Follow Me Monday: Elena

This will be my last time to follow Elena as a 3-year-old!  She will be celebrating her 4th birthday this week. 


Last Monday we went to the zoo for the first time this year.  Elena seemed to have fun, but she said that many of the animals were scary.

Elena still loves her baby dolls, of course, and she dresses them, diapers them, strolls them around the house, takes them on walks with us, and even took them to the library the past two Saturdays.  She checked out books to read to them at home :) 

She's been more interested in cooking things for me in her kitchen.  It's usually cheese or tomatoes.  She took my pitcher and a travel mug and has been making me "pink drinks", too (our name for smoothies). 

Elena says she's only a chef when she wears her hat

Elena also enjoys playing on Starfall occasionally.  She's finally learning how to manipulate the mouse.  She's used to the touch screen of the iPad and doesn't understand why the computer doesn't work the same way.

Elena still loves to paint.  It's a rare day that goes by without her asking to paint.  She often chooses a model for her painting.  On this day it was a toy train. 

 

 

Elena drew this picture of her father one day.  I love the glasses that she included in her drawing :)  Papa took it to his office to keep.

Follow Me Monday: Maria, Back-to-School edition

 

Last week, I followed Maria, but you only got a look at her Easter break activities. We're back to our normal school schedule now, and I wanted to follow Maria again so that you could get a glimpse of her normal school work.

I'll warn you now that I don't have many pictures to share with you. Maria is mostly independent with her work and comes to me with questions if needed. She prefers to work at her desk in a separate room where she can concentrate better. Since she's rarely in the main area of the house where I'm busy with the younger kids, I forget to take pictures of her working. But, to be honest, the pictures wouldn't be too exciting. Most of them would look like this...

Maria loves to read and spends a good bit of her day doing this. So, as I describe her day, just picture this with various books :)

We start our day with math. Maria is working through the Art of Problem Solving's Algebra I book. She is enjoying studying Algebra. I enjoy working through tougher problems with her when she needs it. A little much-need brain exercise for me. Maria was working on a chapter about solving 2-variable equations this past week.

After working on math for an hour, we all get together for our read-aloud - currently, The Fellowship of the Ring. She has read this series through twice since Christmas, but she commented just this week how she enjoys reading it again slowly like we do together because she gets the chance to notice details that she hasn't before. We read together not only to share a good story, but also to appreciate the great writing. I frequently remind the kids that we are looking for the author's use of good literary elements, so that we in turn may learn to use them in our writing. Maria is especially good at recognizing metaphors.

After read-aloud time, we have religion together. We read together from the Seton 5 Catechism about the 9th and 10th Commandments this week. We always have some free spiritual reading time after this, and Maria has chosen to read Peter Kreeft's Handbook of Christian Apologetics. This is a great encouragement to me to always remember to give the kids time and space to make choices like this instead of dictating their entire academic day to them. It would never occur to me to assign such a book as this to Maria since I would consider it much too hard. She has said there are things she hasn't completely understood, but this has made her ask us questions and discuss things with us. She's really enjoying this book and even brought it with her to read during a doctor's appointment I had in the afternoon.

For the rest of the morning, Maria worked on Italian, spelling, copywork, and Latin. In Italian, Maria studied rules on making nouns plural and memorized vocabulary. In spelling, she worked on words with Greek roots. She copied a passage from the book Kon Tiki, which she is reading during lunch time...

 

In Latin, Maria was also studying nouns. She really enjoys foreign languages. She's talking about starting French, too.

After lunch, Maria had project time, but I won't cover her work on that here in detail. You can read about that in my Project Peek Day posts. She is working on several things in that time: a large topographic salt-dough map of PA, a butterfly garden with butterfly houses, and a history project covering the early centuries A.D. She ordered a lot of books about Alexander the Great from the library this week.

In the evenings, Maria has still been working on her NaNoWriMo novel. She made her word count back in November, but she didn't complete her story. She has written more that 22,000 words as of today.

 

Maria also continued work on a skirt she's sewing in the evenings last week. She told me that she plans to cut out one section each evening until she has it all cut and ready to sew. I think Maria's biggest improvement this year has been in recognizing that when she consistently does a little at a time, then she eventually achieves her goals. This is self-discipline that can only be learned, not taught.

 

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Follow Me Monday: Maria (Easter Edition)

 

We have been on break from school for a bit more than a week as we traveled to NC to spend Easter with family, and then enjoyed the remainder of the Easter Octave at home. Today is the feast of the Annuciation, so were not schooling today either! So, I don't have any academic work to show you today :). But, I will show you some of the things Maria did during our break, and next week I'll follow Maria again so you can take a peek into one of her normal school days.

 

Here is a card that Maria made for her cousin's Baptism on Easter Sunday. She enjoys embroidering cards and has become more confident in creating her own designs.

Hand embroidered card

Maria taught herself basic Tunisian crochet by watching You Tube videos. We were introduced to this during a get together with another homeschooling family, and she wanted to give it a try.

Tunisian crochet

Maria made Easter cards for some family and friends.

Easter card

Maria made a skirt pattern and started cutting out the pieces for it.

Making a skirt pattern

Maria made this sketch from a DVD cover.

Not pictured are time spent reading, watching movies, and playing games with her siblings.

 

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Follow Me Monday: Cati

Last Friday I followed Cati through her day. She's our smiley, often giggly, creative, nurturing 10-year-old. She nearly always has a big smile on her face and she's always making something. And her little brother and sisters love her!
During school time, her favorite times are pretty much anything other than math and Latin. Basically, she has no interest in memorizing or figuring out what others have already done. She wants to create!

Working on a math lesson

During language arts time on Friday, Cati took a Latin test on verb conjugations, parsed and diagrammed a sentence, and wrote a paragraph about an imaginary invention. I'll wait to share it on a SuperScribes Saturday post, though.

Typing her paragraph

She loves to write and sometimes writes stories in her freetime. I can't wait to share the NaNoWriMo story that she wrote last November. She is quite good at sharing her thoughts with words and has a definite voice when she writes.

She loves reading to herself and having me read-aloud. At the end of our read-aloud time, she's always the one to lead the loud chorus of, "Noooo! You can't stop now! Just one more page!" We are reading The Fellowship of the Ring as a read-aloud right now. She's been reading it on her own, too, because we're just not moving along fast enough for her. She's also been reading the original Hundred and One Dalmatians during lunch.

Reading during lunch

On Friday afternoons the kids don't have project time. Instead, they go to a program at St. Vincent College for homeschoolers called Step Up. This is a 10 week program taught every Fall and Spring by students working on their education degrees. The kids get to choose up to three hour-long classes in various subjects. It's a win-win situation for us - the kids enjoy taking some different classes and I enjoy going to the grocery store with only two of the kids. This semester Cati is taking two classes: Native American Art and Crazy Chemistry. When I picked up Cati from her class last Friday, she looked like this:

Cati wearing the mask she made in Native American Art

She was inspired by making this mask to make another one at home:

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Follow Me Monday: Matteo

 

Today I followed Matteo through his Monday. His day started a bit slowly, as it does for many on Mondays...

Finish the milk, Teo :)

He did finally get around to his math. He starts his math time with XtraMath, on online fact practice site. I love this site because it keeps up with his progress. It only requires a few minutes each day, and after accessing the student's placement, it focuses on just a few facts and moves on only when these are mastered. Matteo is slowly, but surely working through his multiplication facts and said he recently mastered 9x5 and 8x8. Slow and steady wins the race!

Practicing math facts

Matteo is working through Math Mammoth 4, which he does on the iPad. He struggles with working too quickly through his math and often makes silly mistakes simply because he hasn't read the directions, but rather assumed what he was supposed to do. So, today he was working through some corrections in preparation for an end-of-chapter test.
After math, we read from our current read-aloud, The Fellowship of the Ring. He later had copywork from our reading. He's working on avoiding run-on sentences in his writing, so chose a passage with several short sentences:

"It was dark and damp. At the far end it was closed by a gate of thick-set iron bars. Merry got down and unlocked the gate. When they had all passed through he pushed it to again. It shut with a clang, and the lock clicked. The sound was ominous."

Here is his copywork. I know, his handwriting leaves much to be desired. I had him chose one of the sentences and re-write it in his best handwriting, which is the last line on the page. Then I had him compare the two sentences. My favorite part of his analysis was when he said, "We'll, my 't' is no longer dancing!'"

Later this week, I will give this quote back to him, printed out, but missing punctuation, capital letters, and a few words for him to correct.

During our religion time, Matteo read for us from the Seton 5 Catechism that we read together everyday. We are reading about the Seventh Commandment this week. It was also his turn today to color the symbol for our Gospel reading that we are doing during Lent. The reading was about the poor widow who deposited only two small coins into the Temple treasury.

After this he had spelling, Italian, and Latin. In spelling he had a lesson on words that begin with an unaccented "a" - about, again, agree, etc. he finds spelling pretty easy, and mainly has trouble with homophones, which is pretty common. In Latin he had a new lesson. He and I always do new lessons together, going over the new vocabulary and grammar form and English derivatives. He then does the workbook page orally with me. For the rest of the week he will work for about 10 minutes per day memorizing his new vocabulary and grammar form.

For Italian, he studied some Power Point slides that I made. He thought it was fun to spell in Italian.

During lunch the kids love to read. Once a month I have them choose from a book list that I put together last summer. I do this to expose them to different literature because they would always read the same books over and over. They actually still do this, but at least they do read something new from time to time and they often find that they really enjoy something that they didn't expect to. Earlier this month Matteo read James and the Giant Peach and finished it quickly. Now he's back to reading the How to Train Your Dragon series :)

This afternoon the kids worked on a Cinderella play that Maria wrote. They are planning to present it to some friends at a get together later this week. He actually didn't have much to do during the scenes that the girls were working on, so he watched some of the Blue Planet documentary. He loves learning about ocean life.

Practicing yesterday

Now the kids are in the kitchen playing human chess on the tiles there. Chess is a favorite game of his. The weather is horrible today. Otherwise I'm sure he would be outside. He's always the first to ask to go out.
Later he will have afternoon chores to do, supper, clean-up, and family Rosary. Then I'm sure he will manage to squeeze in some Wii or iPod time before bed.

I would be happy to have anyone link up to this series. I've found it makes me really focus on one child, on the things they say and do in a day, on the their interests. If you would like to participate, feel free to copy the button at the top of this post (just right-click, copy, and then paste into your blog) if you would like, and then post a link to your blog post here:

It would be great to see what your curious kiddos are delving into these days!

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Follow Me Monday: Chiara

Chiara is five-years-old. She spends most of her day amusing herself by playing, mostly with her horses, or by drawing, cutting, and gluing. I remember to have her do half a handwriting page (G-D Italics) a few days a week, as well as a bit of math (Math Mammoth 1).
Here is a sample of her math which she enjoys doing on the iPad.

You can see she enjoys drawing on the iPad!

My main goal with her is to practice reading for about 10 minutes or so. She's almost done with All About Reading, Level 1. She's slowly working through compound words right now. I have to admit that teaching the kids to read has been one of my least favorite tasks. Sure there are moments of joy when you finally see a jump in their progress, but most of the time it is slow-going and takes A LOT of patience. Then I remember that if it's this hard for me, it's probably even harder for them!
An example from this week: My goal was for her to read 15 words that morning. She read two and then we got to the word "filmstrip." No matter what she and I tried, she kept saying "flim." I would cover up the word, showing on letter at a time, and had her say only that part. So, it sounded like, "f...fi...fil...flim!" I finally wrote down three words - fill, film, and flip. She read the first and last easily. Then I pointed out the difference in the placement of the "l" in "film" verses "flip" and she finally got it. Whew! That's a lot of work for one word. Needless to say, we ended our reading session with this triumph. The other 12 words could wait for another day!
She does like All About Reading, especially the activities for each lesson. Here is one she did about compound words. She had to match birds and read the words they made when put together.

Then we read the Fluency sheet over several days. It is a sheet of words and then sentences. I try to make this a bit more enjoyable by making a little prize of putting a sticker at the end of a line once she completes it.

Once she completes this sheet, she reads a story from a reader, which she really enjoys and it usually goes quickly.
Chiara likes to participate in the in things the others do, like...

Nature journaling...the outdoor hose

More nature journaling...snow

Project time

Science fair

And she likes to play, especially with horses...

A self-portrait

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Follow Me Monday - Elena

Elena is a little less that 2 months from her 4th birthday. I don't do any formal schooling at this age. My main goal is not to squash their natural curiosity and desire to learn from the things around them. I also like to encourage them to help with simple household tasks (bringing things to the table for meals, emptying parts of the dishwasher, wiping up spills, etc).
So, what has Elena been up to lately? She varies from wanting to be a part of what the older ones are doing to playing by herself. She also really loves play dough, painting, cutting, gluing and drawing. I keep plenty of paper, crayons, washable markers, glue sticks, scissors, stamps and stickers on her level so that she can use them as she wishes throughout the morning. We do keep play dough in the frig since it's homemade and stays fresh longer there, so one of us usually has to get it out for her. But, I do keep plastic cookies cutters out for her to use which reminds her of its availability. Painting is usually something I only let her do after her nap, so that I don't have to deal with a potentially messy situation when we are trying to get through our morning schedule.

Learning with her oldest sister

Using stickers

Always the happiest when she's painting

Nothing is as fun as a cardboard box!

Love the tongue sticking out :)

Made a face with household items

She loves playing "babies" more than any of our other kids ever has!

Put her brothers diaper on a stuffed animal

Something exciting for me to see lately is that she's starting to make representative drawings instead of random scribbling. On this day she decided to get a bowl from a drawer and put it in front of her while she was painting because she said she wanted to paint a bowl of cereal.

A bowl of cereal

She got her finger squished in a drawer last week and later drew a picture of it. The three E's on the left side page is how she recently starting writing her name.

Elena's hurt finger drawing

I write on her drawings and paintings if she wants me to, so that she can tell any story that might go with her creation.

Sometimes she is interested in doing some "work" like her older siblings, so we get out her alphabet folder. It is a folder with 26 page protectors. We read through the letters she's already done, sometimes tracing them with her finger. Then we sing the alphabet song to find out which letter is next. Then she colors a page with the next letter and I slip it into the next page protector. She's going through the capital letters now. Then, we will add lower case letters on the facing page.

One of her favorite things to do right now is washing dishes. Ah, if only this desire would last for a few more years when she would have the coordination to do it really well. I only let her do this when I'm in the kitchen preparing a meal so that I can keep an eye on the mess before it gets out of control. She's usually good about wiping up spills.

That's our preschooler right now!

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