Fall-Winter 2007 Homeschool Assessment, for our portfolio

Well....I got kind of slack with hs blogging. It's just been a crazy time. First, we all got sick with various things that seemed to stagger so that someone was always sick. Then, there was the holiday craziness. Finally, we're all in a rut living in this apartment. Whenever we visit the new house that's being built, T cries when it's time to leave. I think we're all desperate to have our own house again, where we can make as much noise as we want, spread out as much as we want, make messes and have a yard to play in. It's looking like two more months on the house front.

So I find myself at the end of the homeschooling fall-winter session already, where I have to record B's progress for legal purposes. I don't have to turn it in, but I have to keep it in his personal portfolio at home, by law. So, while I'm thinking of it, here is what I have for B in fall-winter 2007, "first grade".

**Language Arts:
-Although B doesn't sit and read for pleasure yet, he reads at or above grade level. He frequently points out words that he's read. A recent example is reading a magnet, announcing it said, "Polish Art Kenter (Polish Art Center)". He seems to have gone from laboriously sounding words out to reading small words effortlessly and quickly.
-B frequently writes, using inventive spelling that follows phonetic concepts. Example: Hee floo uwae (he flew away). He enjoys writing small books and making greeting cards for people. I posted an example of one in this blog not that long ago. I'm keeping samples of his work.
-B still writes some of his letters backwards.

**Maths:
-I have not formally assessed his ability in this area, but I plan on doing so in the new house when our lives are a bit more normal. I know that he can mentally add sums up to 10 or 15 in his head. He can add single digits to double digit numbers (e.g. 24+4) if he counts out loud (25...26...27...28). In the past, he has added single digits to double-digit numbers without counting but those are isolated incidents. I feel confident that he's at grade level for math. He's taking an interest in very basic multiplication, mostly the doubles of numbers. He often asks things like, "What are two 8s?"
-I consider spatial skills pertinent to Lego building to fall into this area. It's pre-engineering or something like that. He frequently builds very complex Duplo creations. They are structurally sound, very complex and sometimes contain moving parts. He's going to enter a Lego contest in February.
-B started getting an allowance, which has helped him develop math skills. He is now more interested in how much things cost and how to read price tags. He took a loan from us at one point and had to repay it. While we did not charge him interest, we talked about what an interest-free loan meant, which led to some interesting discussions about how banks work.

**Arts:
-B has taken two art classes this past semester. One was a drawing class that focused on shading techniques. The other was a class about making things from paper. B learned art techniques and terminology such as "photo montage". He also learned about some famous artists, such as Pablo Picasso. We have made several trips to the Art Museum.
-B frequently draws and makes 3d paper creations at home. He would do more with other supplies if we had the space for it. He wants to make a robot out of metal cans and other parts.
-We listen to a wide variety of music, such as jazz, African music, classical music, Latin jazz and opera. We discuss some elements in the music. We try to identify which instruments we can hear in classical pieces. We recently watched a bell choir holiday concert on TV. B has expressed an interest in taking violin lessons. Thanks to the 'Little Einsteins" cartoon, he has an awareness of some composers' names; often, they are composers that we have listened to in the car and we talk about that.
-B acted in a Christmas pageant.

**Social Studies:
We don't have a systematic approach to history, but we have a lot of interesting conversations.
-- We've had many detailed conversations about the Vikings, with connections to geography. B is very interested in the Vikings and he can identify their origins and many destinations on a map.
--We've had some detailed conversations about Egyptian mummies and how they were made. We saw a Reading Rainbow episode on this topic and we paused the show many times to discuss things related to it. We have talked about hieroglyphics and we've looked at examples.
--We've talked about slavery, segregation and integration, after watching a Reading Rainbow episode together. We talked about this in relation to our community. We kept it on a very high level.
--We've talked about Jewish culture, on a very high level. We saw a Reading Rainbow episode about Levar's Jewish friend; they made challah bread together. And B drew a picture of a menorah after watching a Blue's Room episode about the holidays.
--We've talked about poverty and we volunteered to buy Christmas presents for a needy boy B's age.
--We've talked about taxes on a high level. We've talked about some things in our community that are funded by taxes, like our local recycling facility. We took a field trip to a local recycling center.
-B remains very interested in world geography.

Foreign Languages
-We have been working on learning some Spanish. We have watched Spanish TV shows, such as "Plaza Sesamo". We have watched the Muzzy Spanish CD. We have learned some Spanish phrases together. I have read them well-known books in Spanish, such as "Good Night Moon" and "Harold and the Purple Crayon". The kids have learned a Spanish song from the Dragontales cartoon: "Buenos dias, buenos dias. Como esta? Como esta? Muy bien, gracias. Muy bien, gracias. Y usted? Y usted?" They understand what the phrases in the song mean in English.
-The kids have also learned some German, after choosing the Muzzy German tape from the library. They have learned the phrases: Ich bin (name), Ich haba hunger, nein, gross and klein. B has also learned how to say, "Good afternoon" but I don't know how to spell it. Dh has taught them some Bavarian greetings. B recently had the chance to speak some German with real Germans.
-We have very briefly spoken about other languages and tried to associate some geographic locations with them. There has been a very brief exposure to Chinese, Polish (they learned the word for "man"), French and Russian.

**Science:
-We've dissected owl pellets, but we have not yet reassembled the rodent skeleton as B hopes to do.
-We've taken some field trips to science museums.
-B drew many detailed anatomy pictures from memory, after browsing through (reading??) his DK anatomy books. He can correctly draw and name the: heart, lungs, brain, brain stem, liver, gallbladder (he doesn't know the name for this one), stomach, intestines, colon (he doesn't know the name for this), and appendix.
-We've read about animal cells vs plant cells, on a very high level. B made an animal cell from cardboard. He remembers that they have a nucleus and he remembers the term "organelles".

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I cannot think of anything else that I should record here, so I'll leave it at this. What I need to do now is buy some pocket folders like I did last year, so I can organize the samples of his work.