Week 3: Adding On...

Another week finished and a few more subjects just begun. This week we added on American history starting at the Constitution, picked back up with insects from Exploring Creation with Zoology 1, and ventured into our new Latin program, Latin for Children A. It's been a good week overall and we've gotten a lot accomplished.

MATH

Jessie finished up numbers to 100,000 in the textbook and workbook and moved on to the corresponding section in the Intensive Practice book. Her favorite exercise of the week is on the left. It's been nice starting at the beginning of a year of math with an easier topic. Her CWP book is going very well. We started our first section of challenging problems this week. I did have to help her set up diagrams for one problem, but otherwise she's been doing fine on her own.

Violet is thrilled to finally be working in her 2B books. The first section is entitled addition and subtraction. For the first part of the week, we worked on finding the missing number in a number sentence. For the second half of the week, we started working on some mental math strategies for addition. Violet has done very well for the most part. The work is a bit slow for her at times simply because she hasn't finished memorizing her addition facts. A few of the mental math problems she chose to work out on her dry erase board instead of in the book, which is fine with me.

Our biggest problem with math this week was trying to keep the girls at the table together. Jessie wanted it quiet, yet she kept humming and looking over at Violet's books. Violet finds it easier to do mental math if she talks outloud to herself. They also seemed to have a hard time staying at the table a couple of mornings to finish their work. So I guess the plan for next week will be to have one work at my desk (which I'll have to clean up over the weekend) and the other at the table. I might also have them run a few laps before we get started Monday to see if it helps their concentration.

LANGUAGE ARTS

As far as memory work goes, both girls have finished up the poem that they were memorizing and have begun a new one entitled Don't Give Up. I believe I pulled it out of the R&S 3 grammar book. Jessie is still plugging steadily away at 1 Corinthians 13, while I have Violet starting to work on Psalm 23. We've been reading aloud the book A Cabin Faced West in the afternoons. It's nice to simply share a book together as a family. I would say the favorite part of the book was when one brother threw cold water on the other after catching him in a complaint. Grammar and spelling are going well for both girls. Jessie is still using the scene when Lucy first goes to Narnia for dictation. Violet has been copying the poems from her memory work. On the right is the second stanza from Don't Give Up. Our assigned reading program seems to be working out well. Jessie continued on in Pollyanna, read The Tempest from Tales from Shakespeare, and The Law of Authority and Obedience from Parables of Nature. Violet is starting to enjoy Pinocchio as she gets further along. She did a much better job of narrating her chapter from The Blue Fairy Book and told me that the chapter from Just So Stories about how the camel got his hump was funny. I'm glad to see her start to enjoy her reading more.

Our first week from Latin for Children has gone very well. Jessie loves to sing and chant her Latin vocabulary (even though it took her a few days to admit it). She had lots of fun using exercises in the Activity book as well. On Friday, I gave her a test that I created, and she did excellently with only two minor mistakes. It's good to see her enjoying Latin this year (and even hear her singing her Latin vocabulary to herself outside of school time).

HISTORY

This week we finished up TruthQuest AHYS1 covering the Constitution, Benjamin Banneker, and the founding of Washington D.C. We made booklet using our narrations for the first two topics. We also added timeline figures for the constitutional convention, Benjamin Banneker, and John Adams to mark his presidency. We may try to find a quick biography to read for John Adams next week before discussing Jefferson and the Lewis and Clark expedition. Our other history project was to make a map of the United States after the Revolutionary War. The map I found online was very detailed, so I filled out a blank map with the information I was most interested in for the girls to use as a guideline. In order to fit the labels on their maps, both girls chose to abbreviation all of the state names. I thought their maps turned out very well.





In science, we finished up chapter 11 by filling in a crossword puzzle booklet covering insect defenses on Tuesday. On Thursday, we began chapter 12 with a general discussion of social insects and a few basics about the two orders of social insects in our trifold booklet.


BENNY'S PREK

Benny's phonics is coming along well. He is confident with his short a sound. His short e sound is correct about 75% of the time. After some initial resistance to playing the short vowel game from the book, he enjoys playing the game and even played a round with DH on Wednesday when he was off. We also started off on our geography theme this week. Since the Olympics are in China, we started with Asia for our first stop. This week we read stories and folklore from China as well as books about pandas. Benny has really enjoyed having all the new stories to read. On Friday, while his sisters were doing there history activities, we put together a panda face on a paper plate. My original plan had been a panda paper bag puppet. When I went down to get the construction paper this morning, I discovered that it had all been used up so we make a quick change of plans. I sat coloring black circles for the eyes and ears on cardstock while Jessie did her dictation. Benny cut them out, glued them on, and drew the nose and mouth. He loved the final result and wanted to make another one.