Week 28: We're still adjusting to Daylight savings time.

We had another light week for us. Part of the blame falls on daylight savings time. It's harder for Mom and the kids to get up and moving when it's not really light outside yet (not counting the later bedtime because it's hard to make your body fall asleep an hour earlier.) As a result, school was late starting every day this week. Part of the blame falls on me. I had a gestational diabetes class Tuesday morning and just really haven't felt very well, much less energetic, this week. The last of the blame falls on the kids, who being tired from the time change, have been taking turns being cranky, irritable, moody, and/or quarrelsome this week. Despite the bad week, we did get a few things done.

MATH

Jessie spent most of her week with Singapore working on a section called geometry. Basically, she learned to identify angles, what a right angle is, and compared other angles to the right angle (bigger or smaller). Since we weren't actually using a protractor to measure the angles, I allowed her more leniency than usual in checking her work. Sometime she called something a right angle that I thought was close but probably not 90 degrees. Sometimes I would have called it a right angle, and she thought it was slightly larger or smaller. Overall I believe she understood the concept so I didn't push beyond what the book was teaching. (I think we'll use protractors next year anyway.) In Miquon she did some pages on Venn diagrams. No math drill at this point. It may have to be a math project for June.

Violet spent the week in Singapore learning about length. She was thrilled to be measuring with the ruler. The units introduced were cm, m, in, ft, and yds. The main focus was on measuring and how the units compared to one another. She did very well overall. In Time and Money, she learned how to figure out how much change she would receive after purchasing an item. We are making progress with her math drill. She's mastered the +6 key, almost mastered the +7 key, and is working on the +8 and +9. Despite knowing almost all of her addition facts, her subtraction is a bit slow so we may add in some subtraction drill for the summer time.

LANGUAGE ARTS

The girls are nearly finished memorizing our poem, A Child's Prayer. We'll finish that next week I'm sure before our break. No literature reading this week. We've had a hard time being consistent about afternoon reading time. I think we'll sneak some into bedtime reading (or maybe over dinner) this weekend and next week instead. Spelling, copywork, grammar and dictation are going well. Jessie is writing a full page from dictation now and actually enjoying it, which is something I had begun to think I would never say. For CW, we started the story The Lion and the Mouse this week. Jessie is still having trouble identifying nouns and verbs in a sentence with CW. I'm considering adding a daily sentence or sentences just to get in some more practice. We'll probably diagram the sentences as well since R&S is doing more writing work and less diagramming right now. I don't want to completely loss the progress we've made so far.

GEOGRAPHY / HISTORY / SCIENCE

For geography the girls completed booklets for Ohio and Oklahoma. For history, we've been reading a book for the topic of pioneers. At this point pioneers referring to the expansion into Vermont and the western sections of several of the colonies. We'll do some map work Monday hopefully to show the expansion and set up the French and Indian War. No official science this week. Jessie identified some blue jays in our neighbor's yard Tuesday while outside with DH. We spotted some robins outside of the building for swim class yesterday. DH finally cut the chicken bone in half so the girls could see how it is hollow inside.

BENNY'S PRESCHOOL

Benny's had lots of DH time this week since he only worked 2 days. We did some reading. He's learned the letters Ss and Tt. No formal numbers work this week. Benny's been going around holding up various numbers of fingers and asking whomever will listen how many fingers he has up. No Kumon this week either since helping DH is always considered more fun.

That's all for this week. The next two weeks we'll be shortened. The plan is to do our standardized testing and take some time off for birthdays, company, and a much needed break from at least most of our work.