Tuesday Slowdown

Today was much better than yesterday. We got a lot of school done. My Transformer graduated from The Reading Lesson today! I awarded him a certificate that officially deemed him a Reader for Life. He was pretty proud, I think. He read the last two passages in the book to his Dad to demonstrate where his reading level is now. Tomorrow he will move onto primers and readers. After those (about three of them), he will start on library books like Frog and Toad. :D

My little girl is doing wonderfully with her blend ladder activities. She does not complain as much as she used to. Also, her writing of the lowercase letters is great, but she doesn't reproduce them on her own. When she writes her own words out, she still uses uppercase primarily. She uses lowercase for letters that she does not know how to write in uppercase.

For math, they are loving doing Living Math. Basically that means that we are using literature for math (the term literature being used loosely since most of the books are not literary). The books make math fun and put it into context, such as storylines that require calculations. They could be mysteries, adventures, or other themes. We've been working on patterns lately to work on the fundamental aspects of math for the Kitty Cat. Since the Transformer is working on addition, subtraction, and multiplication in his Miquon Orange Book, the patterns provide more foundation exercises for him. I had put away Ray's Arithmetic for him when he was struggling with place value and transposing the numbers in the teens; however, I think maybe over the next few months, I will reintroduce him to Ray's, since I believe that his brain will have developed enough by then to comprehend those concepts better. He is starting to understand those things via his continuing work in Miquon, so Ray's should help to solidify that understanding. The Kitty Cat may pick up on some of those things, but I don't plan to implement any formal math for her until she is about 6yo.

On another note, I am really loving the CM Organizer. Other than finishing out the weekly themes that I have set up for the remainder of this school year, I think I will be able to fully rely on the organizer to implement our daily school activities. It so nicely lines up resources to be used one after another with no implied rush to complete anything. Any resource not accomplished that day is left alone until the next weekday that it is scheduled for. What flexibility! :)