Weekly Homeschool report-Week 5

Homeschooling does not mean that we have to stay at home whole day and study. One day while we phoned back to Malaysia, my father-in-law was concern about his grandchildren being isolated and does not know how to socialize with other kids. I would like to let him know that Evan and Ethan are doing great and they got the chance to go out a lot ( I mean in public places very often) and meeting with different people from different ages.

I signed Ethan up for the Health Museum science class once a week. Evan got the chance to stay in class for the lesson too. Ethan has the Chinese school every Sunday.

We joined the homeschool group. We attend the Art and Music class every other Thursday. Park day is on every other Friday. Normally, after the park day, we will stop by Eric's office to have lunch with him. The boys got to meet their dad's coworkers and see his office.

Ethan has the online curriculum through Time4learning.com every day. I prepared the worksheets for him to do in the morning. He played computer game after his work is done. They played their toys and go to the playground.

Math: Money
Ethan has no problem in recognizing the money value. I have to work more on his word problem. One of the assignment is I gave him a grocery store price list and asked him to cut out the items with different prices.He had to cut out the items which are below $1, above $2,about $5, items which are on sale, expensive items and cheap items.




Grammar: Pronouns


Poem: Autumn Leaves
Fall is here. Leaves starting to fall. It is a good time for them to go outside to observe the leaves and collect them.


A lot of things we can do about the leaves. They sort and compare the leaves. They do some counting. They do some rubbing on the leaves to make the leaves art. We do some leaves pressing but it has to wait one month later to get the dry leaves and flowers.


We go around the neighborhood to collect the leaves.



Sorting and comparing the leaves.


Geography: Continents and Oceans.
I did some review with him to test him whether he still remember the continents and oceans. He did it well. There is one good link to test the knowledge of geography that we try this week is http://www.sheppardsoftware.com/World_Continents.htm.



I used the playdough to shape a little ball to represent the earth. I drew a line in the middle of the earth to represent the equator line. Then, Ethan cut it in half. This is a good way to introduce the Northern Hemisphere and Southern Hemisphere. Then, another half from top to bottom to represent East and West Hemisphere.



Science: Digestive system
Ethan had the science class in Health Museum. Evan and I stayed in the class too.

As usual, Ethan went up to be a volunteer. His apron is showing the body digestive system. Esophagus, stomach, large intestine and small intestine.


The instructor is showing how big and wide is the large intestine.
This is another example of showing how long is the small intestine.


The kids got the chance to observe the peristalsis process--- the movement of the food from mouth to stomach.

They played bingo about good and junk food in the class.


Art and music class.

Story time during lunch with other homeschool kids.

Art : making collage




Learning about pattern and shape:
Ethan is master in this activity. Evan still have to learn how to make the pattern.

Weekly Homeschool Report-Week4

This is our fourth week in homeschooling. Ethan is starting to get use of the homeschool system. He starts his day at 7am. Brushing and eating breakfast. Read his book until 8am. He finishes all the worksheets(math, reading, writing, grammar, spelling, words skill, chinese) at around 9am. He then will have the lessons from the Time4learning.com for other subjects.

This week is the first week he has the science class at Houston Health Museum. This week lesson is about brain.

He still has his tennis lesson every Tuesday and Thursday. Friday is the homeschool group park day. He met some friends there. Evan was having fun too at the park.


Math: Learning about Money
He did a lot of worksheets about money. We play some money game. I know he has no problem in recognizing money value. I am going to introduce him how to calculate the change next week and some words problems.

Every Tuesday and Thursday, I let him do some math problems online in Beestar.org. This help me to keep track what he has learn and understand so far.



Grammar: Adjective





Poem: Recite and Rewrite. As usual, he has to find the correct words to place into the blank space. He rewrote the poem to practice his handwriting. From the poem, he has to find the rhyming words.



Science: Brain ( science lesson from the Health Museum class)


We did some reading about brain. I have a human body sticker book and he got to find the stickers to place on the brain.


Geography: seven continents
I found the continents pictures from abcteach.com. I lay them on the floor and let Ethan recognized them. He then has to cut them out and leaving out the name of the continents.



I scrambled the continents and asked him to put the right name on the pictures.


He has to arrange to the continents in the right position.



Homeschool group park day at Lost Creek Park, Sugarland.

Letter of the week --Dd

This week, I started using the Progressive Phonic material to teach Evan more in phonic. The first book is about the dog and it happens that this week I am going to introduce him the letter Dd.

We check out several books from the library all about dogs. These are just a few we read.


These are some of the worksheets Evan being working on. He learned about the square shape.
As usual, he did some tracing, connect the dots and making the Ds words book.


Walking the dog trail. I wrote the dog and dod words on several papers and lay down on the floor. Evan has to follow the trail with the dog word on it. This help him to memorize the dog word.




These are some of the bottle caps that I collected for math purposes. I put all the caps on the floor and let the boys sort them out according to the colors and sizes.
We played estimation games and let the boys guess how many of the bottle caps on the floor and see who got the close guess.



They sorted the bottle caps by color and compared which one is the most. Evan will tell me which one is more and which one is less.

Weekly report--Week 3

Grammar: Verb and Noun
This week is the review week for the grammar. He did a lot of worksheet about Noun and Verb.

Poem: Recite and rewrite
Every week, I wrote a poem into a big piece of paper and left few words blank. Ethan will pasted the right words into right place.
He had to rewrite the whole poem nicely and find all the rhyming words out of it.


Social Study: This week in Time4learning.com( a website I subscribe to let Ethan learn different subjects online), he learned about needs and wants. I drew a big circle with three parts and asked him to draw the basic needs.

Chinese: Learning a new song with sign language. This week is about having good habits.




Life skill: Learning to cook and helping in kitchen

The boys are very interested in cooking. But too bad they are too small to cook the big meals so, I just let them help me to prepare to cook rice.






Ethan is always wondering how the soup come from. So, I show him how to cook the soup. He is so fascinating about the water plus vegetable plus some chicken will become soup.



Science experiment: Vegetable or Fruits


This is a simple experiment to do at home. I took out different kinds of vegetables and fruits from the fridge. They have to group them into categories and determine which is fruits or vegetables. To my surprise, they manage to group them into right group including tomato.

There are two easy way to determine the vege and fruits. Cut the items listed above, if got seeds inside, then it is fruits. If not, then it is vegetables.



Math: Learn about Time
It has being three weeks I focus teaching him about TIME. He can read the time well now but still have to practice more.

Art and Music: Starting this week, Ethan and Evan will attend a art and music class offered by a homeschool group on each Thursday. They are having fun there, too bad I forget to bring camera to show what they have done in the class.