Week 37: Entering the Final Stretch

It's been a good week. The girls started finishing up some books and are excited that we only have one more full week left (although I wouldn't really call it a full week). It occurs to me that I need to get on the ball and organize what we're going to continue with over the break for light school to keep up skills. I also need to reassign chores, add a list of chores that Benny can do, and make new chore charts. Here's a quick look at our week.

MATH

Jessie's math this week has been all about end of the year review. A few careless mistakes here and there, but she has definitely mastered the material. She completed her textbook and workbook and began the end of the year review in her IP.

Violet's continuing to work on the second unit of the 3A Intensive Practice book. Her accuracy in computation has improved this week back to a more typical level. Most of this week's mistakes were due to not reading the problem correctly or slapping down a quick equation that doesn't actually answer the question asked. I'd say she's definitely ready for a break.

LANGUAGE ARTS

I had intended for Jessie to rewrite Rumpelstiltskin this week for CW, but accidentally returned the book. Rather than pull up a new model, I decided that she really has mastered the skills in Aesop well enough that we are done for the year. I hope to use some of the extra time next week to start reading the Homer core for next year. Grammar was light this week. Since SWO already covers some of the dictionary skills, we did the oral exercises in R&S all week and skipped the written exercises a couple of days. She did complete another lesson in SWO. I officially changed The Swiss Family Robinson from assigned reading to free reading with the stipulation that she has to give me a book report once she finishes. Her only assigned reading is The Book of Three. This allows her to finish her assigned reading by next week and insures the books can be returned to the library before they are overdue. She's been doing dictation on her own most of the week. Basically, she reads a sentence, closes the book, and then writes the sentence. It's freed me up to do some other things around the house that needed my attention.

Violet has been copying the poem "Building Blocks and Blocking Blocks" from her memory card for handwriting this week. I've seen enough to decide that we will continue with copywork for part of next year before switching to dictation. It's not that she can't form the letters. Her handwriting is just much sloppier when she doesn't have the model written out for her. She's close to finishing the review lessons in SWO D. We have two grammar lesson left that were scheduled for this week that didn't get done to finish next week. She's finally finished reading The Blue Fairy Book.and has all next week to finish up A Little Princess to wrap up her assigned reading.

HISTORY

This week we read biographies of Helen Keller and Theodore Roosevelt together. The girls also read a biography of George Washington Carver. We completed booklets on all three and added them to our timeline. In addition we added President McKinley to the timeline as well.

SCIENCE

We completed the lesson on echinoderms covering starfish, brittle stars, sea urchins, crinoids, sand dollars, and sea cucumbers along with the corresponding booklets.

ART

The girls each drew pictures of sand dollars and sea cucumbers this week.

BENNY'S PREK

We did three days of phonics this week to finish up the A1 series of Bob books. Benny went fishing with DH on his day off. This morning we just curled up in the chair, and I read him a stack of books for a change. His counting is finally showing some signs of improvement. I'm hopeful that we'll be able to check that off as mastered next week. He finally pulled his Kumon books back out this week (in desperation I think from being trapped inside by the rain) and completed some mazes and several of the cutting pages. Somehow I only managed to get a picture of one page that he cut out.