Week In Review

I’m still trying to catch up on my weekly review posts, and now I’m another week behind. Last week we had a thunderstorm and I heard a huge crash of thunder and suddenly all sorts of things in our house stopped working- the washing machine, the air conditioner, the tv, the blu ray player, the light in our dining room, the internet (ahhhhh!). Anyway, once I figured out how to reset our ground fault circuits everything started working again except a couple things, including the internet.  I was hoping when Rich got home from work he would be able to get the internet working again, but he couldn’t.  First he replaced our wireless connection box, but that didn’t help. Since this happened right before the 4th of July we had to wait to get a new modem, which we now have.  Thankfully everything is now working again, but we were without internet for several days.  Anyway, all that to say- now I am an extra week behind in posting.

This was our last full week of school- so we decided to have a fun backwards day.  Hailey and Hunter wore their clothes backwards and both of them thought it was pretty funny.

Another day they wore their pajamas and both had a blast playing in shaving cream.

Language Arts:

Hailey has really gotten into reading American Girl books lately, so here she is working on the latest book she is reading.

Hailey finished up All About Spelling.  

For most of the year we just did spelling lists to work on spelling words.  Hailey usually did well on her tests at the end of the week, but then didn’t remember how to spell the words later.  So, we switched to All About Spelling this spring.  So far it’s going well and we have both learned a lot of rules for spelling.

Hailey made a really fun memory book about second grade- What’s Your Superpower?  She loved working on this book and it will be great to look back on in the future.

Math:

We played some fun games to work on multiplication- in this game each person drew a card and then multiplied it by whatever the number was that we were practicing.  For example, if you’re working on the 3s tables- and you draw a 9, you would answer 9×3.  If you get the answer right you get to keep the card, if you get it wrong it goes back in to the pile.

This was Hailey’s favorite multiplication game- Each person flips a coin- on one side was written x2 and on the other was written x3.  (You can use any number you want to practice any of your multiplication tables.)  Then you draw a card and multiply it by whatever number you got on the coin.  Then using a colored disc, find the answer to your multiplication problem on the paper and cover it up.  The first person to get 3 in a row (or 4 if you want it to last longer) is the winner.

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Week in Review

Wondering what we’ve been up to?  Here’s a few things we have been working on:

Language Arts:

Hailey finished up working on a story that she has been writing.  She wrote up a rough draft, we typed it, and then she illustrated each page.  She was very proud of her work!  She read her story to Hunter and he really enjoyed it.

We have been having a lot of fun doing an author unit study about Tomie dePaola from Around the Kampfire.  Hailey drew pictures of the main characters in some of his books and we discussed the traits that each of those characters have.

Science:

We started a fun unit all about caterpillars and butterflies.

Each day we read a different book about caterpillars/butterflies.

The first craft we made were these cute caterpillars- which are simply pom poms glued onto a clothespin with googly eyes added.

Then next day we put our caterpillars into toilet paper rolls and wrapped yarn around the outside- this represented a chrysalis.

Hailey and Hunter colored coffee filters with washable markers,

then sprayed them with water.  The colors all bled together and looked really pretty.

We used the coffee filters to turn our clothespin caterpillars into butterflies.

We sang a song about a caterpillar turning into a butterfly.  Hailey and Hunter loved the song and the hand motions to go with it.  Here are the words that we sang:

I saw a caterpillar
climbing up a tree.
He wiggled and he wiggled,
he wiggled right at me.
I put him in a box,
“Stay right there,” I said.
But, when I opened up the box
a butterfly instead.
I couldn’t do it,
even if I tried.
Only God in heaven
could make a butterfly.

Hailey made this pretty sun catcher butterfly.

Of course, we read more books.

Hailey and Hunter worked hard on making the life cycle of a caterpillar.

Here is Hailey’s completed life cycle project- from egg to larva (caterpillar) to pupa (chrysalis) to butterfly.

We watched a Magic School Bus episode about butterflies.  We also learned about metamorphosis on Brain Pop.

Math:

Hailey has been working on multiplication and we played a memory game using the math facts she is learning.  For example- one of the cards might say 7×3 and the matching card would say 21.  It was fun to play and I love it when Hailey asks to play again!

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CTC Math Review

I have always loved math. It always came very easy to me and I found it to be fun. I loved having math homework to do every night.  It’s always been hard for me to understand why anyone would not like math.  So, of course- Hailey has never been very fond of math. She was in public school for 2 years and math was definitely not her favorite subject.  This year, her first year being homeschooled, math has definitely not been her favorite subject. So, I wondered- does she just hate math? Or, is it the curriculum we are using?  Surely she can’t really hate math.  I have been researching math curriculum for the last few months, talking to other homeschool moms about the math curriculum they use, and just trying to decide what to do about math.  Just stick with what we’re using or change things up??  So, when we had the chance to review CTC Math, I was really hopeful that it would help Hailey with her math struggles.  We were given the 12 Month Family Plan to review.

CTC Math is an entirely online math program, so I would recommend having a reliable internet connection to use this program.  You can purchase a membership monthly, every 6 months, or yearly- whatever would work best for you.  Right now, you can get a huge savings of 60% off the regular price!  For a family plan, including 2 or more children, you can purchase a yearly membership for $118.80 (normally $297).  Yearly membership for only one student is $78.80 (normally $197).  

When you sign up for a membership you are given access to all grade levels (Kindergarten- 12th grade) and all lessons for each grade level.  For each grade level (or course) there are several “streams.”  For example, in Kindergarten through sixth grade the streams include:

• Numbers, Patterns and Algebra
• Measurement
• Space and Geometry
• Statistics and Probabilty

From those streams you can pick one and click on it.  Then you will find the topics within those streams.  Once you have picked a topic for your child to work on, your child will listen to the lesson about the topic.  After the lesson is over your child will work on some practice questions.  There are also practice speed drills, that vary in difficulty level to help your child practice his or her math facts.

Each week the parent receives a weekly activity log (by email) that looks like the picture above.  It will tell you when your child logged in and what he or she did.  The overall performance section will tell you how many lessons were completed and what the overall score was of the questions your child answered.

So, what did we think of CTC Math?

Before we started reviewing CTC Math, Hailey had been working on 3 digit addition and subtraction.  When we would work on her math problems together she did great.  But, as soon as I had her do it on her own, she couldn’t do it.  So, I had her start with the addition and subtraction lessons.  I loved that I could use any grade level because she needed practice with 4th grade addition and 3rd grade subtraction.  I had her watch the lessons- they are each only a few minutes long and are very easy to understand.  If she didn’t understand something we could easily go back and watch it again.   Then she did the practice math questions.

I really liked how she could cross numbers out to borrow from when subtracting, and to carry numbers when necessary while adding.  She didn’t need to do it on paper, she was able to do everything right on the computer.  She really loved that!

I had her answer the questions for addition for several days because she really needed the practice, then she did the same for subtraction.  She did great using CTC Math and usually got all of the problems correct, only missing a problem once in a while.

Since I see Hailey still counting on her fingers from time to time, I also had her use the speed skills practice.  In just a weeks times I could see a huge improvement in how fast she completed her math facts.  I even used the speed skills to see if I was getting rusty on my math facts.  In the level 4 group of speed skills there is an “Order of Operations” option, which I definitely needed some practice with 🙂

Here is what is boils down to for me:

Pros:
Hailey loved it!  If there was a day we didn’t use CTC Math, she was asking for it.  This is the biggest plus for me- she actually enjoyed using this online math program.
The lessons were short and kept Hailey’s attention.
I saw a big improvement in Hailey’s speed skills as well as her understanding of the topics we covered.
I loved that I could use any grade level.

Cons:
When Hailey would get a problem wrong, I wish the program would have explained to her right then what she did wrong and how to do it correctly.

Overall- I would recommend this math program and we definitely intend to continue using it!  Using CTC Math has confirmed for me that we need to make a change in the curriculum we have been using this school year.

Want to see more of CTC Math?  You can also check them out on Facebook.