Tiger Badge and a Cowboy Hat

Just a quick post today to share photo and some cub scout news. Last Saturday, our pack celebrated the Blue & Gold birthday of Boy Scouting with a western-themed party. Here is cowhand, Cullen, and his scout buddy, Dylan, preparing to go round up some bad guys.

Cullen received the Tiger badge he'd earned along with a few belt loop awards. He was so incredibly excited about that little orange square of fabric!

Not-Quite Wordless Wednesday Night

A pair of rubber gloves and a little imagination make amazingly realistic chicken feet. :oD

Super Sentences

We've been working this week on writing sentences with plenty of detail. We begin with a short, plain and truly boring little sentence like "A pig ate." Then we brainstorm lists of possible adjectives, alternate nouns and verbs, as well as phrases telling where and when. (These exercises are from a resource book by Evan-Moor called Write a Super Sentence.) Cullen then will write a "super" sentence, either using our lists or whatever else he thinks of.

Of course, silliness is allowed and even encouraged here, so he has been enjoying this. Here are two of his sentences from this week:

A stinky girl burped in the toy box when a spider was in her nostril.

A stinky sow snorted in Daddy's shirt when I used the potty.

Can you tell the writer of these sentences is a little boy? But he does seem to be getting the point that details can make boring writing much more interesting, if possibly a little gross at the same time.

Gymnastics

Just thought I'd post a couple of photos (sorry they aren't better quality - I was at some distance!) Cullen's really been excited about gymnastics and wanted to share these.

I can read his mind in this first one - he wants nothing more than to throw himself into the pit of foam!

He's learned that even though something looks really simple, it sometimes requires more strength than expected.

All in all, this is the perfect sport/activity for my little monkey child!

Weekly Report - Okay, two weeks really.

This is a catch up post. You get TWO weeks for the price of one!

I'll try not to be too long-winded, though.

MATH is moving along well, but that's not a huge surprise because Cullen will tell you himself that he has a "math-brain." He loves thinking through problems and quantifying things in conversation. We've been learning how to borrow in subtraction while reviewing everything else. I've just started adding in an exercise from Miquon Math Red again most days, just to add an element of fun and to emphasise mathematical thinking as opposed to just rote learning.

READING has really changed around here lately. Cullen wants to read more than ever, so I'm a little challenged to keep up. I try to offer a good mix of easy readers and those with a little bit of challenge for him. Here are the books he's read himself over the past two weeks:

We've been doing a better job of daily WRITING, using a journal whenever we aren't doing a specific assignment. Here is a sample from Cullen's journal pages, where he gets to write whatever he likes:

SPELLING is a favorite subject. We usually do any spelling work early in the day, often in our pajamas. Here Cullen is practicing the week's words with letter cards:

HISTORY has been light this week. The Tapestry of Grace schedule we are following suggests some readings on Biblical history during the era of Samuel, David, etc., but we actually just covered much of that during recent reading for Bible study and Sunday School. I am reading aloud a book about the Trojan War, and we'll be picking up Ancient Greece within the next two weeks.

SCIENCE has settled to about 2 days a week, sometimes only one. Cullen had a blast testing various things to see if they were acid or base, then mixing them together to see how they neutralized each other. Anything that makes a mess is usually a big hit around here! I still want us outdoors more, and I'm hoping that the warm weather forecast for this coming week will help!

We did go to Stone Mountain's Snow Mountain yesterday afternoon with Dad for some wintery outdoor fun. The park filtered lake water and made snow to cover an enormous hill that is usually a prime grassy picnic area. It was warm and sunny enough yesterday that the snow was really more crunchy ice but that actually made the tube run a little more fun! Cullen worked on a snowman while a little girl watched carefully in the play area. We also played a round of miniature golf before leaving the park.







For MUSIC, we listened to Peter and the Wolf with the orchestra on cd together. Cullen has children's choir on Wednesday evenings, too. They are just beginning to learn a new mucical called "The Pirates of I-Don't-Care-abean" or something like that!

Gymnastics and baseball practice have been making Cullen a very happy kid. He loves to move!

I feel like I did a better job with music this past week, but art is the challenge for next week! I'll let you know how it goes.

Before I sign off, I wanted to share with you a song that Cullen wrote for me! Of course, I'll never be able to hum the tune from this, but it was lovely when Cullen sang it for me.

Cullen-Cam

Guess what someone got as a Christmas gift!

Here are a few of my favorites out of at least a hundred or so:

I'm thinking I might actually frame that last one!

Weekly Report - January 23, 2009

We are finally back in full swing with our school work. It took a couple of weeks after such a long holiday break!

Cullen completed the last story in his Beginner's Bible just yesterday, reading 5 stories a day close to the end, and is incredibly proud of his accomplishment! There are a great many pages to that, you know. He has been reading more each day - more pages/longer time. He also read these two books and is halfway through a third about Whales.

Math is going well. Addition facts are coming faster now, and we continue to do fun/funny drills daily. In his Horizons 2 workbook, he has focused on adding multiple digit numbers with regrouping, telling time (in 5-minute increments) some skip-counting and a little subtraction. We just touched on the concept of borrowing for subtraction.

In science, we learned about molecules and how they sometimes react with each other. The kitchen is cluttered with stuff for our experiments, but I hate to put it all away. We'll use some of the same things early next week for testing acids and bases. Until yesterday, the weather has been pretty cold around here, so I've avoided spending any time outdoors. We really need to get out next week for some time in nature, whether sunny or not.

Ancient Greece, at least the beginnings of it with the Minoans/Myceneans, has been our history focus this past week. The sport of bull-jumping really impressed Cullen. I'm secretly glad that there are no local, modern-day opportunities for him to try!

Cullen has been writing daily, either in his journal or a small assignment from me. This is an area that I am making special effort in this semester. He does seem to resist writing less than he did a few months ago, which I count as serious progress! Our short-term challenge, though, is to write something that does NOT have anything to do with Transformers. More difficult than you might think for my little boy.

For memory work, Cullen learned Deuteronomy 6:5 and is almost finished polishing up the poem, "The Little Turtle"

I've let art and music fall by the way lately, I'm ashamed to say. My goal for the next two weeks is to get those worked into the schedule again. Cullen is joining the children's choir at church, so that will be good for him musically. Next Tuesday, he begins gymnastics. (We stopped TaeKwonDo before the Christmas break.) Baseball begins in March. He and Dad are at the batting cages, as I type, practicing swinging at the ball. Cullen is so excited about working on baseball with his Dad that he could barely stay on the ground this morning!

Here is a photo of Cullen working at Explode the Code phonics online. No matter how many times I tried to get a good shot of him concentrating on his work, his impecible timing for goofy faces always prevailed!

He takes pride in being able to "spoil" photographs like this!

Hello, Again. Hello.

I've been terribly neglectful of this blog, I know. Too much to do in too little time combined with a whopper of a cold to really make a mess of me lately. I'm beginning to feel like I might manage to make it through intact, though!

We've still been learning and covering all of the basics on our school schedule, just not necessarily according to the actual schedule. Math, reading, phonics, handwriting are all moving along extrememly well.

I've lightened up a little on the history these past few weeks mostly because I have been unable to read aloud without coughing. We managed to cover Ancient China pretty well in spite of this. After a short break for Christmas, we'll move on to Greece and Rome for the second part of the shool year.

So far, Real-Science-4-Kids Chemistry Pre-1 has been a big hit with Cullen. Then, he has loved everything we've done for science.

He did share with me not long ago that he wants to be a scientist when he grows up. His motivation took me a little off guard: He wants to develop a way to turn his cousin Walker into a girl for at least a little while as a just payback for some prank in their history. As he spoke, Cullen drummed his fingers together and grinned wildly at the genius of his plan. Sometimes I think my son should have been born a cartoon!





The session of chess classes finished this week with an awards ceremony. Cullen was awarded third place in chess (as opposed to some of the other instructional games and awards for class point system.) Before the coach called his name, he said that in a class of 1st through 6th graders, it was very unusual for someone so young to place in the top three.



Now if he could just manage to beat his Dad...

Wordless Wednesday

...never should've looked down.