Week 1: Start Up Stretches

We've completed our first week!!! There have been ups and downs this week, but overall school has gone well. It feels great to start easing back into a more structured schedule.

For subjects this week, we began math not only because it generally takes the longest of any of our subjects but also because it seems to require the most focused concentration for the girls. During other subjects, they'll talk or glance at each other's work or talk to Benny. With math, they both prefer it to be quiet and complain about any noises or distractions. Jessie has started Singapore Math 4A. This week has been really simple as we worked on numbers to and then rounding numbers to either the tens or the hundreds. Violet is scheduled to start the 2B book, but before we jump in midway through a math year, I wanted to do some review. We did some mental addition and subtraction reviewing math strategies from the first grade books. We've really drilled her addition facts because I want her to feel solid on them before we reach the multiplication sectionin the 2B series. She struggled a bit at the beginning of the week, cried a few tears because Jessie had started new books and she hadn't, and finally seems to be finding her groove again.

Our other brain warm up for the week was a review of the memory work (Bible verses, poems, grammar definitions) that are in their memory boxes from last year. We shuffled around the cards so that anything that they needed help in remembering was moved forward to be reviewed more frequently. They both did a great job here. Next week, we'll start adding some new cards.

My final goal for this week was to finish up last year's history topics. We read about Deborah Sampson and Benjamin Franklin to start the week. On Thursday, we assemble booklets for all of the summaries that we have done sporadically over summer break. The booklets covered George Washington, George Rogers Clark, John Paul Jones, Molly Pitcher, Sybil Ludington, Patrick Henry, Deborah Sampson, and Benjamin Franklin. We also finished out timeline figures placing Franklin, Washington, Henry, Jones, Clark, and the battle of Yorktown. Today we assembled the lapbooks. The pictures running down the left are from Jessie, and Violet's are on the right. Jessie and Violet are still coloring in picture on their booklets, so I'll post pictures of their completed Revolutionary War lapbooks over the weekend.

Benny had a very light week. We read a few library books each day and reviewed the alphabet by matching letter magnets twice. One day I asked him to show me how high he could count. He made it to 30 with a bit of help between 15 and 20. He was thrilled to restart his schedule play times with his sisters and had a blast cutting paper scraps on Thursday. He made boats and skis for his sisters' paper dolls in addition to a multitude of tiny pieces of various shapes.