The past one week

It has been an unbelievably busy week and totally out of expectation, we ended up babysitting for 3 afternoons for a friend, saw two eye docs (one eye Sergent and one eye therapy) and went through a very long fitting for a pair of new glasses (2 hours!!). Good news is Den get lots of playtime (which is as important as sit down lessons in my book) and eye doc think her eyes are going very well (as far as her squint concerned. Thank you Lord!). Bad news is her eyes went from long sighted to short sighted in a year (about 100 degree difference!!!) and thus were advised to get a pair of very expensive glasses that hopefully can slow that down. Another bad news...we did not get much time for study, so we just squeezed in some schooling here and there.


This is the summary of what we did:


1. Bible - Den is very good with Matt 6:33 song now. We also managed to finished reading 5 stories from I Heard Good News Today and thus finished Sonlight WK 19 history. At my previous posting, I blog about some of the amazing stories we read from I Heard Good News Today, a friend wrote to me after she read my blog and asked where can she get books like these. Off cause the first thing I said is Sonlight! ^^ We read so many amazing Christian books from Sonlight Pre K and K. Having said that it is very expensive to buy from Sonlight if you live in MLY and not getting the whole core, so I also recommended the following, you can get these from local Christian bookstores like Canaanland:


(a) Little Lights series - I bought 4 books from these series - Corrie ten Boom, George Muller, Amy Carmichael and Hudson Taylor. David Livingstone and Helen Roseveare are coming soon. They especially suitable for younger kids (4+). One thing I like about this series is each book started the story when the famous Christian was still a child and that give a positive impression that all these famous Christian were just a little kid like us. It also imply that if we are willing, we can all do great thing for the Lord! RM23.90 each from Canaanland. You can read more here.

   

(b) Heroes For Young Readers series - It has 25 books, I only brought 4 (all female^^) - Corrie Ten Boom, Lottie Moon, Amy Carmichael and Ida Scudder. I would love to get my hand on Gladys Alyward but it was out of stock when I was at the bookstore. Very beautifully written in captivating rhyming poems. We love them. I read one of them to Den and her friend two Sat ago, even my 3 months old niece was listening attentively!! RM 19.90 each from Canaanland. You can read more here.


2. Chinese lessons- 
a) For conversation/new vocab lesson, I make up a song to teach Den some of the vocab about playground, she was having a hard time to remember all these new vocab but with the help of the song, she managed:

(Tune: 郊游）
游乐场 游乐场 (playground, playground)
滑梯秋千翘翘板 (slide, swing and seesaw)
真是好玩 (very fun to play)
我还要在去玩 (I want to go again)

b) Chinese Read Aloud - Ops! Only managed to read a book this week!! Not good! 


你很快就会长高 (You'll Soon Grow Alex by Andrea Shavick) A very fun story about a boy who is very sad because he is very short despite doing everything he can to grow taller. Later, his very tall uncle show him being tall can be troublesome too sometime and teach him a very important lesson - choose to be happy despite his height.

c) Den Chinese Reading - We have been on and off using Basic Chinese 500 (基础汉字500) for awhile -It works like the Peter & Jane series - build up the words steps by steps. For example, this is Peter, this is Jane, this is Peter and Jane that kind of thing. It has Han Yu Ping Ying as well as English subtitle. 


Recently I decided it is time to pick it up again but this time, I covered all the Han Yu Ping Ying because I realized even though I had never teach Den Han Yu Ping Ying, she has kind of figure it out her self and has been relying on it instead of memorizing the actual word. It takes quite an effort to block out all those Han Yu Ping Ying (I'm almost done with one book and there are a lot more to go!) but I think it is worth the effort.

d) Chinese Copywork - she wrote 里(inside), 很 (very) and 两(two) - words that I realized she was not familiar with when she did her her reading in Basic Chinese 500 Book 3.


3)English:
(a) CLP Language Art workbook 103 - She did Lesson 2, 3, 4, 5 and Quiz 1. As I wrote in my previous blog, she make a lot of careless mistakes during quizzes and tests. When confronted, she told tell me since she actually knew how to do it, I should not worry about the mark!!!


I have been cracking my head, thinking of ways to solve this...did not think punishment is a good idea in this case. Two Sat ago, her friend EE came and play. EE attend Homeschooling Center and she told me whenever she got 100% in her test, her teacher gives her a small present! That gave me the idea. I put some of the trinkets I brought for her (I always buy any cheap and interest trinkets whenever I see them and keep them for "special occasions" - like when I need to have long conversation with friend or Im not well and no one can take care of Den- to bring them out and that can pretty much keep her busy and happy for awhile) and put them into a special box. I told her if she can get 96-100% in her quizzes and tests, she can pick one item out from the special box. 


It works! She checked and rechecked her quiz and got 100% mark! ^^ She chose a blow art kits (RM2.99), we have not had the time to experiment it yet. May be tomorrow, hopefully.


(b) English Comprehension - she did 3 lessons from Disney Princess Reading Comprehension (I blog about this previously, if you are interested, read it here.) She finished the whole workbook except for the review questions. A years ago, this was still too difficult for her and now...it is almost too easy! How much she grew in a year!


(C) Read Aloud - We did 4 chapters of In Grandma's Attic


(d) Reading - I brought Roald Dahl's George's Marvellous Medicine for her (and Vile Verses for me!!) last Thurs, she finished reading on Friday. I really need SG library!!! Talking about SG library, we have access to the SG online resources as well and I downloaded (legally!!) Roald Dahl's Fantastic Mr. Fox CD (1hr) and The Witches CD (3 hrs). We has been listening to Fantastic Mr. Fox and going to keep The Witches for the long family trip coming up in May. 

   

(e) Copywork - She did 3 English copyworks this week.


4) Math:
a) She did 2 Sudoku - she is working on 9x9 puzzle now.


b) We started using a workbook I brought quite sometime ago - Mental Maths Strategies Year 2 (by Synergy Media. RM8.90 Popular). It cover all the topics/concept a Year 2 students are supposed to understand. I find the workbook interesting and the questions are put in a way really testing if the student understand the basic concept well. She did parts of the Unit 1-4 (some sections are too easy and I let her skip) this week and from these, I realized, she still making mistake in naming the month of the year (she misplaced October) and even though she knew what is a "corner", she has problem when asked to differentiate shapes that has or has no corner (she kept thinking circle has "corner" because her definition of corner was "where two ends meet"!)


5) Craft: I found this series of amazing paper craft books from Daiso for only RM5 each. In each book, there are about 19-22 pre printed pattern to fold and cut. It is fantastic for eye hand coordination and kept Den occupied for hours (especially for times in the restaurant waiting for food!!). We only work on book 1 (it get harder and harder) and look at these  fantastic patterns she cut (I can feel my hands are itching! May be I will start cutting on Book 3!):

  

  

3 March 2010

Wow! I have not been blogging for the past 2 weeks! Let see what happen for the past two weeks...

Den and I was not feeling well since CNY. We were getting better for awhile then get worst then get better, it was kind of like up and down. So we were taking it easy and did not study much since mid Feb. After that we went to SG and only back on 1st March.

For the past 2 weeks, we only did three things regularly - daily (almost daily) reading of 2 pages of I Can Read It! Book 1 (under Sonlight Reader 1), one math worksheet per day and piano practices.

The result - Den show improvement in reading (and interest), faster in addition and subtraction and more advance in her piano playing than anyone else in her class.

Other than that, I also have an important "discovery" - I was under the impression that if I homeschool Den pass std 1 then it is impossible for me to send her back to the national school later on. However, last night I met a couple who homeschooled their kids for a few years and then later sent them back to national school without any problem. Hmmm...interesting! Definitely something to look into. However, it might be hard to get into Chinese national school though. May be I need to teach Den BM (Malay Language) after all.

Den was still sick today. Throw up 2 time yesterday. Once was early this morning. We slept really late (sending friends off to airport) and so she only woke up at noon. 10 hours of sleep. I decided to let her have something not so oily today. So she had Milk with oat for branch. We also ate a steam fish late in the afternoon. Dad bought it from KK but I kind of over cooked it. :(

We decided to start study today. Since I did not want to stress Den up, I just played by ear, did one thing first and see how she was doing before I decide if we were going to continue or not.

We started with Sonlight Week 8 verse. We still have not finish week 7 yet but Den can memorize wk 7 verse very well already. The verse for week 8 is quite easy...compared to some of the previous weeks:

Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the LORD, your God is giving you. ~ Exodus 20:12

Since it is so easy, I did not let her listen to the Verse CD.

After that we did a math worksheet, it has more challenging addition and subtraction question like 19- ? =5. I also taught her some short cut like for example in a series of question like :

15-9= 6

15-8= 7 (instead of counting from the beginning, just plus one from the answer above)

She understood the concept and was able to do it. I will come up with a few more questions like this and let her work on it tomorrow.

After that she decided she wanted to read Chinese to me. So she ended up reading almost the whole book Basic Chinese 500 Book 3 (基础汉字500). I'm not sure if I wrote about this series in my blog before but it is a good series to buy. It come with 5 books (RM9.90 each at Popular). It works like the Peter & Jane series - build up the words steps by steps. For example, this is Peter, this is Jane, this is Peter and Jane that kind of thing. It has Han Yu Ping Ying as well as English subtitle. Today Den decided to read the Chinese and the English subtitle for me. That's when I realize her speed in reading in English has improved.

After that we read about Icy world (Arctic and Antarctic) in Children Encyclopedia (under Science) and we finished the science worksheet for week 7. We still have not looked at the internet link yet (because I have not had the time to check them out until just now), we will do that tomorrow.

We also read about freezing and melting in Usborne Science Activities Vol 2 (under Science) and watched the DVD. We also did a simple experiment to see if ice always melts at the same speed.

We wrapped a cup with thick clothes, and the other without. We put an ice cube in each cup and covered both with plastic wrap. We checked on them 10 min later. The ice cube in the cup without thick clothes wrapping melt faster than the one with thick clothes wrapping. When I asked Den why, she told me because the heat cant tru to the one with wrapping. Wow!

After that we watched an episode of Between The Lions (under CD/DVD). The episode we watched today is called A King & His Hawk.

I wished we watched this last year. This is the same story we read last year in Children's book of virtues (under Bible and Christian stories).It is about how Genghis Khan (or "king" in Between The Lions) killed his bird in anger. His favorite pet hawk kept knocking down his silver cup whenever Khan raised it to drink the water he gather from the dropping of a brook. Finally, he was so angry that he killed the hawk. Only later he found out there was a huge poisonous snake laying dead at the pool (where the water came from), then he realized that his hawk was trying to save him. But it was too late.

I could not finished the story the last time we tried to read this (read about the incident at my previous blog here). This episode of Between The Lions actually due with sad books. In the movie, after the little Leona heard the story, she wanted to hide the book so that no other kids will read this book and be sad. But later on, she realize this sad but powerful story had teach her an important lesson -- not to do something in anger that she might regret later. So she put the book back to its original place so that others can learn from it too.

It also pointed out 10 high frequency sight words - A, The, Is, That, You, Of, In, And, It, To - Den knew all of them by sight already.

Featured phonic sounds in this episode are "ing".

New vocab - comic, fact, tragic, mystery

Besides that it mentioned quite a few interesting phase I written down (yup, I actually take note while watching) and explained to Den after the show:

In a jam; spilling the beans; you can say it again.

I truly enjoy watching the show with Den.

That's all we did before we went out for dinner with my parents.

For review & info --For K books - http://www.squidoo.com/booksforK
Pre K books- http://www.squidoo.com/ahomeschoolingmomjornel