MATH
Jessie spent most of this week reviewing. Monday she completed the last review exercise in her 4A workbook. The next three days were spent completing the semester review at the end of the 4A Intensive Practice book. Friday morning we finally began our first unit in the 4B books. I think Jessie was as happy as I was to realize that we are now halfway through our year. The first unit in the 4B text is on decimals. She started by learning how to write a fraction like five tenths as a decimal. The first
lesson was easy enough that we went ahead and did two lessons today, and she still finished early.Violet is continuing where she left off with the topic of time in the 2B books. This week she completed the Intensive Practice section on time. She read some times, drew some clock hands, and determined the amount of elapsed time in some word problems. She did a great job!
LANGUAGE ARTS
In grammar, Jessie started a new unit on pronouns this week. R&S separates subject pronouns from object pronouns and teaches them in different lessons. Jessie struggled a little bit since she is used to just identifying pronouns and not differentiating between them. In spelling we're up to lesson 34 of SWO F, so it's great to know that we'll start a new spelling book soon as well. Dictation is going. Jessie and I are still battling over how she holds the pencil. I think next week we'll try a really short pencil to see if that helps any. In CW, we started rewriting Goldilocks and the Three Bears. I've let Jessie do most of the work alone this week while I used the time to shampoo our carpets. I gave her both Tuesday and Wednesday to write the story since she was writing it out by hand. Thursday, she did some of her own editing. Next week we'll sit down together and work through the rough draft. As far as reading, this week she finished up Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh.
Violet's grammar topic for the week has been helping verbs. She had already memorized most of the helping verb list just by hearing Jessie recite it for me so she was really excited to show me what she already knew. For handwriting, I had her do some copywork from The Reluctant Dragon, write the cursive alphabet, and then made up a few sentences to work on the capital letters that she couldn't remember (Q, W, and Z). Spelling is going well. In reading she is almost finished with The Wheel on the School. Her story in the Blue Fairy book was called "The Terrible Head" about Medusa and Perseus. For her Thursday reading assignment, I've started her reading The Reluctant Dragon by Grahame. The story itself it fairly short, but the vocabulary is a little more advance than she is used to so I've divided it into three sections.HISTORY
History this week has been all about historical fiction. Our actual topic for the week was reconstruction. We read a page from Story of the Great Republic. We spent the rest of our history and literature time this week working through two books. Turn Homeward, Hannalee covers the story of a young mill girl who is sent up north during
Sherman's march to the sea. Be Ever Hopeful, Hannalee picks up the story of what happens to her family during the Reconstruction period. Of all of the books that I read taking place in this time period, I found these to be the most balanced in their presentation. Although it is told from a Southern viewpoint, the story isn't so simplified that one side is shown as good and the other bad. Instead there are clearly good and bad folks on both sides both during the war and after. Friday we added figures for Andrew Johnson and Reconstruction to our timeline. Our map shows the US states as of 1870. The date in the ex-confederate states shows the year in which they were readmitted to the Union.SCIENCE
This week we started lesson 3. Tuesday booklet covered some basic information on the order Pinnipedia. Thursday we learned about true seals and how they are different from eared seals and fur seals.
ART / MUSIC
For art this week, there weren't any pictures corresponding with our lesson in the 1, 2, 3, Draw Ocean Animals book. Instead, we took some time Tuesday afternoon to paint the magnet in the kits the kids received in their stockings. Jessie painted the seahorse, Violet the octopus, and Benny the shark. It's a good thing I remembered to take a picture on Tuesday because all three have either been chipped or cracked since then for one reason or the other. For music this week we learned about the clarinet and the saxophone listening to examples of each.
OTHER
In Latin this week Jessie is working on lesson 17. The grammar is a continuation of the imperfect tense. I should have had her do her flash cards last week because she has forgotten some of her vocabulary. Thankfully next week is another review lesson so we can spend some time catching up. (Yes, I have a few words to work on also.) Our new addition to the year is sign language. Our library finally purchased or was given the series of Signing Time DVDs. On Monday we watched the first DVD. Wednesday and Friday we reviewed the signs. Jessie and Violet love it. Benny told me that it was boring but he still chose to stay and watch the whole DVD.
BENNY'S PREK
Benny's preK has gone very well this week. He's suddenly started remembering the number 15 in his counting. YEAH!! We're currently working on counting up to 60. He received a magnetic calendar for Christmas. We've been changing out the day and the weather magnets all week and learning the days of the week. In Phonics Pathways we started on the section of three letter words. He's doing very well, but is having a harder time so we've cut back to covering half a page a day instead of a full one. Today we reviewed the last page of the previous section just so I could see if he remembered all of his letter sounds so far. We just need to work on Y. For reading this week, our topic was Antarctica. Almost all of the books that I checked out were on penguins. We'll actually have plenty of penguin books left to read next week since I spent most of this week rereading Solo by Paul Geraghty over and over and over for school and bedtime too. Normally I would groan by the third time he asks me to read a book, but this one is truly a delightful read with beautiful illustrations. It will definitely make my must read list when I get time to start putting it together.
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