Week in Review: February 13-19

Language Arts: For this week, we did our previously planned unit on snow and winter. Our FIAR book was Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost. We read several other winter/snow themed books, Bub's favorite being Red Sled by Lita Judge. We did a whole day dedicated to winter sports and Bub really loved learning about snowboarding and skiing. We also focused a lot on poetry, and read several children's poetry books, including ones by A.A. Milne. We are coming right along with reading our Beverly Cleary books, and we finished Henry and the Paper Route at the end of the week.

Math/Science: We started math out of our new Everyday Math book, the kindergarten edition, and did a lot with our balance scale and sorting stuff. We also have a subscription to IXL.com now, which has been a fun way for him to learn math. We're just working now on writing numbers, recognize place values, and skip counting. Pretty simple and basic, but that's really all kindergarten math is. For science, we're mostly just looking up stuff on the internet and watching documentaries. Whatever he's interested in or our theme. This week, it was a lot about weather.

Social Studies/Life Skills: Last weekend I found two really great books for our "social" lessons at a used book store. One is Visual Perceptual Skill Building, which focuses on paying attention to complete tasks. The other was Tuned In to Learning: Social Skills & Pragmatics for Autism and Related Needs (vol. 1) which focuses on building social skills. This books is amazing! It puts social situations into cute, easy songs that Bub can learn and will help him in real life situations. He responds so well to music, so this is perfect for him. I cannot tell you how valuable these will be!

Bible Study: We have a kid's devotional Bible we're reading out of now. We read the simplified Bible story, then the "real life" application and discuss it. Usually we have time for two in one period. I'm open to suggestions on any good, kid-friendly Bible studies, if anyone has any.

Foreign Language: We have officially started our Sign Language lessons with some basic words and the alphabet, which will take a while to master. We'll stay on alphabet and then learn numbers before moving on to any more comprehensive lessons.

We had a great week learning about snow. To add to our delight, it snowed several inches on Monday, so the timing was perfect. We got to play with real snow, instead of the tube stuff, and have many sensory experiences with it. Hands down, the highlight of our week was seeing the musical, Annie!, together on Friday evening. Seeing that he's only five years old, I wasn't sure how Bub would handle a musical for the first time. We brought along his "busy hands bag" so he would have more success at paying attention and also brought his weighted compression vest, to help keep him calm. Turns out, neither of these were needed. As soon as "A Hard Knock Life" started, he was engaged. He sat, open-mouthed, the whole time taking it all in. It was such a good learning experience and he completely loved it! I think he has developed a love of theater now, which makes me smile.

We had a great week! Next week we have several field trips, so we're going to do a kind of unschooling week. We'll still do some of our lessons, but probably not a FIAR book.