Week 26: Adjusting

We've had a lighter school week than usual. Almost all of the basics have gotten done, but I knew we would need a chance to adjust because Jessie and Violet started swim lessons. The classes are twice a week in the afternoons. Although that doesn't disrupt morning school work directly, it does affect the housework and chores, which then have to be done at some other time (we played a bit of catch up this morning). Meals have been another big challenge simply because I'm not used to getting home just before 6 and needing something for dinner right away. One week of classes down. Three more to go.

LANGUAGE ARTS:

Together the girls are continuing to work on A Child's Prayer for poetry memorization. For literature (which didn't happen on swim lesson days), we read sections of Calico Bush (which we also worked on during history time. Both of the girls enjoyed the book very much. Actually the minute I finished it, Jessie pounced on the book and took it to reread herself. For Classical Writing this week, Jessie has begun rewriting the fable The Fox and the Crow. I'm trying to get her to stretch the story a bit with her imagination by amplifying the dialogue. It's been slow going so far. I think we'll continue working on it for a day or two next week before writing a final draft. She also finished her critical thinking for the year. YEAH!! One subject down. In grammar, she's having some difficulty distinguishing between adjectives and adverbs. I think that all the different questions that R&S uses for introducing the two have her a bit confused. We went back to straight definitions from FLL for nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. She could tell me what word it described. Then we took that word and figured out if it was a noun or verb, which then told us whether the word in questions was an adjective or adverb. We may take a break from grammar next week and do some more diagramming and just marking parts of speech in sentences for some more practice. On the right is a page of Violet's copywork from our current poem.

MATH:

The has been mostly a review week for both girls. Jessie had 3 days of cumulative review in the textbook and workbook. Friday, she started a new math section on time. Most of this should be review, so we'll try picking up the pace next week. Violet spent 4 days reviewing addition with regrouping and subtraction with borrowing with exercises in the textbook. The second day, I checked her paper, and it looked like she had forgotten everything she has learned in the section (which I found strange since the first review page had been fine). It turned out that she just wasn't in the mood to do school that day so she was just slapping numbers down without putting much thought into her work in order to call it done. When called on her sloppy work, she claimed that she didn't understand and it was too hard. It made for a very long morning. I'm happy to say her work was much better the next few days. This morning her only mistake was in miscopying a number from the last word problem, so we'll just keep chugging slowly along through the section. On the right is a multiplication table out of her Miquon book. There was a page for each number. On the top was a hundred chart with blanks to fill in skip counting according to the number. On the bottom was a multiplication chart with only the row and column of that number to fill in. Here's the end result.

GEOGRAPHY / HISTORY / SCIENCE

We picked up the geography pace this week adding geography into the time slot on Tuesday and Thursday that used to be critical thinking. Tuesday, both girls decided to do the entire New Mexico booklet instead of just the first half. While they are still enjoying the lapbook, I can see the "it's almost spring, let's get this work done" attitude starting to creep into their work. I think it's because I have all of the booklets printed, so they know exactly what is left to accomplish. Having the end in site is always a great motivator for them. We'll just go at their pace and see when we finish. This week's booklets were New Jersey, New Mexico, and New York.

For history, we basically took a week off. We spent part of the time finishing up Calico Bush and Friday playing with friends. I didn't have the mapwork ready for the French and Indian War anyway. I think we might take Monday to assemble all of our booklets so far into our lapbook. (Hmm. That means I need to type up those summaries of William Penn.) The bags are getting pretty full and we still have the French and Indian war and the War of Independence at least to do for this year.

Science is going great. The shorter lessons in the Apologia book using my homemade booklets combined with the "Peter Rabbit stories" as my kids call them (aka The Burgess Bird Book for Children) have made science a new favorite subject. No extras this week because it's been so busy. The migration booklets that we made are pictured on the right.

ART / MUSIC

No art this week. Music appreciation got done simply because the kids chose to do it. I checked out two Classical Kids tapes for Mozart. Wednesday afternoon, all 3 decided to listen to the first tape without any prompting from me. It is titled Mozart's Magic Fantasy. Jessie is really showing an interest in classical music. She loves the Masters of Classical Music cds that we have, but rarely gets to listen to them because no one else wants to listen with her. I think next week, I'll offer to let her borrow my portable cd player with headphones and see if she wants to listen to the Vivaldi or Bach cds on her own.

BENNY'S PRESCHOOL

Benny's school time was a bit shorter than usual. He was a bit disappointed when I spent half of the morning catching up on some cleaning before our company came. I promised we'd read some books this afternoon after nap instead. No new letters added this week. We just reviewed the ones he already knew. The girls have been teaching him how to spell words with the magnets on the refridgerator. Benny's been a good sport about it, so I haven't said anything to the girls about the lessons being too hard for him now. His newest idea for the week has been to start singing the alphabet song the moment he sits on my lap at a speed so fast that sometimes I can't understand the letters. He also hasn't been interested in doing any Kumon pages this week, although he did make quite a mess yesterday cutting up some of his sister's geography scraps into tiny pieces. No pictures this week for Benny.