We Have Begun

Started back on a light schedule with W. We are finishing up a bunch of readings we didn't get to from AmbOn1 and started with the new 3rd grade English, Math, and Science workbooks. His narrations are even better than they were last month - he's using "puppets" now to act out the stories (ok, well 2 dry-erase markers as the main characters, lol). He's so into it. Maybe it was the 2-weeks of acting classes. We're reading Viking Tales, Our Island Story, Aesop's, The Blue Fairy Book, and D'Aulaire's Buffalo Bill. I read the stories to him and he follows my finger and reads it with me. Sometimes he jumps in and takes over the last few sentences. We'll start AmbOn2 in about 3 weeks.

In keeping with the dyslexia help, I've succumbed to buying phonics and sight-word flash cards and we go through one whole stack every day. I keep the words he has trouble with to the side and he writes them on his dry-erase board. This is funny - he found an old bookcase shelf with a smooth surface and decided that is now his own dry-erase board. I was hesitant, but it wipes clean and it's the perfect size for his lap. He decided on his own to write out the words he misses. The other night he kept asking me to give him sentences to write. I was surprised to see that he knew how to spell words like "would" (and could and should), "football", and "before" without any help. He also wrote the word "what" correctly. It has always been hard for him to distinguish between "what", "that", "when", and "want". They all look the same to him. "Than" and "then" look the same and so do "these" and "those". So, it seems he has an easier time writing out words than reading them. Interesting.

We cracked open the new Science book (Science Essentials Grades 3-6) and started on dinosaurs. He loved this and grabbed his dinosaur encyclopedia to check facts and look up pictures on certain types. He lives and breathes science and wants to do experiments and projects at least 2x a week. Yay that this book has so many.

J and I are zipping through Life Of Fred Fractions and then we'll do Decimals & Percents. I figure we'll spend about a month or so on each of these books just to solidify her understanding and fill in any gaps. Then we'll spend the rest of the school year on Beginning Algebra and Advanced Algebra. She really likes these books and I plan on saving them for W since they're hardcover and non-consumable. And like I said, I bought 4 LoF books for a total of like $96 - that's less than just 1 level of TT.

B and W just brought home a luna moth caterpillar from the park. It's bright green and juicy and about as big and wide as my index finger. Ick. It looks like it's about to start a cocoon, so now we have another cool pet. He kinda reminds me of THIS GUY and we've named him Heimlich. Altogether we have 3 goldfish, a bullfrog, a snail, an anole lizard, that weird caterpillar, and a really awesome black-capped conure parrot. We're just not dog and cat people.