Week 25: Moving Along

It's been a great week!! Despite oversleeping a couple of mornings and an early morning doctor's appointment, we have gotten all of our work done. We even added in a little extra (see the post on science below this one). Here's our week:

MATH

The fraction manipulatives seem to have done their job. Jessie had a much easier time going through the workbook exercises this week. The only question that the manipulatives couldn't answer was: "How do you know what number to use for the common denominator?" I gave her a couple of guidelines even though the reality is that it just gets easier with more practice.

Violet has been working on borrowing for subtraction all week. We started off with the manipulatives to illustrate borrowing from the tens place. Then we reworked the same problem both by writing it down and moving the manipulatives. I split Monday's lesson and exercise in half so that she could practice just borrowing from the tens place first. Then Tuesday, we finished up the lesson and explained borrowing from the hundreds. We've also speeded up the pace in her Time and Money book which she loves mainly because it is so easy. She was very excited to be learning about quarters on Thursday.

LANGUAGE ARTS

Our new poem to memorize for the next couple of weeks is A Child's Prayer (the words are over on the left under poetry). Spelling is going well for both girls. Violet spent part of the week copying Psalm 1 which we are also working on memorizing. Then she requested to use a section from a Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle book she has been reading this week for copywork. I was happy to oblige and not have to come up with my own selection. Jessie is still plugging through the creation section of The Magician's Nephew for dictation. I think it may end up lasting us the rest of the year. Jessie is wondering if we can fit it all in her handwriting book.

GEOGRAPHY / HISTORY / SCIENCE

We have started doing geography daily now. On Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, it is still part of history time. On Tuesday and Thursday, the girls are working on their booklets during their critical thinking time since Violet has finished all of her books and Jessie will be finishing the last one next week. We finished booklets for Nevada and New Hampshire and started a booklet for New Jersey. Now I just have to remember to sing that song so we can finish it up.

For history, we read the TruthQuest commentary on the Great Awakening, Nathaniel Bacon, and Peter Zenger. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any of the books listed in these sections. We did read about Nathaniel Bacon in Guerber's Story of the Thirteen Colonies. The remainder of the week we worked on the section about slavery and indentured servants. The girls asked me to explain the difference between a slave and an indentured servant. In addition, I explained that even though the family in our reading selection was nice to their indentured servant that was not always the case. We read Calico Bush during both history and literature time this weekend. I underestimated the amount of time the book would require, so we'll do a bit more reading on it over the weekend.

For science, we looked at how birds fly with topics on flight muscles, steering, takeoffs, flapping and gliding, as well as soaring. We cut back on the amount of reading from our zoology book and decided to spend part of our science time reading The Burgess Bird Book for Children which is available online at http://www.mainlesson.com/. On Thursday, we also incorporated some origami into science. See the Tuesday and Thursday posts below for more information on science for this week. The pictures on the right side show this week's science booklet.

BENNY'S PRESCHOOL

Letters: We've now added Nn. Benny does great at matching up the letters. He has needed a couple of hints this week on letter names because he was mixing up G and J also M and N. We'll just wait a few extra days for those letters to sink in before we start adding on again.

Numbers: Benny's counting is improving. He's still skipping a number here and there. We're working on that for now and then we'll get back to some number recognition again.

Other: This week Benny decided to work on his Kumon coloring book. I lost count of how many pages he did. There are a couple in the pictures below. His favorite books for this week were the Frances books Best Friends for Frances, Bread and Jam for Frances, and A Birthday for Frances. We read the other books in this series last week. I was also very impressed by Will You Be My Friend by Tafuri and The Quarreling Book by Zolotow. New for this week, we've started adding a short short Bible reading each day and are starting to learn a few simply Bible songs as well. If nothing else, at least he'll have something to sing to himself once he's tucked in at bedtime other than the Alphabet song.