Evaluation of Set One

It is hard to believe that we are one-seventh of the way through first grade! The weeks went really smoothly and I'm satisfied with the progress we made.

• Bible -- we completed everything on our schedule and K. has earned her 50¢ for memorizing Psalm 1
• Writing -- we completed our lessons in Draw Write Now, but didn't get the Draw What You See done; the schedule didn't allow for 2 games/activities in weeks three and five because we don't have Writing on Wednesdays; comparing K.'s first and third drawings, I see some improvement
• Spelling -- K. has known how to spell all the words so far; it is interesting to me that she really likes the dictation sentence, and will ask for more than one
• Grammar -- I believe K. has a good grasp of prefixes, suffixes, and compound words; she enjoys playing the syllable games on Learning Games for Kids; she easily picks out action words from a list
• Reading -- K. is reading smoothly and her comprehension is good; last year she really needed a book mark to stay on one line, but this year she isn't using a book mark and is doing fine; she enjoys discovering new words, their meaning, and adding them to our list
• Math -- K. understands addition and subtraction; we found a game on-line that really helped with her understanding of fractions; I discovered math books at the library -- not text books, but interesting books that cover one subject, like symmetry, fractions, patterns, and estimating
• We normally get into church early and play an "I Spy" game of things in the sanctuary. This morning I turned it into a shapes game: rectangle solid (piano), cylinder (drums), sphere (lights), rectangle (screen), etc.
• History -- in history we are mostly reading books; she really enjoyed the stories of pirates; Pangur Ban by Stolz wasn't interesting to her, but I finished reading it myself; she was intrigued by the fancy first letter of each chapter, so we were able to talk about the illustrating that the monks did
• Science -- we really had a lot of fun learning about the Arctic and Antarctic; we didn't do anything with natural disasters or make a mural, but I am very satisfied with what we covered and how much she has retained
• We play a "Guessing" game at odd times (in the car, doing her hair, at the table, etc.). To play, one person give three clues (sand, waves, bathing suit) and the other person tries to guess what the first person is thinking about (beach). I have started throwing in rounds that have to do with science (and history). Here is an example: Arctic, ice floes, seals = polar bears
• Fine Arts -- we read several books about J. S. Bach and listened to a cd of his music several times