Milly is loving pre-preschool, although she insists that it is, in fact, "pretty pretty school." We're focusing on one letter and one number per week, so she now recognizes A, B and C and the sounds that they make...although she does think that C should say "ssss", and I don't blame her one bit. Coloring pages were an absolute Godsend today, and I tried to reinforce the C sound by teaching her that C is for...
CUPCAKE, of course! (What else?!) A slightly gothic/moldy cupcake, perhaps, but a cupcake nonetheless. And yes, Milly is quite seriously considering being a lefty. This stresses me out just a little since I have no idea how to teach a lefty to write, but then, some of the prettiest handwriting I've seen was produced by a lefty. Good thing it's not up to me to decide, huh?Rachael had a wonderful morning, even though she was stuck doing copy work in her language arts book while her sister colored. As a general rule, Rachael and copy work do not get along well. She tends to rush through it, insert random capitals, omit capitals that actually should be there, and forego a lot of punctuation. This leads to much nagging on my part to just pay attention to what you're copying, because it's right there in front of you, and really, there's just no excuse for getting it wrong. *ahem* Look at what my girl did today!
I hope you'll notice that big A+ at the top too! I'm not sure exactly why, but she wants a letter grade on everything these days, and is happiest if there's a + or a - to follow it. She doesn't even care if it's a C- (not that she gets many of those), as long as there's a letter grade on her paper. I'm not exactly sure how I feel about this - for the most part, I want her to learn to do her best and take pride in her work, not do it solely to be rewarded with a letter. So I'll grade things sometimes - usually written work, so I can explain to her that the grade is based on neatness, attention to detail, creativity, etc. I refuse to assign a grade without an explanation to go along with it.
There are two things that are always graded. The first is her weekly book report. She's done two so far - I let her choose the book for her first report, and she chose Green Eggs and Ham. I learned my lesson and assigned her second book, which was Sarah, Plain and Tall. This being a short week, I just chose a book from her shelf that I liked when I was a kid, and we'll be writing the report together to focus on content.
The second thing that's always graded is her Friday spelling test. I'm so proud of this child and her affinity for language arts. Check out her spelling list for this week:
I was a little nervous when her spelling book first arrived and I found that the weekly lists were written in cursive...but she can read them, even though she can't write in cursive yet. (I won't even be attempting to teach her cursive for a while yet. Refer to the copy work picture for my reasoning. I'd love for her printing to improve first!)One last picture for tonight...the dreaded math. It boggles my mind that she detests math so much, even though she's really pretty good at it. Here are two pages she did this morning, with no help whatsoever from yours truly.
The color is a little funky, so here's a quick recap...solving for unknown (6+X=8), adding two-digit numbers (13+66), adding two-digit numbers with regrouping (44+46), money/counting by tens (which would you rather have, 95 pennies or 9 dimes?) and adding three-digit numbers (244+234). I absolutely adore this math curriculum...and while she's not a big fan, it's obviously teaching her the concepts.We are eagerly awaiting Thursday's arrival, when Rachael will attend her very first art class at a homeschool co-op in Danville. The last of her supplies were purchased today (who knew it would be so hard to find a black felt-tip pen?!) and I can't wait to see what she learns first!
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