Ruby Slippers School Update

We have had a very long but productively good week! Here is a peek into what our little ones are doing here at Ruby Slippers.

Spelling

We had taken a break from spelling for while because, well I'm not totally sure why but we just kinda stopped doing it. I think it was way back when things got pretty busy...don't ask me to be specific cause things always seem to get busy around here but I do know that it was during one of those occasions that we stopped it. Anyway, we picked back up but this time we jumped into the list that is included in our Beyond manual. Here is a peek at Biggest's spelling list. She also did some word building on a flannel board set that I picked up at a local homeschool used book sale last week. I got it and 2 sets each of letters and numbers for $5!!! What a steal!!! She also did a physical activity with Brother one day to review her words. And she made sure to let me know in no uncertain terms that next time I should have Big Sis help her with that little catching game because Brother was just no good at it! Poor little fella! Today she took her test using a new spelling program that I am trying out called SpellQuizzer. (More on that program in an upcoming blog! You'll love it!) She aced the test!!

Copywork

We do copywork with Bigger on a regular basis. I use it to try and get her to pay attention to captials, puncuation and penmanship. This is a sample of something she did this week. What she copies changes daily but this one is from Monday which is Bible copywork. I wrote the verse first and then she copied it underneath. She is showing much improvement with her penmanship!

Big Sis doesn't do copywork in quite the same way yet. She does plenty of writing on her own so she really isn't behind I just don't require it for "school work" quite yet. I have learned from experience that being more relaxed in the early years is much more beneficial!! That also is a topic for another post! Right now I am having Big Sis work on individual letters. She has a tendency to start all of her letters from the bottom so I am trying to work on that! One of the letters we worked on this week was the letter 'M'. I have her first produce a few nicely done letters then she writes a big one and then turns it into some kind of a picture. You can see from the drawing what she chose for 'M'. (Okay so I'll tell you that it's a mountain!) I love her little drawings!

Math

We are using Rightstart Math here at Ruby Slippers and I love it! Read some reviews here. It took some getting use to at first just because it is so different from the traditional math that we use in our country but after some time of adjustment and understanding of the method and goal of the program I fell in love! We have been working hard this week on adding 2-digit numbers with sums over 100. Honestly Biggest struggled with this quite a bit. I decided that it was better to park ourselves here for a little while so that I could be sure that she was completely understanding this before we moved on. I finally got on the Yahoo message board for RS tonight to ask about this particular concept and do you know what I found out?! I had been teaching her the method all wrong!! I was confusing her with what I thought was the easy way! Now that I understand how the manual was telling me to teach I think that things will go much smoother tomorrow! This is a sample of her work from Monday. Yes, she got 4 wrong but Lord willing we will take care of all of that tomorrow!!

Reading

Our favorite time during the day at Ruby Slippers is when we have our read aloud time! Whether it's me reading to the kids or them to me it's always enjoyable! Currently Biggest is reading a book entitled The Whipping Boy by Sid Fleishman. Because she is above the reading level of what is called for in our Beyond guide I am having her read the books that are listed in the Beautiful Feet Teaching Character Through Literature guide.

The book is about a Prince who never suffers the consequences of his actions because there was a law against whipping a Prince. So, as he endulges in every rotten temptation that comes his way, a young boy named Jemmy is the one so suffers the consequences. He is called the whipping boy. Amazingly this little guy takes the punishments without so much as a whimper. It really reminded me of what the Lord endured for my sake and without so much as a word He bore it as well. Biggest is enjoying this book quite a bit. Biggest's picture is about the opening scene of the Whipping Boy. I also had her dictate to me what the picture was about.

Big Sis is currently reading Christian Liberty Press' Nature Reader Book 1. She loves this book! She is a nature lover by heart so this is right up her alley!! She has read about Paper Wasps, Mud Wasps and Spiders. She came in the house the other day a caually stated, "We saw mud wasps outside Mom." (I didn't even know that there were two different kinds!!) Oh the things reading teaches you!! She too drew a picture and dictated to me what her picture was about.

History

The children love the history from Beyond so much that we were actually ahead so we didn't have much to do this week. We did read about how different the Pilgrim's Sabbath days were from ours. The girls were amazed at how little they actually were allowed to do. Tomorrow we will do a notebook page and I will post that if I get time!

We did a lot of outside work this week that has been wonderful true life science learning! I will post about this a little later! I am beat!

I love to homeschool!!!!!

Lovin' Learnin'