Four weeks in...September 28, 2009

I did not post from post overload Friday night but Frazer drew me to the star chamber for an hour and a half of reading Saturday.  He is really starting to need a good deal of oral reading to satiate his curiousity which is nice but whowee! 

I apologize for the rampant typos in my writing.  I sometimes I am too tired which is the world's lamest answer to go back and fix them.

Today we had another change of plans but we roll.  After Frazer signed in -- trying to figure out why there are not 31 days in September, we hit some reading.

I have been thinking about quizzing him on the how to spell the days of the week and the month of September.  We have not purposefully tried to teach them as they are not in his syllable pattern but it may be worth a shot to have a spelling list.

He read the 3rd chapter of Henry and Mudge and the Big Sleepover and I read two chapters of The Magic Treehouse Twister on Tuesday for which we also have the companion science book.  It's hard to gauge if Frazer is interested in these because of Miles as he has not shown much interest in storms in the past but we can read them.

As William was working from home this morning and I had plans to meet someone, I prepared some work for Frazer that I would have sat with him as he went through but he was going to sit with Will.  There were four math assignments and one sheet on Virginia he needed to cut and paste to complete.

Will said he worked through the 100 grid easily where he rolled the die and moved a marker that many spaces until 110.  Frazer was supposed to record each roll but it looks as if the numbers got higher and he fell off.  But, this was a mental warm up. 

Next he used the mini and long Base Ten blocks.  Rolling the die to add the minis (ones) until he reached 10 minis and needed to exchange the minis for one long (tens).  He had to roll until he reached fifty which Will said he handled easily.  I need to introduce place value and I don't hink he is going to get it implicitly yet I want him the have a familiarity with these manipulatives so that we can move through addtiion and subtraction and start grouping numbers and working on place value.

Next I left him with two Miquon pages on the various ways in which to make 7 and 9.  Will said this was much harded for him until Will suggested he use the base ten.  I had hoped that Frazer might think to use the base ten because I had mentioned that he could before I left.  However, dad helped with that and Frazer successfully completed those sheets.  Frazer had seemed unsure that he could ask his dad for help and I assured him that Daddy could handle the math.  He said, "Really?"  Hmm....The humor!

The final math activity was to use the addition wrap up keys and practice rote =1, +2, +3 but apparently Will thought trying +5 would be fun.  Not so much or at least not as successful.  He has a tough time seeing five wihtout slash marks.  Yet he can add 3 + 5 on the +3 wrap up no problem.  I think he does well with some rote memorization but he does not the conceptualization behind it.

 Notice the key shape.  One side has a list of numbers and in the middle is a +1 and you then find the appropriate answer on the other side.  You wind the string around the numbers.  If you answer each one correctly, the string matches the pattern on the back side of them key.  Very clever!  Frazer has a challenge manipulating the string but he usually can easily answer and the numbers are in no particular numerical order.

When we went back to work after lunch, I had planned a mini geometry lesson but he wanted to write his riding instructor.  Fairly quickly he wrote a letter and then he got his drawing time in by designing the cover.

I hope to add addressing the envelope tomorrow.

Dear Miss Karen and Sarah,

How are the ponies doing?

Love, Frazer

Wow!  Love -- he is totally digging the riding!!!!!!!!!!

Karen, Frazer (in the helmet) feeding the pony Blue he has been riding and Sarah her 15 year old daughter who helps with the lessons.

no school Thursday September 24 2009

The second day of riding was a hit.  I watched from a distance so that he could establish his own relationship.  He got to ride Blue again and learned how to mount and dismount independently.  He tacked up with Karen's help.  He did lead line work learning how to put his heels down and toes up, and use his seat and voice to halt.  And off lead line he went steering and moving.  Karen had a super way of making a game out of the work.  It was clearly hard work learning to squeeze his legs.  Frazer enjoyed giving Blue an apple.

We went to library after riding and returned some books and foudn a book on CD and matching novel -- Peter in Scarlett. 

The project was full and chaotic today with all members there.  It was fun and the kids are enjoying each other.  Frazer is easily able to focus even with others doing other things for most of the time.  He drew a great picture of a horse with pencils and then used the markers again to go over it.  I pushed him to do another pencil drawing and he did.  I think he presses down so hard that he is not able to control the marker strokes.  I don't want to change his drawing but I want to make his depictions more accurate.

He then ahd soccer in which he worked hard and scored a goal in the scrimmage.

He ate aton for dinner, planned for his field trip tomorrow and and we read some more Mudsharks.

Wednesday, September 23 2009

Frazer has mastered the month of September in terms of the calendar.  I am curious to how he will do when we switch to October.

This morning we went to BAPP to support the kids as they prepared snack.  Frazer took his sketch pad with the idea that he would sketch one of the photos from the album Miles had given him.  He thought it would be nice to give Miles a sketch as a thank you.  He took his sketch pad and ended up drawing the praying mantis in the enclosed netting.

 

His sketch was much clearer and a better depiction when he used his pencils.  Going back and adding marker seemed to detract from the work. I think maybe ai should invest in some more flair tips so that he can have the smooth effect of the marker without the broad and uneven strokes of the markers.

I think he added cardinals but they also look like the chicks from the photo book Miles had given him.  We studied cardinals as state bird of VA as well as the photo album.  Frazer did not say what they were except birds.

Next Frazer wrote Finn a letter.  I did not photograph it unfortunately. He wrote, "Dear Finn, How is your new school going?  Peace out dude!  Your friend Frazer."  he also decorated the front of the card with a pumpkin/jack'o'lantern.  It was sweet and I had him fill out the return address as I knew we would visit our map work after this.  My favorite part was Porter sitting down and drawing a square pumpkin for Matthew and even getting some of the word Matthew copied correctly.

 After this fun experience, we settled into another section of Mission Addition which showed how to add numbers vertically as well as horizontal.  He liked that enough that he asked to read the next section which discussed adding numbers when there are more than single digits.  As Frazer does not yet grasp that any number plus ten is say thirteen or that number plus ten I felt like he would not get this concept but it good to expose him.  Well, he seemed to do okay when I drew a grid.  Note the slash marks he is using even though he can count to 100 by 5's.  Something about 10 + 5 is not clicking with him yet.

Copy of the book.

The slash marks help.

 

Vertical addition with double digit numbers.  Hmm..

Okay he did this one easily.  Little surprised.

This one he needed me to mark 10's and 1's column which I am not even sure he understands.

 

Next I wanted to return to the map work and try to show Frazer how he had mislabeled the map and encourage him to ask about the relationships if he does not understand..  I want Frazer to be able to articulate when he cannot easily discern a relationship or correlation.  With the map, I don't think he knew to look at the houses number of the house he drew but he knew he needed a house number so he just ran up our street.  In talking about it, we just discussed how when you look at your room, you can add lots of details and we you start moving out, you have less small details.  He liked that and then mentioned the google map.

The big map of Richmond I had was not in the map folder -- hope we can find it.  So we moved onto the study of the state of Virginia.  Basic stuff - abbreviation, flag, bird.

 

  He started to fatigue; I gave him the cusinaire and some paper to ask him to make five and write and photo it while I was tutoring.

At bedtime we read Gary Paulsen's Mudshark.  Frazer was belly laughing when I did the principal's voice.

Tuesday, September 22 2009

Today Frazer went with me to chaperone the 8th grade breakfast at Collegiate.  He did not make it to tutoring. We were finished and had Porter to BAPP early.  We went home and had a very productive morning session.

We went back to the final chapter in Henry and Mudge in Green Time and he did a super job of filling out the 5W questions from the graphic organizer.  He needed slight prompting on the the how but knew and copied any words he did not know easily from the book.  That was exciting!

We moved onto crazy syllables ccvcc pack.  He loves this game.  Unfortunately I won the first two hands even though I tried not to.  He won the third and asked for another which he won.  However, he is always in a good mood about it.

We moved onto some addition games.  We each had a deck of cards 0-10 and we each turned over a card.  He then added to two number together.  We did the deck twice.

Frazer also wrote down all the equations on paper as well.

We moved through this material fairly quickly and did Great Leaps which was solid this morning -- trending the same as yesterday 30/1.  Then off we went to get Porter.

We had to run to Ukrop's before we headed home.  We got food for cooking tomorrow morning at BAPP.  We used then used the recipt after lunch to learn how to add decimals on the calculator.  I didn't introduce the word decimal.  I just said, "one dollar and 14 cents.  1 point 14.    We highlighted the receipt to see how much things cost and how much we saved.  After about 7-8 minutes and Porter interupting us started to fade. I finished up trying to point out the savings on the cheese and crackers.  This was more for introduction.  We need to move to money and I am trying to decide when we have had enough work on time.  I think time is more complicated than I expected and that we should maybe move on and come back.

We worked onthe addition of +1, +2, and +3 with the key.  He is really accurate with these.  I think I may him work on these for accuracy and speed.  We did discuss the need to know facts and understand them.  I feel like I am trying to get him to take some ownership of what he needs to know as well as an understanding of how to to apply that understanding.

Before I tutored tutored Tony, we read the book on verbs. Frazer loves the verse quality and was able to point to pictures int he book that were actions or verbs.  The Brain Cleary books are amazing.  www.braincleary.com

 

We read the remainder of King of the Windby Marguirite Henry for an hour at  bed time.  What a super book!  I was in tears at the end.  Frazer kept snuggling up.  It was lovely.

September 25 2009

 

 Friday, rainy Friday.  A day of learning and flexing.

Frazer was to go on field trip to Renwood Farm in Charles City with Heather Jeffery for the day while I get a moment to myself and work with one of tutoring students.  Ah, the weather.  Heather called by 7:30 on my way to drop off the older boys to let me know that she thought the trip would be off but her crew was really hoping for a day with mine.  Of course I felt a bit trapped -- preschool, tutoring, Porter with a friend coming home as well as seeing my alone time slip away and then I realized that Frazer could have been tutored.  However, no point worrying.  Sure.  This part of school is tricky -- sticking ot schedule and being flexible but that is the same for a classroom teacher.

By 8am the trip was canceled and Heather was set to pick up Frazer at 11am in Chester to take him to Pocahantas State Park for fishing and water and rain play.  William took Porter to school for the first time, and I was able to work with Frazer on his reading and math.1.75 hours -- not too bad.

He read aloud Henry and Mudge and the Big Sleepover.  He read the first chapter with minimal support.  Long vowels are not yet in his repetoire but he gets them sometimes as well as oo vowel twins.  He is stumped by -ai and -ea but they have not been introduced.  It sounds as if his fluency has increased.  He has "preread"all these stories.  He says hat he looks through the pictures first.  I think he reads some.  He has been leaning towards the Henry and Mudge variety although the level is about the same as Nate the Great.  There are more pictures in H&M.

He did not want to do the drill deck today when given the option.  He is allowed to not do that with me as that is something he does priamrily with Marmi.  He did complete the Great Leaps but he was not very proficient today 30 words with five errors.  He did not want to retry his work.  I think the greatest problem is that he read like a sight word which is essence good but paying attention to the vowels is important.

With the cusinaire rods we worked on ways to make six.  He independently figured out about -8 ways with me nudging him a bit.  One equation he work tickled me 1red + 1white + 1 Green

                                                                                         2  +  1         + 3

 

I had him write each block equation as number equation and then I showed him a few more ways to make six.  He seemed pleased with himself which is always a treat.

I read Exploring Autumn to him -- at least two bits.  One about the autumnal equinox which he remembered that we went to Riverside Outfitters last Friday night to celebrate and one piece about how the calendar days are related to the year and how we lose time.  He listened to me read -- the material was fairly dry -- but he attended.  He did get the connection between equi and equal halves of a cookie.  He did not know how many hours in a day (his guess was 6).  We looked at the analog classroom clock.  He did not know that there were twelve hours in the cycle of the clock going around once.  I told him the day started when we slept at midgnight or 12pm and when we ate lunch at 12, the day had already gone by half way.  Then I talked about 12 + 12 = 24 and that there are 24 hours in one day.  Half of our day is daylight and half darkness on the equinox and no darkness is longer than light as we are moving away from the sun.

I thought we would roll through some miquon (p. 2 book one).  The page was dedicated to ways of making 5-- an activity he had just done.  The equation 2+ ___  stumped him.  He did not say 3.  I repeated the directions but he continued in a fog.  I wrote the equation 5-2 = and said that the answer was the number and the difference he was looking for.  We then tried some slash marks as we moved onto another problem.  He was still a bit clueless.  Then the thirs probelm was 3 + __.  When I mentioned that he switch addends (which I had only read about once in Mission Addition  on Tuesday) I got the remaining answers correct except for the final one.  The equaton was __+__+__+__+__.  Even with slash marks, and my hand he was at a loss for the answer. Then I showed him the 6 white blocks he had done for ways to make 6.  Then he seemed to get it.  I am not sure if he is missing the connection to the different kinds of work he is doing or it is not totally cemented.  I need to buy some more jello and have him do some of the basic computations in the jello.

Next all he needed to complete was the "Make Your Own" section.  I was surprised to see him taking numbers and doubling them  I gave him cusenair rods to use buthe seemed baffled ab=nd got out the eight rod and began working 8 + 8 to get 5.  He asked me "What's 8 + 8?" at which point I suggested that he decide which number was great in number 8 or 5.  I knew that 8>5 but did not seem to undertand that using eight was not an effectiv way of making 5.  I asked if he was write subtraction equations.  No answer.  I got out the base ten blocks and he made two rows of ten individual blocks (total 20).  He did not count to eight coreectly once I pointed that I gave him the 10 rod to see if he could manuveur things and he just starting guessing answers for 8 + 8.  At that point I told him the answer  by counting the rods with him -- 16.  I then pushed everything aside and asked about why he was guessing.  He gave me that vacant look.  When I explained to him that in the one on one setting he needs to tell me what he understanding and what he is not. He seemed surprised that he could tell him that he did not understand this.  I tried to stress that I cannot help him or teach him if he does not tell me that he is confused.

He had a great day with Miles, Zella and Heather.  Out in the open, playing, fishing having fun.  SO much fun that he did not even stop to take photos which surprised me.  He is also really enjoying listening to Peter in Scarlett in the car.  He is following along in the book some. 

Monday, Spetember 21, 2009

 The Star Chamber!

Frazer apparently had a great morning with Marmi learning about gentle cindy and the magic e.  I will write about these another day.  He is averaging in the high 70's for his drill deck which is great.  He working to discriminate between the various ways the /k/ sound is spelled in his dictations.  I had no idea there were so many rules.

We came home after after dropping off Porter and he set up the calendar.  We jumped straight to Great Leaps.  He bumped up a bit in the number of words and decreased the number errors.

We began with reading the Let's Fly a Kite which I read to him.

He was clear on what was going on and able to predict all the next actions of the story.  He did a nice job summarizing the story.  When I got out the centimeter graph paper, he knew we were going to do a symetrical drawing.  I wanted him to decide how we were could divide the paper in half with out just folding it in half.

We counted the height of the squares.  26. When I asked how we could figure out what half of 26 was, he started counting.  I gave him colorful mini popsicle sticks.  We counted by twos so that he would only need to take away one to figure out half.  13.  He counted thirteen spaces and with the ruler to guide for a straight line he divided the paper in half.  I drew a design with all right angle shapes. I then let him color each separate space with a different color crayon. He worked hard to stay in the lines either pressing down heavily or almost too faintly.  He then copied.  I guided his work by telling him a step by step approach.  First copy the space adjacent to the mine and count spaces and build either left or right or up and down.  With me helping him count the spaces, he knew which direction to go in how to proceed.  We will need to revisit this idea regularly to increase his ease with doing this exercise.

 

We then moved to reading the last chapter of Henry and Mudge in the Green Time.  He is mostly reading independently - with me helping one maybe two words per page.

Before he read, he G.O. without me prompting him.  We need to finish the chapter and use the G.O. to break it down.

I wonder if  his comprehension will be aided by these devices which might to give him a vehicle to discuss the material.  I think he understands plenty but his processing speed impedes his ability to explain what he knows.

We read the first chapter of Mission Addition learning about addends and sums and how addends are interchanging.  the book was more fun than this description.  I  am very pleased to find so many good books at the library the use storytelling to explain math.  I think that hooks Frazer into the story.  It also exposed him to the horizontal and vertical representation of the equation.

We ended our time playing a game of "More" with Porter.  Using Everyday math cards numberd 0-10, Porter and Frazer each had half the deck.  They also had unifix blocks.  Each player turned over a card.  First, the player had to decide which number was greater.  Porter answered this most of the time -- correctly --with me reading him the number -- he does not identify the number and symbol beyond his five fingers really.  Although he got good at counting the dots on the cards.  Every time Porter got that correct, he got a unifix cube.

Next, the difference between the cards had to be determined and that was Frazer's job.  He got these right 24 out of 26 times.  A few times he used the number line but the more we played (2 rounds) the more he was able to computate or know the the addition fact.  The first game Porter won 35 to Frazer's 34.  The second game Frazer won by 14.  I let Frazer use the calculator (something he had been dying to do) to add the totals of both games together and see the overall points and the difference between them.  He was excited to use the calculator.

While I tutored, Frazer went outside with some guidance and further redirection from me on making our street map.  He does not underatnd how the houses are marked.  He knew where to find the house number but he did not put the corresponding on the map.  This was independent work and he did a decent job but he needs more explicit instruction and perhaps modeling with this.