Week 28: A Loooong Week

It has certainly not been our best week of the school year, although it wasn't a complete waste either. I was sick with a stomach bug Sunday and Monday, so we didn't get off to a very organized start (even the check sheets were only half done.) Trying to get caught up in things around the house has taken some of my attention away from schooling at the end of the week, but there are a few things that simply had to get done. Here's a look at what we did accomplish....

MATH

The main focus of Jessie's work this week has been dividing decimal numbers. She did an excellent job at the beginning of the week. When she had to start adding decimal places to find an answer without a remainder, she struggled a little bit. Friday's lesson was bumped to next week partially because I was in a hurry and didn't teach the concept well and partially because of Jessie's attitude. We chose to work on character rather than school.

Violet had a new unit on area in her textbook and workbook this week. Basically, the focus is simply learning what area means. She spent most of her time counting the number of square units or comparing the area of two different figures. Her Miquon dealt with map scales and measuring distances on maps. She did very well with both areas and continues to zip through her schoolwork.

LANGUAGE ARTS

We did very little CW this week. At the beginning of the week, we tried to do some editing and I simply was too tired to focus. We also did only half of our regular dictation. She did accomplish her spelling, which was a review lesson. We continued with adverbs in grammar and had a lesson in poetry on Friday. In reading, she finished her last story in Tales From Shakespeare. YEAH!! She wants to know if she gets to read a real Shakespeare play next year and told me that her favorite story was "A Midsummer Night's Dream". I told her that I would think about it. She's continuing to progress through 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and Lad, a Dog and seems to be enjoying both.

Violet spelling continues to progress nicely. In grammar, we discussed indirect quotation for two days and then introduced adverbs. I did manage to write out copywork for 4 days, so she got one day off. She's still enjoying All-of-a-Kind Family for reading. Her fairy tale this week was "The Goose Girl", and she also read through The Bears on Hemlock Mountain.

HISTORY

History was brief this week. Together we learned about the transcontinental railroad. We ended up focusing mainly on the Union Pacific Railroad building westward because one of the books on my list was checked out. Violet was impressed by how quickly they laid track. Jessie seemed most interested in the work train for cooking, sleeping, and other needs. The girls also each read a biography on John Stetson. We had booklets for both topics and a timeline figure for the railroad. We also made a combined map showing the routes of some of the cattle drives we read about last week plus the railroad route this week.

SCIENCE

Only one day of science in which we learned about ichthyosaurs to finish out the lessons on aquatic reptiles on olden days. There was of course an accompanying booklet.

LATIN

Jessie did complete the next lesson in LfC. We've started learning the Latin prepositions. We also memorized the future form of the verb to be.

THE EXTRA STUFF

It didn't get done. No art, music, or asl this week.

BENNY'S PREK

Benny's still working on counting to 100 by ones. He's mastered counting to 100 by tens but has yet to remember Thursday is one of the days of the week. Oh well, he'll get it eventually. He continues to do very well with his phonics. We've been working back through the same two pages of PP as the previous week go across the page this time instead of down. I actually had library books for him, but he wanted to read a Larryboy chapter book instead so we did. I didn't have a craft for him, so he made silly Mr. Potato head faces instead.