This week at Ruby Slippers

We worked on more adjectives, nouns and verbs with Biggest. We are using Language Lessons for the Well-Trained Mind and I LOVE it!! It's very thorough without being overwhelming. She is also working at memorizing the poem The Land of Nod by Robert Louis Stevenson. Expect a short video presentation in the near future! :)

For math we are still working on the following skills:
Addition facts through 12's with our review item Math Facts Now. You can see my review here.
Times tables practice is done with another review item, Times Tables.
Skills scheduled in the Ten Marks program review that we are in the midst of. Look for that review within the next week or so! It's an awesome program! We have worked on such skills as calendars, telling time and elapsed time, addition facts, place value through 10,000 and dollars and coins.

With all of those math review items Biggest has gotten an awesome dose of math this last month or two!

We finished up our history last semester and although I was able to order the next manual earlier than I thought (we got a great deal) I am not sure when we will begin it.

We have also starting a wonderful writing program from Institute for Excellence in Writing. We are currently taking two weeks for each lesson and are working on key word outlines. I'm telling you that the method is amazing!! She is enjoying it, much to my surprise!!

We have put spelling on hold simply because of the learning dysfunction issues. I am praying and studying about what the best way to teach spelling to her would be. It's been a slow process so we, unfortunately are doing nothing at the moment. If you have any suggestions please leave a comment! Any help is always appreciated!

With Big Sis we are also working through First Language Lessons for the Well-Trained Mind level 1. We were actually doing 2 lessons at a time because it was going a little slow for her. We are now back to 1 lesson  four times a week and have about 55 more lessons to go before we hit Level 2. We are still working through Nouns, common and proper and she has memorized about 3 or 4 poems. I need to get some videos of those up! We are coming up to pronouns next and I'm sure she'll be glad for the change! She can rattle off the definition of a noun in her sleep!! She is also just beginning copywork. She's not too thrilled about that but I know she needs it.

I've been taking it easy with math, only assigning pages from a Scott Foresman Grade 1 workbook that I picked up at our local thrift shop for $1.00. It's actually pretty thorough! I will continue to give her pages from that book here and there but we picked up where we left off with Right Start math simply because the strategies that the children learn from that program are amazing and I want to make sure that she gets those! She also has her own lessons on Math Facts Now.

For reading she has been reading a few pages out of one of her The Bobbsey Twins books. She does amazingly well for never having been taught to read with the normal "phonics flashcard drills" approach. I have noticed that she skips some small words however. I am keeping a watchful eye on her for any learning troubles as well.

I meant to get back into spelling this week but it didn't happen, next week for sure!

For both of them we are now beginning a new science program. I decided to try out the history first semester and science second semester approach. We've done tons of history the past couple of years and very little to no formal science so we're starting now.

We are using Considering God's Creation and the girls are loving it! I've started with the God Made Me Unit and we have been working this week at making mini-skeletons for our notebooks. We will eventually add in the digestive and respiratory systems to this as well. We are learning the actual names of the bones and a little song to help remind us what the bones do. It's been fun for us all. We will only do science twice a week so that the girls continue to look forward to it.

All of the kids are working on Spanish with Speekee, yes, another review item. Gotta love that! And the girls both have music practice picking back up.

It's a full schedule but we've done well. What can I say, God has been good! Until next week!!

Lovin' Learnin'