the allen's: Arrow Academy–Week in Review, 3

Welcome to our weekly homeschool report! This week we were scrambling to stay on track thanks, in part, to all the illness around here. Lucy and I have slowly overcome our colds, but Ty was lucky enough to get a relapse of walking pneumonia. Ugh! Back on breathing treatments again for at least the next three months.

This week’s overview:

Theme – Ponds
Verse – Exodus 20:15
Letter – T
Color – Yellow
Shape – Rectangle

One of Ty’s finer moments this week was when he had just completed this cursive writing paper.

Ty made the Tool Man, Lucy, and I all gather in one room so he could reveal his “prettiest paper ever” to us. He was soooooooooo proud. “I love writing papers,” he said. “I want one whole day when all I do is writing, writing, writing.” OK. Who are you, and what have you done with my son?

During arithmetic this week we’ve been talking a lot about halves. Half of an object, half of a group, half of a number, half of a dollar, half of an hour… You get the picture.

Here’s Ty showing off one of his math papers. Don’t ask me what’s with the goofy look on his face.

Ty’s also been working on memorizing those blasted addition facts. Dear me! It just doesn’t seem to click for him. He can memorize a poem in a day. He knows dozens of Bible verses by heart. He can quote the entire movie Milo and Otis, but he just can’t (or won’t) commit those facts to memory. What’s a mom to do?

Here we are playing a leap ~~frog~~ bird game trying to have some fun while working on those facts. Things were going well until Lucy came through and scattered the lily pads all over the room.

Even the homeschooler gets a chance to write on the board. I haven’t exactly made up my mind where I want to hang the white board, so I’m just using the easel for now.

As I mentioned earlier, Miss Lucy concentrated on yellow, rectangles and the letter “T” this week at Tot school. I plan to repeat this material again next week since we were forced to skip several things due to illness this week.

On her Tot Trays this week were: yellow lacing beads, wooden knob puzzles, a yellow alphabet school bus, a tray of yellow manipulatives, a shape sorter bucket, and various two-piece puzzles focusing on yellow, “T”, and 2.

This puzzle was a breeze for her, but she still enjoyed it.

The monkeys made these letter “L” lions last week, but I left them up since they were yellow. Ty designed and created the bottom lion there all on his own. I was impressed by the way he used L’s to make the lion’s arms and legs.

Our Raising Rock Stars’ verse of the week:

Both monkeys had this verse memorized in no time! This week we talked about the Ten Commandments, so I came up with a Ten Commandment craft for Ty to make.

First Ty cut some tablet shapes from poster board. Then he faux-finished them to look like stone. I made him a painting tool out of a wadded up plastic grocery bag. Then he dipped it in a mixture of black and white paint and dabbed it on the the tablets.

I asked Ty to hold up his painting tool so I could get a good picture of it, and this is what I he did. Crazy kid!

While the paint dried I had Ty copy the Ten Commandments onto paper. Then he cut them into strips. Once the tablets were dry, he glued the strips into place.

We’re still talking about ponds here at Arrow Academy, so this week I found some frog videos on National Geographic’s website for the monkeys to watch. Although they both look like they are enjoying themselves here, Lucy was not at all interested in the videos. Oh well, at least Ty loved it.