Acquara Independent School

Hey, after months of fucking around with fujitsu, they are sending me a refund for my defunct ScanSnap. And now I’m replacing it with a Canon Scantini. That should come within the next week or so, and then all kinds of scanning school work goodness will once again come forth on this blog.

For now, Avery’s Goddard notes says it was all about Lego and art today, where it looks as if it was drizzle painting. He is getting more and more comfy there now. All seems well. He was cute with the gigantic (very cheap) bear that I finally let Aaron get at Costco yesterday after he’s been working on it for a month. It has been all bear all day long today.

Leopoldt Action Bear Robinson XL joined us for breakfast and school, then brought 5 bear family members to lunch.

Avery didn’t care about the bear yesterday at Costco, but today before school he was all over it.

Big kids school:

• Read “Wild School” and did back of book activities. Aaron aces these. Naim does terrible. I wanted to find some reading that had an emphasis on content that they could do together. It worked well at first, but now it is too advanced for Naim. Probably will let it fold into Aaron’s individual reading and Naim can listen. Naim can go back and finish up Discoveries in Early Reading. After we are done with the Usborne Box, I may go to the Calvert Discoveries in Reading program for both of them. Or maybe just Aaron and Naim will continue with stuff like Bob Books and the Calvert phonics books. Keep it at his level and he chugs along nicely. Get ahead of him and it is an exercise in frustration.
• We started “Sentence School” today, which is the HWT sequel to “Word Time.” It is essentially copy work a la Well-Trained Minds Classical Education style. It focuses on writing simple sentences, capitalization, punctuation, noun/verb agreement and the like. We will do this book and then switch to the National Writing Institute’s Writing Strands Series for journaling and composition writing.
• HWT was -i- and listened to Vowel song on CD
• Naim-Sylvan worked on rhyming words that for some reason he just wasn’t getting today. But  got in the end. He has trouble switching gears from initial sounds, vowels, rhyming, etc. HOP did the DVD and main lesson for Lesson 13 -in words, read book “In the Bin.”
• Aaron-Sylvan was more sight words like an, say, will, etc. He did four pages there. No problems. HOP was also his lesson 13, tr and dr words.
• Math: played on Geoboards for awhile and then did Calvert Math Lesson 5.7, congruent shapes. Made congruent and differing attribute shapes on geoboards.
• Science, started on Magic School Bus unit bacteria and fungi. I have to prep the pitri dishes with an agar mixture, did not get that done today so we skipped to start a 12 day experiment with bread mold. (Oh, yeah, there will be pics of bread mold!)

Naim using a sippy cup to put warm water on his bread.

Day 1 Observations: White, fresh smelling, soft. No mold.

• All of us (Avery included) went out and played parachute games in the alley. Avery mostly rode his trike, though. big kids got carried away with the neighbor girls who were imprisoned playing in their yard. I have tried numerous times with the mom to invite them over to play, but she is having none of it. She is scared of The BIG FAT BLIND NEIGHBORS!!!!11!! So, those girls are in their yard from almost 7 am to 9 pm off and on all day and the kids talk through the wooden slats in the fence. We are always doing fun stuff and they are bored and want to join. Naim feels bad for them so we do stuff like move the parachute over close to them so they can see or bring the big bear out to them to keep them company. It would be more fun to play WITH them during our “PE” time, and I have said I would be happy to come get them or take them to the park with us. But she says she is not comfortable and she won’t come out with them. So they kind of become a distraction. Soon I will cut a “doggy door” in the fence and slide them through.

Bonus pic! Avery decompressing after a stressful costco trip. (We had to leave the goldfish crackers with Nik! While we took the train home! It was a travesty! (Nik took a cab with the stuff.))

All the big and little dudes I love in a pile. With a very orange shirt.

Filed under: Art, Handwriting, Language Arts, Math, Physical Education, Science, Social Skills | Tagged: Biology, Calvert Math, Goddard School, HOP, HWT, Magic Schoolbus, Sentence School, Sylvan |