know some of them still had to count each finger and weren't able to just recognize with a glance so it seems he is on the right track. He also seems to understand the concept of zero. He knows that zero is nothing, but he doesn't know immediately that subtracting zero from any number always results in the number. That will come with practice.
Yesterday I read him the story of Samson and how Samson killed a bunch of Philistines by breaking the pillars of the building down and Andrew said, "But Samson didn't die."
I said, "Yeah, Samson died too."
Andrew looked at me in horror and Chris says, "You had to tell him that?! I remember how I felt when I found out Samson died!"