Russia, Grizzly Bears,' Long O', Adding Zero

Art: Here's G's beautiful grizzly bear. There's also an owl in the conifers (pine trees). He did the bear all on his own without my help (he usually asks for help), so this was a breakthrough with drawing animals!

Literature/Geography/Science: We read more stories from and about Russia and grizzly bears.

Language Arts: We did McRuffy 1 lessons 16-20. The focus was on the 'long o' sound spelled with 'silent e' and 'oa'. The reader was called No Toast, and this one was quite funny. I even laughed out loud to my self while pre-reading it. It had a lot of things that G loves...a fire engine, putting out a fire, a bulldozer, mud, oats, and more. What an adventure Ruff and Violet go on to get some toast! He is reading so well and fluently now, I am impressed! The ten spelling words were hard because memorization is the only way of knowing if a 'long o' word is spelled with a 'silent e' or 'oa'. After writing it wrong, he realized it and changed it, on three of the words on the spelling test. He's doing great with McRuffy 1 so far.

Math: We did CLE 1 lessons 16-20. We introduced identifying a point, practiced greater than and less than, and G's favorite...adding zero. We did the first speed drills, where he has 2 minutes to answer as many math facts as possible out of 15. (We started with 1 minute, but we decided 2 minutes is better for now.) On the first one, he got 9 out of 15 correct, and 10 out of 15 correct on the second one. The timing aspect kind of threw him off, but this will become a daily practice that will get easier with time, I think. He went back afterwards to correct the wrong ones and finish the ones he didn't get to, and he does much better when not timed. I might do it differently later where we time how long it takes to do them all, and then he tries to beat his own best time. We'll see how it goes. We also finished the first light unit (magazine-like workbooks that last one month, or 20 lessons), and finished with a light unit test, and he got all but one right. He really likes this math program and I'm glad we got it. Next week, we start light unit 102, which goes into subtraction!