Friday, September 16, 2011

Weekly Wrap-Up(week 3): Busy Bee's & IEW Update



Therapies, Ladies Night Out, Art lessons, Piano, Quizzes, Field Trips, OH MY!

This was a very busy week for this homebody we had appointments, therapy, evaluations, classes & quizzes no t to mention our regularly scheduled activities such as Wednesday night church group!

  Monday: We had an appointment and we restarted our regular library visits. I picked up several books for the kids to read and they choose many more books. Bullet is currently reading through the Bobbsey Twins mystery series.

Tuesday: We have been able to get into a good routine in the morning completing our school work by the early afternoon. After a long hiatus Sweety started Speech Therapy this week. I have talked about our small struggles we 've had teach Sugar Pie to read so this week when we hit the point in , Teach your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons, where they remove all the symbols I was a little worried. I didn't need to be the transition was seamless. Of course we have been reading books that didn't have the long vowels or other marks since the start, but in my initial panic I totally forgot about that. Her reading is exactly on target which is at the end of K the start of 1st grade.  We have 23 lessons left after which we will move either into Christian Light's Reading Program or the McGuffey Primer.

Wednesday: The girls had Art Class, then we ate lunch in the park.  At the park we ran into a dear friend of ours and we truly enjoyed visiting and catching up. Her children have Spanish that day and the Lord provided that we would both have the same hour break time! It's nice to refill your tank with a sweet friend. After the park we ran off to our field trip to see a friend of mine a local optometrist.  When we got home we completed the basics and then we headed out to our church group.

Thursday: We had piano lessons and a 3 hour ECI (Early Childhood Intervention) Evaluation for Shoo. She has delayed motor skills, stiff joints and I've been concerned about Cerebral Palsy for quite some time. Thankfully, she 'failed' her evaluation and was accepted into the program so we will have 2 therapy sessions each week. We still have to get Bubba's 3 hour evaluation completed! During her evaluation the other children were suppose to complete their school work but instead they got into everything they could get into that was quiet. I must, however mention, that Sweety was innocent of the crimes of her sisters but she also didn't get any work done. However, by the end of the day and I mean the end, after 5 pm, all of the school work was done and Sweety pulled off 2 perfect scores on quizzes.

Friday: The kids Finally we are at home just schooling, it was a little bit longer school session because I think we are all so tired. We finally got back into the swing of having our memory time at the start of school. We do specific addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, states & capitals, Greek Vocabulary & Veritas History Cards are coming soon to memory time! One of my goals this year is that the children have instant recall on their math facts. Today was Bullet's turn to take a Language Arts & Math quizzes and she also did well.  Finally all of the children completed their Paces & Light Units right on schedule and they received new workbooks today, which they think is exciting. Now I have to get read for game night we are going to play that game Head Banz so fun! Whoo! What a week!
Institute for Excellence in Writing
We have been doing Institute for Excellence in Writing for the last three weeks, this is the largest investment we have ever made in our homeschool. We are currently working on perfecting our subject outlines. From the outlines the children write their mini essays. We've written more in these three weeks then we had previously written during our entire homeschool. The thing about IEW is that it is well laid out and very easy for both the teacher and the student to follow. Each party knows exactly what to do/grade. My kids are completing about 2 polished paragraphs each week. So far we have watched two lessons and we are going to be watching the third lesson sometime next week. Although I had some hands on teaching during the first 3 days they have been able to work independently and turn in some great assignments.

We are linked to  Weekly Wrap-Ups@ Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers and  Homeschool Blog Link Ups @ Virtous Foundations Homeschool

6 comments:

SarahinSC said...

I am a total homebody too! Being out more than a few days at home nearly kills me!

Both of my boys have been in speech therapy for quite some time now. One used to go for fluency issues (stuttering) and the other for articulation (mostly "r" controlled vowels.

Hope you get to stay home a bit more next week!

Sharla said...

I'm a homebody too and I got a bit crazy if there isn't at least one day a week when we stay home all day.

Tina Hollenbeck said...

How old are your kids who are using IEW? I think I am on the verge of starting this with my girls - ages 9 and 10 - and it'll be our first attempt at formal composition (after doing lots of narration the last couple of years). I am excited that you are finding it to be so positive. I would LOVE to hook onto something like this where the girls could use and perfect and fine-tune the same techniques all the way through high school so they leave me as accomplished writers.

Anonymous said...

Sounds like a fun and busy week. I teach deaf/hard-of-hearing (very part-time) so I am very familiar with parents hoping their kids will fail the eval. Funny, but true...hope therapy helps quickly.

I like the idea of doing memory work at the beginning of the day. Right now we do it towards the end and it is the first thing to be dropped if we run out of time. We are still working on those pesky math fact too. :)
Becca

texasmcvays said...

Sharla & Sarah - Thursday & Friday at home were a God send! It was time to refresh and refuel for sure.
Tina- The girls using it are my 13 year old (mild autism/pdd with hearing and vision issues)& my cracker jack 8 year old. I thought I'd have some problems with the 13 y/o but the only issue we have is that she sometimes needs to rewrite sentences so they are clear.

Becca- I wish I could say I had some brillian insight about memory work. The truth is I hate math flash cards and it bores me to death. So it is best we are doing math flash cards when I have coffee in my hand. We do math next which is my least favorite subject. Anything, I tend to skip I try to make it happen early in our day so it gets done. We are starting the Veritas Press History cards as soon as they arrive. So we do Math Flash Cards, Sates & Capitals, Greek and soon Veritas History. :)
Thank you all for visiting! :)

Lea H @ Virtuous Foundations said...

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