Week 30: Starting down the home stretch

We struggled a bit to get going at the beginning of the week. I actually had to assign the girls homework to finish just the basics on Monday afternoon (something we haven't done in several months). By Tuesday, they were beginning to get back into the rhythm. Next week, we'll just have to concentrate on getting up and started on time in the morning, and our routine should be back to normal. Overall it was great week. We got a lot accomplished.

MATH

Jessie has finished up all of the new topics in her Singapore math. This week was spent doing the review exercises in the textbook and workbook. Jessie is thrilled to have completed both of them. That just leaves some review in her Intensive Practice book, and a couple of weeks of Challenging Word Problems before she finished for the year.

Violet has started a new section introducing multiplication and division, which she has declared to be both fun and easy. She finished her work so quickly that we doubled up the assignments on several of the days and accomplished nearly two weeks' worth of work in one week. With only one more section to go after this one covering multiplying and dividing by 2 and 3, it looks like she will be finishing up the entire 2A book by May after all. This week she also finished her lessons in The Complete Book of Time and Money.

LANGUAGE ARTS

We introduced new memory work for both girls this week. Their new poem is The Rain by Robert Louis Steveson. The poem is only four lines long so I expect we'll move on to another poem by the middle of next week. For their Bible memory work, we started memorizing I Corinthians 13. I expect this to take us through the end of the school year. Violet has completed through lesson 17 in spelling workout, which is as far as I planned for her to go this year. Next week, we just have a handfull of missed words to go back over before we declare her spelling done for the year. Jessie still has one more lesson and a few missed words to go next week before finishing up as well. We'll continue copywork and dictation with the girls through the end of the month. Jessie is still working through sections of The Magician's Nephew. Violet copied our new poem this week and started copying our Bible memory selection. This should last us a couple of weeks before I'll have to actually comes up with copywork for her again. Jessie's rough draft of The Lion and the Mouse is complete. We have a bit more editing that we didn't get to so that will have to be added onto next week.

GEOGRAPHY / HISTORY / SCIENCE

In geography, the girls completed booklets for Rhode Island and South Carolina this week. After giving both of the girls the words to the Fifty Nifty United States song to practice on their own, they have finally finished learning the names of all of the states. The last several states are sung to a tune that the girls created themselves instead of the original tune, but I don't really think it makes any difference. That shifts the focus for the rest of April and part of May into learning the state capitals. I think we'll try practicing this at lunch next week since I'm usually doing something with Benny when the girls work on their geography booklets.
In history, we finished up the French and Indian war. Since I had another doctor's appointment Friday morning, we spent an hour on today finishing up. The girls completed maps of America before and after the war. We assembled booklets on William Penn, the French and Indian War, and James Cook. We also added the French and Indian War and James Cook figures to our timelines. The history booklet bags were getting to be a bit over full, so we took out all the booklets created so far and put them together in lapbooks. I'll post final pictures of the lapbooks in the next couple of weeks after the girls have had an opportunity to decorate the outside.
No science this week. I spent so much time and effort planning and having birthday parties for both girls over the weekend that the booklet for the last chapter on birds didn't get typed up. We'll add science back in next week.

ART / MUSIC

No formal art this week. I consider the crafts from the girl's birthday parties last weekend to be enough. At both parties, the girls made paper butterfly suncatchers. At Violet's party, we made butterfly pencil toppers. At Jessie's, we made flower bookmarks. Piano lessons and practice were a little sporadic this week mainly because we kept oversleeping. The girls picked up the tape Beethoven Lives Upstairs at the library yesterday and listened to it today at lunch time. Jessie's reading the Venezia book on Beethoven from the Getting to Know the World's Greatest Composers series as I type this.

BENNY'S PRESCHOOL

Benny got off with a light week on preschool this week. We did add the letters Vv. He did his egg puzzles one day and stuck the matching letter magnets together on two other days. For counting, we did one day of finger counting and counted the letter magnets to find out how many letter pairs that he has learned on another day. He did a Kumon maze on his own one day. (I only know about iit because he left the book laying out.) He did one cutting page today while the girls were assembling their booklets. On Thursday, I did show him how to sign the letters a, b, and c in ASL. He caught on very quickly and went running in to the dining room to show his sisters the new signs.