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 20:12Since 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
