Week 23: Real schooling...

It's been a long week. We did accomplish the majority of our school work this week; however, for once school wasn't really the focus of our week. At some point during the week, I put school on hold to work with one or the other of my kids on a few character issues. It irks me not to finish what I have planned for the week a tiny bit. (I like checking off boxes.) In the long run, however, I know it will always matter more who my kids are than what they know. So the school work had to wait a bit.

MATH

Jessie did complete several lessons this week. (We doubled up two or three days so I'm not sure of the exact number.) She's still working with decimals. The beginning of the week dealt with the thousandths place. I met with the same resistance as the previous week when she was asked to reduce the fractions. As it turns out, the problem was one of desire not of ability. In her own words, "Why do I have to simplify fractions? It's boring!" Whew! At least we don't have to go back and review fractions. The end of the week, her lessons involved rounding numbers with decimals to either the whole number or to one decimal place. She zipped right through those lessons and ended up with some extra free time on Friday. It's always nice to end the week on a good note.

Violet completed the last of the capacity section in the textbook and workbook as well as the entire capacity section in the Intensive Practice book. The words problems tripped her up a bit. A more careful reading of the problem solved several of the issues. The rest we worked out together. It's been a while since she needed to complete more than one step to solve a problem, but with a little coaching (and encouraging) she did just fine.

LANGUAGE ARTS

Jessie finally finished the last spelling test from Spelling Workout F. The abbreviation for merchandise (mdse.) tripped her up for a couple of days, but she finally got it straightened out. This was also her first week in the Spelling Workout G book. I was surprised to see that there was a big difference between the level F and level G workbooks. Level G has four pages of exercises to complete. There are either more exercises on the page or more words used in each exercise. It also no longer tells you how many mistakes are in the paragraph that you proofread. The bottom line is that I decided that we would slow the pace from 1 1/2 lessons a week down to just 1 lesson a week split over 3 days. I think next week we'll switch the third day from Friday to Thursday so we can test on Friday. In grammar she learned about possessive pronouns, using this, that, these, and those as pronouns, how to write a friendly letter, and to address the envelope. For CW, we've started rewriting "The Three Billy Goats Gruff". I again let Jessie write out by hand over two days. Then we spent two days doing about half of the editing work. It will be next week before we finish working through it. For reading she has continued with Caddie Woodlawn and seems to be thoroughly enjoying herself. Her narrations are much better and more detailed at least. In dictation, we completed a selection from The Voyage of the Dawn Treader where Caspian arrives at the first set of islands.

For grammar this week, Violet has been learning about contractions. Her spelling is going well. Her cursive copywork came mostly from her independent reading. We copied a few sentences from and one from Five Children and It and one from The Reluctant Dragon. On Friday, I forgot to write the sentences out ahead of time, so she ended up with a couple of sentences from The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. (What can I say, the book was already on the table.) She also really seems to be enjoying Five Children and It. There were a several words in the first chapter that she didn't understand. We went through that section together so she could understand that the sand fairy was talking about different dinosaurs that people used to wish to receive for various reasons.

HISTORY

We didn't get all of our planned history done. As I said in Tuesday's post, we've started a new section of pioneers settling in the Great Plains. The pictures are some close ups of our sod house, which you can read more about in a couple of posts below this one. The rest of the week, we've been reading Little House on the Prairie both as our history selection as well as our read aloud. I had planned to finish the entire book, but we're only about halfway through as of this morning. I had also planned a second craft of making baskets which we didn't get time to complete. The girls are sure to keep reminding me over the weekend and next week, so I'm sure we'll get to it.

SCIENCE

Tuesday's science covered manatees and dugongs. Thursday, we began lesson 4 learning a few basics such as what the terms herpetology, endothermic, and brumation mean. The booklets we created are pictured below.

ART / MUSIC

The girls did some drawing on their own this week, but we didn't have a formal project. Nor did we get to any music this week. Maybe in the van tomorrow.

LATIN

In lesson 19, we learned about the future tense, both the list of endings and how to translate. While it was nice that the endings are similar enough to the imperfect tense to make them easy to remember, it also meant that it was easier for me to mix the two tenses up when Jessie did some translating. (Naturally, Jessie translated them correctly, and I was incorrect when I checked her work.)

BENNY'S PREK

We did do a much better job of being consistent with Benny's work this week. On counting, we're still working on number to 60. Basically, all he needs to remember is that 60 comes after 59. He's memorized most of the days of the week already. For some reason he keeps leaving out Thursday. We're still tackling 1/2 page of phonics a day sounding out three letter words. One day, Violet finished early and took baby Henry to the back to play while we worked. Benny did much better both focusing and sounding out words. I may try having baby Henry play alone in his bed for 10 or 15 minutes next week. If Henry will cooperate, it would make phonics much easier for Benny. Our theme for the week was the arctic. No craft this week since DH had Friday off and the weather is nice enough for he and Benny to spend some time outside.