Moving beyond the workbook

Schooling was not successful during our post tornado summer, and during our moves (there were many, all summer long...). We are now back to the books a bit late for the school year start date. My children balked terribly! They have always loved school and we have been doing it since they were quite small.

So now we are back to hands on learning because they are unhappy with the books we used last yr. I went through alpha omega math workbooks for 1st grade, nathalie was able to work to book 5 of 10 before she became miserable with it. Here is our daily math now:

Wrap ups (if you dont have them you need them!)
Out loud addition facts
months, days and wks in a yr, days in a wk
days and months in order

Your own birthday (tad cant remember his, she can)

Inchs in foot, feet in yards, inchs in yard

count by 2, 5, 10 and 100
place value practice
money value practice-adding change and giving change
telling time

For these last 3, we do a game that teaches one of those concepts every day, even on wkends. On the place value game day, we still practice the other 2 with a handful of change, lots of questions and then we tell time on a clock sheet. The time telling game is long and involved and we just start it back up each time because we cant get through it in a day.

Tads 2nd grade math is more involved than this, it delves into higher numbers for adding and subtracting and doing carrying and borrowing. Both of which he is fully capable of, but it takes him so long bc he is slow at math drills. So by doing this list at least 6 days a wk, she will move fully through 1st grade math by december and he will be well into 2nd grade.

For reading he does a 2nd grade reading book and language arts, and spelling. She does a first grade reading program and is doing well now though we had a hard start. She learns reading facts well (like y saying ee at the end of a word) by learning something funny. Such as, "Daddy is the man." She learned when to use a capital letter, and when to use a period by doing this sentence over and over and she can now read just about all words ending in Y that say ee. Just from learning how to spell and read daddy.

Science, history and geo are still being achieved well at a higher level than their grades by using books, games, activities and like yesterday, a railroad track walk where we picked up lots of things and many many questions were asked and answered. We visited with neighboring cows and successfully inspected each cow (by leaning WAAAAY down and seeing if they had b____s or an udder-not my idea!!!) to decide male or female. Tad was spot on every time! I will post pictures from our rail walking later.

So today, we are almost finished with school. We did our list that I typed here, did our reading and each child wrote the whole alphabet, capital and lowercase as they are still using these incorrectly. They also learned to spell their last names and wrote out the days of the wk by memory. Nathalie is still in panties and knee socks only and tad is in pjs. We are also eating candy.

We miss you daddy, if you are reading this.