Week 9: The Anticipation Is Building...

One more week of school until we take a week off and go for our yearly trip to the beach. The kids have been counting down and talking about what they want to take with them for weeks already. I have one or two things left to plan for next week, and then I'll be ready to focus on packing hopefully. The girls did a great job this week finishing up early several days and moving on to independent work without waiting to be told what they need to do. This allowed me to finish up washing the fall clothes to rotate into their closets. Anyway here's a look at our week.

MATH

Jessie is still cruising along through fractions. This week she converted fractions back and forth between mixed numbers and improper fractions still making sure that each was in its simplest form. She also compared mixed and improper fractions. Then she learned about fractions of a set. She's in the last review section of her CWP 3 book and is looking forward to finishing her second book of the year. (She finished up her first Mind Benders book this week.) Something about being close to the finish, even if it's just one book, is a great motivator for her.

Violet is still zipping through her multiplication and division work. This week she has been multiplying and dividing by 5s and 10s. It's great to see her confidence and attitude improvement since our struggle the first couple of weeks this year. Her favorite math moment of the week was an addition problem in her Miquon book: 9876543210+123456789 = 9999999999. She loved making such a large number with all nines.

LANGUAGE ARTS

Jessie's spelling is progressing nicely. I even noticed her taking a couple of minutes to go over a word she had misspelled in her workbook to make sure she could spell it correctly on the test the next day. In grammar, she has started the section on nouns reviewing the definition of a noun as well as the difference between common and proper nouns. In dictation, she is still slowly progressing through the battle scene of The Horse and His Boy. She's grown accustomed to using the grip and doesn't try to fight it anymore. I'm still having to remind her to angle her paper and keep her hand below where she is writing, but I believe we are finally starting to make some progress. In CW, she rewrote the fable "The Cock and the Fox". This is our first model that was over one page in length (double spaced) since last year. Monday, she decided to outline the story before trying to narrate. I limited her keyword outline to 3 words per sentence and left her to complete the outline alone. She did a great job and successfully used her outline to narrate to me on Tuesday. In literature, she has started reading The Light Princess by George MacDonald. It is a nice short read, which we'll finish before vacation. She still loves reading Tales From Shakespeare on Tuesdays. This weeks selection was "Romeo and Juliet". I am considering dropping Parables From Nature on Thursdays and look for something else to substitute. Maybe a day of poetry reading??? Frankly we both find the stories a bit boring. Plus I keep forgetting to print them out.

Violet's spelling is going very well. Last night the girls came across Violet's diary from a couple of years ago and spent about an hour laughing and joking about the difference between what she meant to write and what she actually wrote. In grammar this week, we wrapped up nouns and pronouns. Tuesday we looked through the fable "A Bundle of Sticks" to locate all of the pronouns. Thursday, we tested her grammar memory work and looked for both nouns and pronouns on the first couple of pages of Jack and the Beanstalk. She didn't find every noun on the page, but she did a great job nonetheless finding all of the more obvious ones. On Monday, I made her erase and rewrite two words in handwriting because they were just plain sloppy. The rest of the week she made an extra effort to write as neatly as possible and did an excellent job. (The best part being of course that she was as happy with her writing as I was.) I think when we come back from vacation, she will be ready to start some cursive writing. Her final accomplishment for the week was to finish reading Alice in Wonderland.

HISTORY / SCIENCE

In history this week, we took a look at the presidency of James Monroe touching on the basics of the Missouri Compromise and the Monroe Doctrine. We also learned about the election of John Quincy Adams and read a biography of Andrew Jackson. Jessie read a biography of Noah Webster this week, while Violet got a week off from assigned history reading. For our lapbooks, we completed booklets on Monroe, Jackson, and Webster (for Jessie). We also made maps of the Missouri Compromise color coding the slave and free states. We used the same map to show the new borders with the British to the north and the Spanish to the Southwest which we negotiated under Monroe. To our timelines we added figures for Adams, Jackson, the Missouri Compromise, and the Monroe Doctrine.

In science this week, we took the week off. I still need to make booklets for the last lesson.

LATIN

We've dropped out Spanish and sign language for now. I just need some time to finish a few other things before trying to work on anything else formally. Jessie is still doing very well with LfC A. This week we learned the 2nd declension endings and the present tense conjugation of esse. We also had our first crack at some Latin translations. Jessie was a bit confused at first, but she seemed to catch on with a bit of practice.

MUSIC

This week in The Story of the Orchestra, we read about and listened to selections featuring the viola and the cello. Next week, I hope to finish the string section before our break.

BENNY'S PREK

Benny and I had some ups and downs this week. In PP, we introduced the s sound and then practiced combining it with the 5 short vowel sounds. Monday and Tuesday, Benny did an excellent job. By the end of the week, he was telling me that he didn't know what sound the a makes when it is with the s. (I have no idea where that came from.) Anyway, we'll give it another try next week and go ahead and introduce the next sound. Hopefully, the week of vacation will give him the break he needs to process the blending. If not we'll reevaluate later this month. Today he finally remembered the number 15 when we counted. I had to help him with 16 and then he made it the rest of the way to 20 on his own. YEAH!! For books this week, we read about Russia and polar bears. Here is Benny's polar bear puppet while it was still white. He spent about 30 minutes making it all the colors of the rainbow, but I haven't gotten a picture of the final look yet.