Year 1 Term 2 Exams

 I love writing updates to our school year and continuing to watch Christian and Eva Mae grow!  Before I share some of Christian's exam answers to this term I want to highlight the amazing growth in a few areas that I've noticed!  With Christian, I've seen a real jump in some math understanding.  We continue to use Miquon math and have 2 pages left in the Red book.  I'm thinking that the math book will be something we will continue all through the summer so that we can be close to finishing the Blue book by the start of Y2 in August.  He is so quick at dividing numbers in half and continues to excel at skip counting for basic multiplication with multiples of 2,3,4 and 5. He can invert the multiplication problems as long as it's not an equation over 6x6.  I really like the teacher manual of the series and look forward to using it with Eva Mae next year!  Christian's reading is also continuing to improve as he picks up books on his own to read without any prompting!  I am enjoying the process of watching him develop a love for learning! Eva Mae has really picked up an interest in reading and letter sounds!  Our focus this year is to write the capital letters of the alphabet and know their sounds (as well as recognize both capital and lowercase.)  One of my favorite bedtime activities is having her ask "can I draw letters on your back?"  Who can say no to that!  And it usually puts me to sleep! ha!  She loves to be silly and ask "what letter is this?" and then draws a number!  It's turned into our little game!  The other day I heard her reading a book to herself in the hallway.  She has a Leap Frog Tag Reader and several books that go along with it so she can hear a story being read while I am working with Christian.  She has listened to these books multiple times so her recall and memorization of the story are incredible!  I couldn't believe I was hearing her recite the book all on her own!  She does the same with her favorite story books (Magic Fish, Ferdinand the Bull, Goldilocks and the Three Bears, Old Woman and the Pig, etc.)  I love that this rich introduction to literature is paying off!  It's so fun to see her basically teach herself to read!  We do work on some phonics with letter tiles as well and follow the Charlotte Mason steps to teaching reading.  I have the book Discover Reading by Amy Tuttle and we have basically been following the same steps.  I use the BOB books to help with some of those phonic sounds and blends.

Playing with letter tiles at the breakfast table - she sounded out brother's name all by herself! Can you spot it?! ❤️

A post shared by RaeAnna Goss (@sewingmamaraeanna) on Mar 2, 2017 at 6:02am PST

The past two weeks have been very busy with school activities outside the house (symphony, Dr. Seuss at the library, Bowie nature study, etc.) so we've slowly been working through the exam questions for Term 2.  We finished those today but I didn't take any video this time around.  I just wrote down his narrations and will share them here! Bible: Tell me a story about David. He wanted to fight Goliath.  He was a giant. David knocked him out with his stone. Tell me about the Tower of Babel. There were bad people and they wanted to build a tower up to heaven.  And then it was impossible so God made them all different languages. Two Bible Verses that he can recite are Jeremiah 29:11 and Psalm 100:1-2 Literature: Tell me about Grace Darling. There was a shipwreck and Grace Darling wanted to save the people but it was too late.  The waves were so strong but they did go out in the boat and saved the people that were on the shipwreck. What was your favorite Fable? My favorite one that we learned this term was the peacock and the crow.  The crow wanted to be pretty so he took some feathers.  When they saw that, they pecked them all off.  (He remembered after narrating the crow was called the Jackdaw.) The poems he can recite from this term are "Knight in Armour" by A.A. Milne and "O Lady Moon" by Christina Rossetti. Natural Science: What do you know about nests? Some birds build on the ground.  Owl nests they build in the trees. What do you know about rocks? There's emeralds and geodes, limestone.  Sedimentary.  (he was starting to lose interest in narrating.) Describe your favorite nature walk this term. My favorite was when we were at Thompson Station Park and we threw the leaves in the air and made leaf angels. Here's a little video of one of our nature walks:

The sun is out so we are out! ❤️☀️️ #naturejournaling with the shadows of plants! (And a kitty)

A post shared by RaeAnna Goss (@sewingmamaraeanna) on Jan 26, 2017 at 2:53pm PST

History: Tell me about king Arthur. So people were trying to find a new king.  They were having a battle and the wizard came along with a boy and the boy's name was Arthur and everyone was like "who are you?" and the wizard got angry and said "I am the great and powerful wizard."  They saw the boy and the wizard showed who he was. He showed them a sword in a stone by a church and only Arthur could pull it out. Geography: Christian showed me the path that Paddle has taken so far along Lake Superior and Lake Michigan.  He pointed out Nipigon, Sault Ste. Marie, Chicago, and Gary, Indiana. Picture study: He picked Giotto's nativity scene since we talked about it during co-op.  He remembered that Jesus was laying down with Mary in a bunk bed. ;-) We've also enjoyed our drawing and painting activities

Our painting lesson today - they lasted 5 minutes and then went off to play so I had a nice quiet painting therapy time ❤️🌼

A post shared by RaeAnna Goss (@sewingmamaraeanna) on Feb 21, 2017 at 12:00pm PST

Music:

Best seat in the house #nashvillesymphony #homeschool #powerofpercussion

A post shared by RaeAnna Goss (@sewingmamaraeanna) on Mar 8, 2017 at 9:08am PST

(the highlight for me this year has been all the wonderful Nashville Symphony Young People Concerts!!!) He said his favorite folk song is Hole in the Bottom of the Sea.  We had a fun time singing it together this morning! :) He is almost done with the Primer level in piano lessons and will be moving on to Level 1 in Term 3. I'm looking forward to our Term 3 studies!  We'll probably work over parts of the summer to finish all the reading assignments but we've already been studying composer and artist of Term 3 for several weeks.  I'm thankful for the curriculum outline and really love all the selections for each subject!  It's going to be fun to start collecting books for next year!