week 22

Monday- While Caiden and Maddy were at HsAP I took Westin to the early learning communities play group.  I use to take Caiden and Maddy to these groups when they were his age.  He loved it and did really well with listening to the leader and playing well with the other kids. We'll defiantly be back.

Tuesday- I usually only highlight the fun things we do but here's an update of our curriculum work. 

History -We continue to be on break from our winter promise history curriculum as we work through the Liberty Kids series.  The kids are really connecting with the characters and are doing a great at remembering the historical events.  We've been using historical quotes for our copy work to reinforce key events and people. They love it.  

Phonics-We've been working through activities that teach the long vowel combinations.  We've done sorting and matching games.  This method seems to have really improved Maddy's reading. This week we're working on long U. 

Reading - I continue to let the kids read books that they are interested in.  I recently let Caiden use his reading time to read chapter books to himself instead of out loud.  He reads 1 chapter a day.  Right now he's reading a Hardy's Boy book.  Maddy reads Little Critter books, Pinkalicous, and Fancy Nancy books.  We do our read aloud time at night.  We're reading to Caiden the Lord of the Rings.  Maddy has lost intreats in this so she now listens to books on tape while we read to Caiden.

Writing-The kids write every day.  Sometimes they tell me about their favorite things, or we do word based activities or our history quotes.  They also do daily copy work to improve handwriting.

Science- We continue to do our monthly unit studies.  Maddy chose cars for this month.  So we have watched movies that talked about how cars are made and how the process of scraping them when their old.  We also watched a movie showing how race car engines are made.  We will also cover core standards of Forces of push and pull and friction with this unity study.  The kids also continue their study of electronics with their EEME kits.  I am amazed at what they are learning with these projects.

Math- Caiden continues to be extra strong in math.  Maddy is needing some extra work on memorizing her addition facts.  We are working on ten frame grouping and memorizing number groups.  She does well with other Math concepts of telling time, measuring, patterns, and counting money.

Spelling- Both kids get almost all of their spelling words right each week.

Sight words- Maddy struggles with her sight words at the beginning of the week but by Friday she knows them all.  Caiden usually knows his sights words the first time he sees them.

Bible- I bought a bible book to work on with the kids but we are counting AWANA memory work as bible for this year.

• They also continue to enjoy their free Hamilton community classes of SWIM, GYMNASTICS, PIANO(Maddy) and ART
• They also enjoy REZ LIFE, CAMP ROGER, and CAIDEN'S Guitar class.
• At HaSP they get Science (studying the human body) Math, Gym, Art, Music, Drama, and Spanish. 

So on to the fun stuff of today.  We meet up with 2 families at the library today for story time.  Westin played with playdough at home while Caiden and Maddy worked on school.  Westin was super cuddly with the big kids today. Caiden and Maddy made up their own card game and the sun came out so we played outside.  We also met up with some friends for a picnic dinner after art class.

Wednesday -Big day!  The kids completed their swimming level and will be moving up to the next level next week.  They've been doing great in their lessons.  I had Caiden skip Ampd today as the kids aren't feeling well. 

Thursday- Our first official sick day.  We skipped skipped rez and gymnastics but Maddy piano teacher came to our house today.  We also watched liberty's kids and did math and reading.

Friday- Caiden finished his first chapter book that he read completely independently.  He was so proud and loved it.

Weekend- we had a pretty big weekend.  Maddy had her first friend stay overnight with us.  And Caiden turned 8 years old.  We had a Mario themed birthday party for him at church.