Box Day

Today brought a long awaited box day.  I purchased the remaining items we will need for the rest of this school year that we should finish by the end of July.  I switched my oldest son’s Greek curriculum earlier this year to Athenaze.  We have been using a library copy of Athenaze with no teacher’s edition for a couple months.  Now that we have the teacher’s edition we can check our answers and learn the grammar portions a little better. I recently moved my younger son to Athenaze too because the Hey Andrew curriculum was no longer working for us.  My older son really enjoys Athenaze, especially competing on Quizlet for the highest score on a chapter’s vocabulary.  He also received another 1/2 year of Singapore math that he will complete before he starts 5th grade.

My little girl received her first school books.  Previous to this she hasn’t had her own school books at all – at least nothing she can hold in her hands and flip through.  Needless to say she could hardly contain her joy when the “box man” was at our door completing the paperwork for customs fees.

She received two Singapore Essential Math books and two Steck-Vaughn Phonics books.  The second math book is a little pink which pleased her very much.

Peeking at her new phonics book.  I wanted something somewhat simple and yet suitable for a young child.  Steck-Vaughn seems to be a good choice for her.  It goes over all the letters and the sounds they make in the first book.  Plus she will get to practice writing each letter.  She is just starting to read and write CVC words now, but I think starting with something easy and fun will build up her confidence and enjoyment of phonics and reading.  We are also doing Getting Ready to Read for phonemic awareness.  It doesn’t involve writing so it is a bit easier to incorporate it into play.  It has helped her learn to rhyme and clap the syllables in a word.  It is now having her spell CVC words with letters.

My younger son is the primary reason I purchased Hands-On Equations.  It is a hands-on visual introduction to algebraic concepts.  It teaches the child to balance equations using manipulatives.  My middle child is a visual-spatial learner and has a knack for figuring in his head.  He isn’t ready to speed ahead in his math program so we branch out to give him a broad base in math.  Today, for instance, he did a lesson in Singapore followed by playing around with a fractal program on the computer and then he attempted to complete two complex tanagram pictures.  I think Hands-On Equations will approach math in a way he will understand.  Both of my boys will be using the program

We have about 15 weeks of school left this school year. We have had very few breaks since Christmas so we are chugging along quite well.  We have a couple days off this month though and we will probably have a couple more before we are done with the school year.