starchamberexpereience: 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.