The Lesgaux School

More words from R:
off
bath
agua

T was very hyper today. Despite this, he still finished his work. He even beat the clock during Language and Spelling!

I’m tired, so I’ll post more tomorrow.

It seems that we’re always going off track and getting back on. It comforts me that real teachers have the same sorts of problems. What teacher is able to keep her students focused when a bulldozer is working outside the window, or during a thunderstorm. Katrina and Rita were huge bulldozers.

T worked well today, though very slowly. I didn’t make him finish the work beyond his time allotment. That would have sent him over the edge. Instead, I let him finish on a high note with comments on work well done. He should be able to finish tomorrow. By the end of October, he will be starting Level B in Spelling. Yeah!

D just worked on reading today. We don’t officially teach reading, only Phonics. We read aloud mostly. Yesterday we made one of our rare trips to Half Price Books, where D “bought” three level one readers. Today, he read two of them out loud to me. I read them aloud to him first, then pointed as he read and prompted him with the long words. In Phonics, he can nail most three letter words, but has yet to move on to four letter ones. He’s only 4 1/2. Needless to say, I am so proud!

Today I will start a list of R’s most intelligible utterances. At the top of the list is no. Also heard were eye, and other.

As you may have noticed, my current reading list is no longer on this blog. I have moved them to a new blog, a major work in progress. I want to dedicate this blog solely to our homeschool shenanigans. I will post a link as soon as I think of a title.

Meanwhile, all scheduled studies were brought to a standstill by Hurricanes Katrina & Rita. For the last several weeks we have focused on:

• current events
• weather
• which is worse, earthquakes or hurricanes?
• emergency preparedness
• lots of pretend play
• lots of physical education, including our first try at Homeschool Soccer for ages 4-9
• good vs. not so good leaders (mayors, governors, presidents)
• Can Granddad bring his boat when he evacuates? What will happen to his table?
• Vocabulary (hurricane, cyclone, evacuate, route, gust, rotation, you get the idea)
• Driving in the van at the exact speed the hurricane travels
• It’s ok to turn off the telly

We plan to get back on track on Monday. See ya then!

It seems to take T forever to finish writing assignments. That is, assignments that require him to write answers. We are not yet writing paragraphs, just single sentences, and occasionally two sentences. I need to work more with him in this area. I’m not sure whether the slowness is due to a lack of focus, poor hand coordination/fine motor skills, daydreaming, etc. To compensate, I am going to a 5 day week, so that we won’t fall behind in his other subjects. He did 1 1/2 hours of written seatwork today (math & spelling). In my view, it should have taken him 40 minutes. He still has his copywork to do. This focuses primarily on handwriting.

Today was Labor Day. Dh was home and took the older boys to an amateur rocket launch. They got to see 5 or 6 model rockets being launched, plus interviewed the club members about how they made their rockets. There was a fire on launch pad 12, and D even got to launch the last rocket of the day. R & I stayed home, as he fell asleep right before they left. The quiet in the house was eerie. Here are some pics…

D watching a launch at launch control.

Some of the rockets are very big! This one is disassembled.

The fire & safety crew heads for pad 12 to put out the fire.