Week 19: Pushing to the finish...

The girls have both worked very hard this week although not always on their school assignments. Jessie is finishing up her last few assignments as I type. Overall, we accomplished our work and had a good week. We are all looking forward to our short two day week next week followed by our Christmas break.

MATH

Jessie is still working on area and perimeter. Most of her assignments this week were in the Intensive Practice book. Math dragged on forever this week for a combination of reasons. The problems themselves were challenging with most requiring several steps. (On the bright side I do believe I am close to convincing Jessie about the merits of showing her work.) She's had a harder time concentrating with the increased distractions. (DH likes to watch tv in the morning while he drinks his coffee. Baby Henry's vocal volume has seen a substantial increase recently.) And let's face it, there are just more interesting things to think about at Christmas time than math. At any rate the work finally got accomplished, the concepts mastered, and it's time for a weekend break.

Violet finished up with the topic of money, did a couple days of review, and began a new unit on time this week. Violet naturally had the opposite problem from Jessie. Her assignments were short enough and easy enough for her that she could dawdle through breakfast, stop to talk with Benny, or take a peek to see what DH was watching on tv.

LANGUAGE ARTS

In grammar this week, Jessie learned some basics like when to use sit versus set or don't versus doesn't. She took last week's notes on seahorses and turned them into a rough draft on Monday. On Wednesday, she rewrote the rough draft and added in some topic sentences. On Friday, her lesson was about writing a book report. She chose to write about A Little Princess. Both the composition and book report turned out very well. I also decided that she had done enough writing for grammar this week, so we skipped our CW work. Spelling and reading are still progressing well. In dictation, she wanted to skip towards the end of the book and just do one more paragraph out of Prince Caspian. I vetoed that and chose the section of the book where Lucy encounters Aslan. She rolled her eyes the first day, but hasn't complained since then.

Violet's grammar this week has been about using linking verbs. In handwriting, we finished the cursive alphabet and celebrated by writing the first stanza of "Away in the Manger" for copywork on Thursday and Friday. She's still reading The Wheel on the School but managed to get out of reading any fables this week because I forgot to write those assignments on her sheet. (Naturally this was not pointed out to me until the day after the assignment would normally be done.)

HISTORY

In history this week, we finished up the Civil War by reading about Sherman's March to the Sea and Lee's surrender at Appomattox. The girl's assigned biographies covered Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee. We did narrations and booklets for all four. We also added the appropriate timeline figures. Jessie also insisted that we add a figure for Sherman in addition to the one about his march, so we did that.

SCIENCE

Science this week was all about baleen whales. We learned about baleen, blue whales, gray whales, humpback whales, and right whales. Jessie and Violet both cheered for the gray whales who were known to overturn many whaling ships and laughed at the right whales frowning face. I had hoped to go outside and measure off how large a blue whale is, but it has rained too much this week. We may do that next week one day just for fun if I remember.

MEMORY WORK / LATIN / ART / MUSIC

For memory work, both girls are currently continuing to learn the verses with their Sunday school classes even though I am not really excited about the selections this quarter. Rather than working on one selection over several weeks, we are back to a new short verses or even just a partial verse each week. I can already see Violet having trouble remembering the references for the verses. I haven't decided if we will split off and do our own Bible memory work again or not. For poems, Jessie is working on Obedience and Violet is learning The Coin. I've decided to let each one work at their own pace for the remainder of the year. Jessie is doing very well and will continue learning new material. Violet needs to go back and review a few of the poems once we start up in January as I find I am having to prompt her more than I would like.

In Latin for Children A, Jessie completed lesson 16. We learned what the imperfect verb endings are and how to conjugate them. Jessie wasn't the only one I caught chanting the new endings. (Just don't tell Violet and Benny that I overheard them.) For art the girls each drew a mother and baby humpback whale. For music we learned about oboes and clarinets and listened to selections featuring both.

BENNY'S PREK

Benny is still working on counting to 50. He's still skipping 15 frequently. He forgets sometimes when to say 30 and when to say 40 or 50. I think starting in January we'll work on number recognition to 20 as a means of reinforcing the number 15. We will probably also take a break from counting by ones and count by 10s. This should help him remember when to say 30, 40, etc. when we start counting by ones again. In phonics, we have reached the end of the first section. We have a couple of consonants that we are reinforcing by matching up consonants and vowel pairs with our magnets. He's spent a lot of time with DH, so we still have a few Anderson tales to finish up. For his craft this week, we made a Christmas ornament with baby Jesus in the manger, a few Popsicle sticks, and a bit of ribbon.