Weekly Wrap-up: The Appley One

I love autumn! The colors, the smells, the trips to the orchard, the FOOD. Autumn is good eatin'! We went to the apple orchard near here, and they've got apples, which are yummy. We also got several pie pumpkins, which I am in process of cooking down, pureeing, and putting in the freezer. Not only is it cheaper than grocery store pumpkin, it's easy, and I keep hearing about how there's shortages... don't want to be without the pumpkin! Pumpkin pie, pumpkin bread, pumpkin scones: YUM. Plus, the orchard makes for good pictures.



I think my favorite part of school this week was that we added Narration to the mix. I ran across such good ideas on the Charlotte Mason Carnival that I decided to go ahead and try it.

One thing I loved about the ideas on Practical Pages was that in every case it made the story touchable. I decided to go with something familiar: our flannel board. I made color copies of a couple of the illustrations, covered them with contact paper & sewed felt on the back. I'm not sure that I'll do this again, cuz that was a lot of work for what we got out of it! But, if it was a favorite book, and I though that he'd tell the story a couple of times & enjoy playing with them, then I'd absolutely do it again, cuz it's not that much work.

Clearly, this is going to take some practice. The actual narrating part was surprisingly tricky. Monkey wasn't sure what I wanted... I wasn't sure what I wanted. I'm not sure that I'm any better at summarizing a story than he is! But we did it. And we'll do another story next week. And practice makes everything better.

Math went well. Math is probably Monkey's favorite, right now. We did more flannel board stuff.

Same stuff, different day: mostly. Math Expressions had us do trapezoids & octagons (OK, they were supposed to hexagons, but I made 'em before I realized that. I oughta read the instructions better, I think!). Last time we did the "mat" activities they had a different focus.


The book also suggested singing math songs, so we did a couple of those this week too. "One, Two, Buckle My Shoe" and the like.


We also did patterns on the flannel board because it's fun. Monkey brought me his dot-to-dot book one evening and asked could we please do some? Why, YES!

We did a little Nature Study on a trip to the park for a playdate (though I also count the orchard for nature study).


Phonics is going really well: I decided to focus on just drilling with the games, rather than trying to do much reading in the Bob Books yet, because it was so frustrating to Monkey, and I want him to enjoy reading. So we got the Reading House (practicing rhyming cvc words, from Happy Phonics) back out, and he loves it now. Used to hate it. But it seems to make more sense to him this time. And I'm working on making cards of the words that are in those Bob Books to practice in our games. We'll probably start using them this next week. But it's so nice to have him asking for more of his phonics games again!

We finished Charlotte's Web, so we're just starting a new Read-Aloud. We read the first few pages of Stuart Little, but a friend loaned us Mr. Poppin's Penguins, so I think we'll switch and read that next instead.

Whoosh - There Goes October

Monday was pretty uneventful. We did lots of math. We counted pennies again, Monkey jumped in circles while we counted dog noises, we played Hi-Ho Cherry-O, and he counted our silverware when we ate our ice cream. We didn't do nearly as much reading, which is OK; we'll get that another day. But we did do some flashcard games with the letters and sounds. The one that went the best was when I would show him a letter and he would find it on his alphabet strip and then tell me the sound. He's really solid on about half of the letters, but some of those less common ones are tripping him up still. We didn't get to doing our read alouds until bedtime, and he was pretty tired by then! He made it through reading the scriptures, but fell asleep in the middle of reading Little House on the Prairie.


Tuesday we did some nature study, which got its own post. It was a great trip. We saw all kinds of fun things, including the garter snake that I almost stepped on.


Wednesday we got a lot accomplished. For math, I had some new manipulatives to play with. Late last week, I made 10 squares of 2 different colors of felt, so 20 in all, and put a dot on one side of them with paint. By Wednesday they were dry and I was organized enough to play with them. I had 3 and Monkey had three, just pulled randomly from the pile, so our sets were different. We then set and re-arranged our 3 "tiles" into every different shape and arrangement that I could think of. "How many is it now?" I wanted Monkey to see that no matter how they were arranged, they were still 3. We also talked just a little bit about how 1 and 2 are partners to make 3, and 2 and 1 are also partners in 3. Monkey thought the whole counting and re-counting was hilarious. I'm not sure he understood what I was getting at with the "partners" idea: he gave me a funny look.

We did some practicing with his letters. I've been trying to emphasize some of the less common letters, and it's paying off. I could see that he's getting better at them, but I didn't realize how much better until Thursday.

We read a chapter and a half of Little House on the Prairie. I'm beginning to look at my copy of the 1000 Good Books list, thinking about what are we going to do next. I always find choosing a read-aloud a little bit stressful.

Thursday, when we did our phonics practice, I tried something different: I told Monkey the wrong thing. I'd show him a letter - W, and tell him it said, /d/. His response, "Noooo! W says /wuh/!" It worked like a charm. Much faster, much more fun, and I realized that he knows his letters, big and little, much better than I'd realized. And he's much more firm in the sounds of all of them (except B & D, which he switched around consistently), than I thought. We also have been using his markerboard to practice 2 letter blends, and I've shown him some CVC words, but he doesn't have those yet. It's close though. Very close. I pulled out the next game in the Happy Phonics pack and set it up. It's a blending game, and we'll start it next week.

We also went to another nature preserve and did some more nature study. Ducks, this time. The kids (public school was out and there were many) were loving it when the ducks would tip up and nibble on whatever's down there. I need to pull out the Handbook of Nature Study and learn some more about ducks because I couldn't tell Monkey very much about what they were doing as they tipped and splashed. But it sure looked like they were having a good time! Monkey also experimented with the moving water. He liked to drop leaves in and watch them get washed away. We did that for quite a while. I've got pictures of it all, but I think I'll have to get those up later.

Today, Friday, we didn't do a thing. We spent the morning catching up on some housework, and the afternoon we spent enjoying Daddy after he came back from a week away on business. It was a good day.


Mom's Ed went well this week. Read some more from America's Constitution while I waited at the doctor's office (just a check-up), and I worked a little bit more on the Sumerian King List, and I had a peek at the Epic of Gilgamesh, which looks pretty interesting.

A Picture of "One"

Here is Monkey at his flannel board, making a picture of "one." After we were done with the picture of "one" I started to put away the numbers, planning to let Monkey just play in the felts. He begged to do a picture of "two," so that's what we did! This picture, being the second time we did it, was much easier to do.

Trying Math Mountains

My Mom, a kindergarten teacher, swears by Math Mountains. She's been telling me all about the good things they do, and I've been listening. So I made some felt parts this afternoon & we tried it out. If you look closely, there is a 6 on top of our green mountain. I may re-do the numbers because they're hard to see. But Monkey liked it, and I was pleasantly surprised at how well he did with it. One of these days I'm going to stop underestimating him! Now I need to talk to Mom some more about fun things to do with this fun new game. (Up there at the top is Mary and Baby Jesus, who were observing the process because it was important to Monkey that they be there. How sweet!)

5 Little Ducks

I recently joined the FeltFun Yahoo group, and was pleased when one of the first patterns that someone posted after I joined was for "5 Little Ducks." That's a cute song - and it's a counting song. Math is good. So I made up the flannel board pieces, and today we tried them out. Just for the record, when he saw that I wanted to take some pictures, he sat like that all by himself, the little HAM. But if he's going to be so cooperative, I'll bite - it's a cute shot!



As you can see, they were a hit! The funny thing is, I thought when I started that we were laying the foundation for math, what with it being a counting song at all. But by the end of the song, Monkey was telling me "kak kak kak" which was completely adorable!