Week 18: A short week, but a good start

I had intended to start up on Monday and run a full school week, but I decided instead to catch up on a few things around the house Monday and Tuesday. Overall, our shortened week went very well (with only a few groans about having to do school work). Although we haven't tried the whole schedule yet, the portions that we have used seem to be working very well. We'll see how next we goes when everything gets added back in the loop.

MATH
Both of the girls did 3 days of math work this week. Jessie spent two days working with and converting between pounds and ounces. This morning she started the weight section of the Intensive Practice book. I did get a good silent chuckle out of the first page she did this morning. Problem one wanted her to match up a person or object on the left with an estimated weight on the right. She matched up a man with just over 300 ounces and a watermelon with 160 pounds. (Can you imagine one that big?) We worked through the problem together ranking the column in the left in order from lightest to heaviest. Then I just had to tell her that pound was a lot closer to a kilogram than a gram, and she did fine. In Miquon, she is working on another section of fractions. (The only Miquon section known to cause tears and frustration at this point.) I had to help her convert a couple of fraction but on the whole it went much better than it ever has.
Violet started back in the Singapore 1B section on addition and subtraction within 100 which we are working through a second time before moving through to the next book. So far she hasn't needed my help and has finished quickly with only a couple of careless mistakes. It may not take us as long to review this section as I had thought, but we'll just continue to play it by ear for a couple of weeks. She did finish up her Miquon Red book today and is excited to have a new book to start next week.

LANGUAGE ARTS
We did do some combining in language arts this week to put in a full week of work. Jessie did a weeks worth of spelling, grammar, and CW in 3 days. She did get a week off from Latin, no new memory work, and no literature this week. For handwriting, we did one day of copywork with some spelling words and two days of dictation which I thought went very well. Violet also did a full week of spelling, but only 3 days worth of copywork. (One day of which came straight from the VeggieTales video that Benny was watching.) She still hasn't made connections in her memory work between the reference for her Bible verses and the verses themselves. I'm really not sure what to do with her Bible memory work at this point.

HISTORY / GEOGRAPHY
History and geography were both very laid back this week. For history we read a couple of short books on woodland indians just for fun. Geography we just did part of the Maine booklet. We'll wait until next week to add in science.

ART / MUSIC
I spared DH, who had the entire week off, from listening to the Classical Kids Bach tape since he is not a classical music fan. We'll start that up again next week when he goes back to work. The only art that the girls did was to draw on the new easel from Grandma which is down in the basement. I'm going to try to move most of the art supplies down there this weekend and set up a little art area over in the corner (at least for the messier things like playdough and paint).

BENNY'S PRESCHOOL
Benny and I did 2 days of preschool this week. He still loves playing with the numbered cups. One day I decided to try putting the snap cubes in the cups instead of the game chips that we've been using. It turns out that he had a harder time counting with them all snapped together. He's recognizing all of the number from 1-7 now but doesn't want to take the time to count out the chips for 5-7. We'll work on this more next week. He's making progress with the alphabet. We're still learning G and H, but at least now I can ask if the letter is a G or an H and he can pick the correct answer. No pictures this week for Benny. I think we'll pull out some new letter games for next week to make things more interesting.