Monday, September 3, 2012

Homeschool Week 2

Practicing writing Chinese numbers
Last week we "visited" our first country of the school year.  We're using Confessions of a Homeschooler's Expedition Earth curriculum and love it so far!

Little man can now find China on a map and locate it's capital.  He knows the population, how to say hello and thank you in mandarin and that they have a really strict government.  We studied a few of the animals found in China and his favorite were the pandas and the snow leopard.  He really enjoyed watching a documentary on the Great Wall with his daddy.

We read "The Story About Ping" and "Tikki Tikki Tembo".

We went out for Chinese food and Little Man tasted sweet and sour chicken and sesame chicken.  He preferred the sweet and sour without the sauce....basically just chicken nuggets!

He hasn't received his China postcard yet, but it's on the way.  He still has no idea that he'll be getting these.  I'm pretty excited about it.
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In math we focused on different kinds of graphs and charts: venn diagrams, tally charts, picture graphs. I let him poll my Facebook friends to make a tally chart of his own.  He scored a 100% on his test at the end of the week!
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Spelling words this week were a, of, the, and, -at family words.  He practiced writing them, spelling them and using them in sentences.  He scored a 100% on this test too!
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Each day he did independent reading and I have seen such an improvement in his skill!  I didn't even sit with him for this.  He made his way through the 1st complete set of BOB books (which we were able to check out from the library!)  He can read aloud or to himself during this time.  If he gets stumped I will go over to help him.  He spells the word for me and usually he can figure it out without any help from me!  A big goal we reached was him being able to read most of his math work on his own.
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We also took a family trip to the aquarium before our yearly passes expired.  We spent lots of time with Luna, the albino alligator.  There was a volunteer standing at her exhibit that Little Man had lots of good questions for.