Week 32: Starting the final lap

After a week off for break, it's nice to see the end of our school year in sight. The kids all really enjoyed their time off, and amazingly were ready to start back up this week with no complaining. Jessie and Violet have even been starting school before 8:00 most mornings in order to finish up early and either go outside or spend time playing downstairs on the days it rained. I'd say we've past the winter doldrums. Now if I could just get Henry's nose to stop running so I can stop wiping his nose every five minutes.

MATH

Jessie finished up the IP section on measurement this week. There was really not a lot of new information in this unit. It felt more like a review of what she had already learned using decimal numbers instead of whole numbers. On the bright side as we go through more and more multi step problems, Jessie has learned the value of showing her work. It makes correcting mistakes so much easier. She also spent a few days doing review exercises in both the textbook and workbook.

Violet started the 3A level books this week. She's was a little surprised to be doing "third grade" math, but it's also been a good confidence booster for her. The first unit so far has been an introduction to the thousands place. She's been writing numbers as words or words as numbers, comparing numbers, identifying the value of numbers, and arranging numbers in order. I've decided that we'll go through the end of the second unit before breaking for the end of the year. It's not quite as far as I had originally planned, but I think it will make the beginning of next year easier to start at the beginning of unit three instead of part way through it.

LANGUAGE ARTS
In SWO, Jessie completed lesson 10. In grammar, she finished up unit 9. She commented this week that there weren't that many pages left in her grammar book. Another day, she asked if we could do some school outside when the mornings were a little bit warmer. (I think I detect the beginnings of spring fever.) We didn't get a lot of editing done on her CW this week so we'll have to finish up next week. It just seemed that even starting early she was running behind this week. She's getting close to completing both 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and Lad, a Dog. In dictation, we're still using The Silver Chair. We spent part of the week on a few paragraphs in the giant's castle. Then Jessie wanted to skip almost to the end and write the part where they emerge from under the ground.

Violet finished up with synonyms and antonyms in grammar and has started learning about prepositions. I did manage to get myself somewhat organize last week, so she had copywork again this week. We're still using sentences from Little Pilgrim's Progress and will probably continue to do so for the remainder of the year. She's close to finishing up with her spelling lessons. I may have her go back through and complete the review lessons in SWO D to make sure that she's mastered the material since we have the extra time.

HISTORY
This week we learned about the Statue of Liberty and read some stories about immigrants. In addition the girls read a biography about Blanche Leathers, the first female steamboat captain, and another about the Ringling Brothers. We played catch up with booklets and timeline figures on Friday. There are booklets for Custer's last stand, Geronimo, the Sioux Indians, Princess Kaiulani of Hawaii, the Statue of Liberty, Blanche Leathers, and the Ringling Brothers. To out timelines we added Custer, Geronimo, and the Statue of Liberty as well as states of 1889 and the 1890s, President Hayes and President Garfield. Our map is a look at the United States as of 1880. In case you're wondering about the fingers. Those would be baby Henry's. I made the mistake of laying the papers on the floor to take a picture because the girls had booklets spread all over the table. Nothing beats the sound of crumpling paper, at least in baby Henry's world.

SCIENCE

This week in science, we doubled up on booklets to cover about 3/4 of lesson 7. We learned about cartilaginous fish and how they differ from bony fish, types of rays, basic information about sharks, and completed an overview of different types of shark with the corresponding booklets.

LATIN

Lesson 28 completed.

ART

Too much art this week to post in our weekly report. Jessie drew two pictures, and Violet made three. Benny did a drawing and a playdough sculpture. I'll upload pictures tomorrow in a separate post.

BENNY'S PREK

Benny completed four days of preK this week. In phonics we covered the -ck sound at the end of the words. Then Friday, we read another Bob book. In math, we used a hundreds chart for counting as a change of pace. No real theme this week, just random library books of Benny's choice. He did want to make a shark today, so I printed out a hammerhead shark coloring page and a mirror image of the page so he could put his hand in between the two sides and swim it around. Oh, and he cut it out all by himself