Friday, January 21, 2011

Weekly Wrap-up January 16 - 22, 2011

Wow!!!  We had a busy week.  We started a new handwriting curriculum.  I have been reading lots of reviews about Draw, Write, Now.  None of the kids are fond of Handwriting without Tears.  Joey likes to draw and so does Lydia...so I thought let's try it.  We are just starting in Book 1.  I was shocked how well Brayden enjoyed the 2 lessons this week.  He finished his handwriting assignment with minimal whining.  In fact he was showing off his workbook proudly.  Soooo I think we have a winner!!!  My next purchase is going to be a new Spelling curriculum.  I am still debating and comparing between Sequential Spelling and All About Spelling.  Reviews are great for both!  This week the boys are working more on multiplication and multiple column adding.  I love Teaching Textbooks!!!  I am going to include some more games on multuplication for them in the next few weeks.  Joey is still struggling in this area.  Language Arts the boys were working on Compound words.  They played on Zoodles.com.  Lydia started Funnix.com phonics program.  The boys started a new science topic of matter and basic physics, not one of my strong points.  Energy and motion...uck.  They started online Science Jim classes.  Once a week they watch their class online and then we will be doing experiments to reinforce the topics that week.  I purchased Real Science 4 kids to go along with this.  It's a program that I can use for all of them.  The experiments are wonderful in this book.  The book is written almost comic book style.  We weren't getting anywhere with the Scott Foresman books I was using, so I had to change.  We did fall behind in Music though.  We will have to make up next week for it.  We talked about invertabrates for our zoo class, which we missed due to a mix of icky, icy roads.  Oh and we started our new Bible study of Daniel.  Joey (and I was soooo shocked he was able to finally make a comparison between them) looked at me and said, "Wow Daniel is very similar to what Joseph did."  HE WAS LISTENING!!!!!  Bible study is a hard concept for the boys, which makes it difficult on us to try and teach them.  Joey has really begun asking, "What does Jehovah look like?"  "Why can't we see God?"  Spirituality is a rough concept for kids with autism, they are concrete thinkers.  They need to have that object to look at and create the picture for their brain.  We are looking forward to the next couple weeks studying Daniel and his Companions!

Here's some pictures of our activities this week:

Lydia had her second ice skating lesson.  She graduated up to the middle group this week.  That means she doesn't need the walker or bucket to stand up on the ice.  She still falls, but is really learning balance.


Joey and Brayden joined the LEGO Club on Currclick.  We missed the first meeting, but he finished his project for class and we sent in a picture.  Can't wait to see next month's project.  Our own local group has it's meeting this coming Monday.  We will be building winter ideas such as snowmen and penguins.  We can't wait!!


Our parsley is doing well.  The dill still hasn't perked up.  The cilantro and basil seem to be ok also!


We had a basketball game Tuesday night.  Here's Joey during warm-up.  Check out our Awesome new uniforms.  No more purple!!

                                             
We finished up our Community Helpers/Respecting Others project.  Here we are playing Safetyville.  I liked this game and it was a hit at our scout meeting.  I just had some issues with a few questions.  I picked up a card to read it and it was a question about what to do if someone opened fire in your school!!  Scary that something like that needs to be put into a children's game.


The boys waiting for their first Science Jim class to start. 


Lydia's attention span has been near zero lately.  So we work for a small bit on her subject and then I have been setting stations up in the living room for when I need to do something with the boys.  That day I set out the little balance scale.  They had fun trying to get the smae amount of pom poms in both buckets.

Caty spent a lot of time playing with this.


I "borrowed" this great idea from another wonderful mom in our homeschool group.  Betsy and her children threaded oat cereal onto string and tied it off for the birds.  Less messy than the peanut bagels we made last year.  I think there is still bird seed being swept up:)  I threaded their needles from their sewing kit to make it easier to thread on the cereal.  We talked about how when the cereal is all gone, the birds can use the string to make their spring nests.


They ate more than went on the string.  I had to keep reminding them that the birds are hungry because it is so cold outside.


Daddy helped us put them outside.  Our neighbors are in Florida for the winter.  We used their bushes because you can see them from the living room windows.  The girls got back inside and were sitting on the back of the couch watching.  Caty screamed, "I see my cheerios!!"



We had several projects we included into our curriculum this month.  We made hair bands to share with our fellow Daisy's.  I found these little giraffes on Ebay and we sewed them on.  I ended up doing most of the work because the elastic was very tough for Lydia.  It seemed so much easier in my mind!  Hot glue would've never worked for these, so I had to sew.  Oh well...they turned out so cute!



We are learning more about natural resources we can use.  We learned about the benefits of using lemon oil.

We looked up more on the state of Tennessee.  All states have flowers, animals, and trees that represent them.  The state animal of Tennessee is the Racoon. 

We learned about an endangerd animal from our area.  Lydia thought the Indiana Bat was so cute.  (It really is.)  We learned why they were endangered and how they can be protected.  We also learned that the racoon is an enemy of the Indiana Bat.  
We were concentrating on our community and using our resources wisely.  Lydia was in charge of the can recycling this month at our house.  We learned about sorting our recycling.  In the spring we are going to go on a field trip to a recycling center.  Betsy had a game for us to play showing how our planet is overcrowding and how we need to share.
 Then we learned to reuse our materials.  We made flower planters from aluminum cans.


We will also be turning gallon milk jugs into water sprinklers for spring.  NickJr.com has some awesome reusable ideas for kids.  We did not do that with the other Daisy's this month.  That will be an at home project.  Next we will be studying healthy food choices.

As I am sitting trying to upload pictures (and let me tell you that blogger gave me a fit tonight), Caty is laughing and pointing at all the pictures.  I ask, "Aren't you getting tired?"  "No!!!" she responds!  I start Wizard of Oz on Netflix and I look over and she didn't even make it through opening credits.  Now Lydia is still up and loving the movie!!

Next week, we will continue with Draw Write Now handwriting; our study of Daniel--learning to do more for God while we are young; Language arts we will be continuing parts of speech---Adverbs; we have LEGO club on Monday, we will be learning about Thailand in Geography, in Science we will be learning about the rules of gravity, we have a basketball game and ice skating also.  We start Agility Therapy back this week.  On Tuesday we are taking a day off and going to Sylvania Playland which is a inflatable place in our area.  We have med checks with the Dr. this week also.  Uggghhh I hate looking at the schedule!  One more week before we are going to Kalahari waterpark!!!!  The kids are getting more and more excited!  It's almost Winter Break time!

I think I may join Caty now!!!

2 comments:

  1. WOW you have accomplished alot this week:) Lots of great stuff is going on in your house.

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  2. I love your post- so many great pictures and activities. How do you find the time? I too am looking into Draw Write Now for my 6 year old for next year, so keep us posted on how its going! Thank you for sharing.

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