Week 6: Busy, busy...

It's been another one of those interrupted weeks here. Benny had his very first dentist appointment on Wednesday. Of course, they only do new patients in the morning, so we had to pack up school to take with us. Friday we had the opportunity to shop at a consignment sale. I've tried shopping that particular sale on the weekend before and made a solemn promise to myself never to make that mistake again. It's just too busy. Anyway we're a bit behind in some of our work, but we still managed to get the majority of our work done this week.

MATH

Math for both girls this week has gone slowly, but well. Jessie has spent the week working on the section for multiplication and division in the Intensive Practice book. Because she hasn't completely memorized her multiplication facts a couple of the days were really long. She can work the problems just fine. It simply takes her longer to do them that I had expected. The limited space on the page also seemed to contribute to a few more careless mistakes as she tried to work mostly in her head instead of using the margins or the dry erase board to work out the problems. Friday, she only completed half of the problems in the word problems section that I had scheduled, but it wasn't because she was goofing around. I decided that she had put in a good days work, and we'll pick up where she left off on Monday.

Violet has also spent most of the week working on the mental math section of her Intensive Practice book. She has done extremely well this week. She opted to do most of the work in her math notebook instead of using sheet protectors. The majority of her mistakes this week were not in her calculations, but simply the result of copying errors. I considered writing the problems out for her, but being able to copy problems carefully and correctly is something she would have to learn eventually so we stuck it out.

LANGUAGE ARTS

Grammar for Jessie this week is still a review of last year's material. We finished diagramming statements, and discuss how to find the simple subject and predicate and diagram questions. Spelling has been fine. She missed a few more words than usual at first. I had her write each word five times, and the next day she could spell them all correctly so we kept moving on. In dictation, we've moved on to The Horse and His Boy for our selections. We've started working through the section where the boy slips away from the city to try to meet his friends out by the tombs. Jessie did get Friday off from dictation simply because we ran out of time. For her independent reading Jessie is now working her way through Pollyanna Grows Up. For Shakespeare, her story this week was King Lear, and we didn't get to the Parables From Nature on Thursday because I hadn't printed it out. In CW we did manage to complete the writing portion of our fable, "A Boy Bathing".

Violet started a new topic in FLL this week. We're now working on pronouns. She tells it that it's easy because she's been listening in on Jessie's grammar. She has a few more spelling words that she are still on her list of missed words, but as I recall beginning stayed on Jessie's list for a while also. We may actually make a point of memorizing the spelling rule next week to see is that helps. For handwriting, I've been a bit lazy allowing her to copy off of her memory card instead of writing it out for her. While it may be easier for me, the results aren't nearly as neat so we'll switch back to having writing the assignment on the paper for her to copy next week. In literature, Violet is currently reading Alice in Wonderland. I personally still find the story odd, but she is enjoying herself. Her fairy tale from The Blue Fairy Book this week was "Little Red Riding Hood". She was quite surprised to find out that the story ended when Little Red Riding Hood was eaten by the wolf.

MEMORY WORK

The girls are both making good progress through our current poem, Don't Give Up. For scripture, Jessie has decided to memorize the ten commandments with the kids in her Sunday school class. Violet is now over half way through the 23rd Psalm, which means she'll finish well ahead of her Sunday school class so I'll have to choose another selection for her to work on until the new quarter begins at church.

HISTORY / SCIENCE

History this week was our hardest subject. The first problem we encountered on Sunday at the library. Two of the books that I had put on hold to read aloud were not available to be picked up. So on Monday, instead of assigning the book on Eli Whitney to the girls, we read it together and made summaries. We talked briefly about the Industrial Revolution. We also read a book called Bobbin Girl in order to highlight some of the problems with the Industrial Revolution. I'm not sure how much the girls absorbed this time around, but hopefully we've planted enough of a seed that we can have a more fruitful discussion in four years. On Wednesday, we did manage to pick up the other library books, and the girls read a biography on Sequoyah. It wasn't until Friday afternoon that we finally got a chance to read the biography on Osceola and get their narrations done. We didn't get any history booklets made or add any figures to our time lines. Rather than try to catch up this weekend, I think we'll just wait until next week.

In science this week we completed chapter 12 in Zoology 1. On Tuesday, we learned about beetles in general, and then about scarab beetles, fireflies, and ladybugs. On Thursday, we made a booklet about flies, mosquitoes, robber flies, and true bugs. I personally found it interesting that one fly leaves behind more bacteria when landing on a piece of bread than several cockroaches would by crawling over it.


LATIN / FOREIGN LANGUAGES

Jessie completed lesson 4 in Latin for Children. No Spanish or sign language completed.

BENNY'S PREK

Benny and I spent the week reading the rest of his books on dragons and Japan. He's doing very well with his vowel sounds. We introduced the short O sound about halfway through the week. Then added the O cards to our vowel game on Friday. Since I knew we would be shopping on Friday, I didn't prepare a craft for Benny. As it turned out, Benny came up with his own craft while the girls and I were catching up on our history reading. Below is the puppy face Benny made all on his own. He worked very hard and did a great job.