It’s a New Year, I cant believe it is already 2012! Being half way through the school year, I wanted to make sure we were on track, so I gave Ralph a mini evaluation. I am a little concerned that there are several things that he did correctly, but needed prompting or explaining to get through. I know what we need to work on, and I need to start making him do more on his own and figuring things out. We have plenty of time, so I’m not too concerned.
We were having a little trouble staying on track during the day, so I finally caved and made up a daily schedule. I scheduled when Ralph can go to the bathroom, when we will eat, and each activity of school so that he knows when it’s coming and doesn’t get distracted and stop to ask every 5 minutes. It has helped a lot. If he doesn’t finish his seat work in the scheduled time, it falls to homework time. So far he has finished everything on time without a problem.
This week we have begun learning subtracting with borrowing or regrouping. I was nervous to start this topic because Ralph has been having a little difficulty with simple subtraction. I think that is mainly because he just needs to memorize the facts and he hasn’t yet. He did great though! I got a free app on the iPad called Math regrouping, it’s basically just a chalk board with a math problem and they can work the problem by writing on the board then choose the correct answer on the bottom. math regrouping there is also a paid version, but so far the free version is doing just fine for us. After going through a few with the ipad, I pulled out the math cubes and showed him a visual of borrowing for the 10′s place. It is a good refresher for me to, it’s been a long time since I did math without a calculator
I also found another great math app called Splash Math 2nd Grade . My son LOVED this app. It goes through all the math concepts in the grade level as a game. There are 10 questions per level and it gives rewards and bonus points if they do well. The reward system is a really fun aquarium with crabs to play with, and you earn stuff for it as you go. The levels get progressively harder and it even has a report card system built in so that you can see their progress and what they need to work on. The only down side is that the full version is $9.99, which is a lot for an app. However, if I were going to buy a math book or a computer program for school I wouldn’t think twice about spending that. I will see how far the free version takes us. You can buy chapter add on’s for $2.99 a piece, so that is an option as well. I had Ralph use it for his homework last night and he didn’t want to stop. It has already helped him improve with place value!
We have also started cursive, we are using a Reason For Handwriting curriculum, and started in with cursive after Christmas break. He has been doing so well! He seems to enjoy it more then printing, and takes a lot more care in the way he writes. I have a app on the iPad for that as well that he likes to use, it is just tracing print and cursive letter forms, I have a stylus for the iPad and he enjoys practicing that way. There are several different ones, but we use Letter Forms
Over Christmas break Ralph read his first chapter book in his own while on a long car trip! He read the first book in the Magic Tree house series, Dinosaurs before dark. We are now reading Tonight on the Titanic. I found a website that has comprehension questions, vocabulary words, and activities for each chapter of almost every book in the Magic Treehouse series! We got this one at the library, and it sort of goes along with our study on explorers and maps. We got some books about Christopher Columbus, and Lewis and Clark and a few map books. We even made a map of Ralph’s room and the house. He wants to do the neighborhood next.
We were having a little trouble staying on track during the day, so I finally caved and made up a daily schedule. I scheduled when Ralph can go to the bathroom, when we will eat, and each activity of school so that he knows when it’s coming and doesn’t get distracted and stop to ask every 5 minutes. It has helped a lot. If he doesn’t finish his seat work in the scheduled time, it falls to homework time. So far he has finished everything on time without a problem.
This week we have begun learning subtracting with borrowing or regrouping. I was nervous to start this topic because Ralph has been having a little difficulty with simple subtraction. I think that is mainly because he just needs to memorize the facts and he hasn’t yet. He did great though! I got a free app on the iPad called Math regrouping, it’s basically just a chalk board with a math problem and they can work the problem by writing on the board then choose the correct answer on the bottom. math regrouping there is also a paid version, but so far the free version is doing just fine for us. After going through a few with the ipad, I pulled out the math cubes and showed him a visual of borrowing for the 10′s place. It is a good refresher for me to, it’s been a long time since I did math without a calculator
I also found another great math app called Splash Math 2nd Grade . My son LOVED this app. It goes through all the math concepts in the grade level as a game. There are 10 questions per level and it gives rewards and bonus points if they do well. The reward system is a really fun aquarium with crabs to play with, and you earn stuff for it as you go. The levels get progressively harder and it even has a report card system built in so that you can see their progress and what they need to work on. The only down side is that the full version is $9.99, which is a lot for an app. However, if I were going to buy a math book or a computer program for school I wouldn’t think twice about spending that. I will see how far the free version takes us. You can buy chapter add on’s for $2.99 a piece, so that is an option as well. I had Ralph use it for his homework last night and he didn’t want to stop. It has already helped him improve with place value!
We have also started cursive, we are using a Reason For Handwriting curriculum, and started in with cursive after Christmas break. He has been doing so well! He seems to enjoy it more then printing, and takes a lot more care in the way he writes. I have a app on the iPad for that as well that he likes to use, it is just tracing print and cursive letter forms, I have a stylus for the iPad and he enjoys practicing that way. There are several different ones, but we use Letter Forms
Over Christmas break Ralph read his first chapter book in his own while on a long car trip! He read the first book in the Magic Tree house series, Dinosaurs before dark. We are now reading Tonight on the Titanic. I found a website that has comprehension questions, vocabulary words, and activities for each chapter of almost every book in the Magic Treehouse series! We got this one at the library, and it sort of goes along with our study on explorers and maps. We got some books about Christopher Columbus, and Lewis and Clark and a few map books. We even made a map of Ralph’s room and the house. He wants to do the neighborhood next.
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