Week 4: Trying to settle in...

It feels like I've been on a roller coaster this week. The kids either zip through their work or take forever at it. There hasn't been anything in between as yet. Overall, I'm happy with all that we've accomplished this week. We're still struggled to fit in the hands-on activities into the scheduled time, but the kids enjoy them enough that they don't mind doing them later in the afternoon if we need more time.

MATH

Jessie finished the first unit in Singapore 5A this week. The three days in the Intensive Practice book took longer than I expected (hence some of the dragging). It really didn't seem like that much when I assigned them, so we were both glad to see the unit complete. Thursday was the first day of unit 2. We reviewed multiplying by two digit numbers. On Friday, we covered division by a two digit number. Jessie opted to do most of the work on the dry erase board and just give me the answer in the workbook. She did a great job! :)

Violet's been reviewing subtraction and borrowing all week. The only difference between the problems in 3A versus 2A is the larger numbers. She's been finishing her work really quickly (and without whining), but the careless errors are driving me bonkers. I need to help her find a speed between turtle slow and lightning fast that gets the work done well.

Benny worked on number bonds making 7 and 8 in Singapore 1A. We used the cuisenaire rods to figure out all the combinations first and then kept our little wall of rods handy for the exercises in the textbook and workbook. In Miquon, we filled in numbers in a series one day. So far we've also spent two days filling in the holes of a chart counting to 99. It's a lot more writing than anything else we've done so far, so I cut back on his regular handwriting a bit to compensate. He'll be glad to finish it up on Monday and move on to something else.

LANGUAGE ARTS

Jessie finally got a 100 on her spelling test this week. YEAH!! Grammar has been lots of sentence diagramming this week. The one day that wasn't review covered diagramming compound sentences. I showed Jessie how they diagrammed it in the R&S with the two skeletons side by side connected by a dotted line with a conjunction. I noticed that the convention used in CW was slightly different putting one sentence over top of the other with a bracket, so I showed her that way as well. I can see advantages and disadvantages to both, so I just let her pick the method she preferred. For CW Homer, she rewrote Belling the Cat using the six elements of a scene that we discussed last week and worked through the editing routine. For literature on Monday, we discussed Tuck Everlasting using one of the story charts from Teaching the Classics and filled it in together. We only covered conflict and plot, but I thought it went very well. Asking her to take that discussion and turn it into a book report was much harder. After a couple of false starts, we finally got straightened what I expected the final book report to contain and got it completed. Hopefully, it will be much easier next time. She was also scheduled to begin The Phantom Tollbooth this week. Unfortunately, it still hadn't reached our library branch when I stopped by Monday afternoon, and DH has had the van all week while his truck is in the shop. She'll have a little reading to do on Saturday to catch up.
Violet completed lessons 5 and 6 in SWO E. In R&S 3, we covered more diagramming, capitalization, and direct quotations. For CW Aesop, she rewrote the fable The Fox and the Grapes. My favorite part of her story was seeing her write the words jump going up and fall going down. (Now if I could just get her to write a little more neatly). For literature, she nearing the end of Understood Betsy and continuing to enjoy her assignments from The Red Fairy Book and The Complete Peterkin Papers.

Benny's ability to read 4 letter words with a double consonant ending is continuing to improve. The hardest ones seem to be those end with s and another letter. He keeps trying reversing the letters to make the s sound at the end. In handwriting, we added the letters I and J. He likes to call the Js fishing hooks. I think I'm going to have to shorten his pencils because he keeps trying to wrap his thumb around to his index finger instead of putting it on the pencil. (I have learned my lesson with Jessie that this is better corrected early on.) The picture on the right is another page of mazes from his Visual Perceptual Skill Building 1 text. For read alouds, we've finished Elmer and the Dragon and are ready to start the last book in the series.

HISTORY / ART

The plan was to take a week off from Bible, focus on dinosaurs and the ice age, and catch up with some of our hands on projects. Jessie read In the Days of Noah by Clanin, Dry Bones and Fossils by Parker, and Life in the Great Ice Age by Oard. Violet read the latter as well as The Great Dinosaur Mystery and the Bible by Ham. Benny and I read The True Story of Noah's Ark by Dooley, D is for Dinosaur by Ham, and What Really Happened to the Dinosaurs by Morris. For art, the girls drew the tower of Babel using Draw and Write Through History. They completed a map of the ice age using an online map I found at the Mystery of History website. These along with last week's Babel narrations and Jessie's map of the dispersion after Babel were put together into their notebooking pages below. We added dinosaurs and the ice age to the timeline.
Monday, we went outside with our little soccer cones to show the kids how large the ark was. I wanted to keep out of the woods so we measured the 450 foot length across our yard, our neighbor's yard, and on into the next yard. It was good that we placed the first cone by our cedar tree since we couldn't see it because of the slope. While in our neighbor's neighbor's yard, we measure the 75 foot width and used the trees nearby for an estimate of the 45 foot height. Friday, we made cave paintings on crumpled construction paper after looking at pictures of cave paintings in Prehistoric Art by Hodge. Benny's pictures if you need some help are a horse and a rabbit. The girls still want to make challah, so we're going to try tomorrow I hope.

SCIENCE

We studied germination and the difference between monocotyledons and dicotyledons. Tuesday, we started two experiments. The first came from the Botany book with bean seeds in the sun, in the dark, and in the cold to compare their growth (or lack of growth). For Benny, we decided to test whether or not roots always grow down. We took a pint jar, put construction paper around the inside, filled the middle with wet paper towels, and added bean seeds turned different ways between the paper and the jar. The hardest part is remembering to check them each day. Thursday we put Henry in the wagon and Jack on the leash and went for a nature walk through our yard and the in-law's yard. We managed to find an example of all of the different plants that we have talked about so far.

GEOGRAPHY

This week was an overview of the Middle East. The girls were supposed to label the countries of the Middle East and color them in. Jessie loves maps but I think she got a little carried away labeling all the countries instead of just the ones I listed. She started to color them all in as well, but her hand finally got tired of coloring.

LATIN / LOGIC

Jessie completed lesson 3 in LfC B. (I needs to spend the weekend working on the new vocabulary.) The grammar is still review. This week on nouns and case endings in the first 2 declensions. For logic, more Mind Benders and Think-a-Grams. She's getting the hang of them now. BTS 2 was working with maps and directions.

Violet has completed lesson 3 in Prima Latina. We're going to spend next week reviewing all the vocabulary from the first 3 lessons (hopefully with some games if I get a chance to work on them) before moving on to the next lesson.

OTHER

For memory work, Jessie learned Hebrews 11:3 and completed memorizing the poem Thy Word. Violet mastered John 4:24 and All Things Bright and Beautiful. Benny has learned Genesis 1:1. I forgot to write music on the check sheets so that didn't happen. Hopefully, we'll get it all pulled together next week.

Finally, there's Henry. Here he decided to add some artwork to Benny's Miquon page. I know he learned to put the cap in his mouth from watching Jessie. Sadly, I couldn't catch her doing it at all this week for a side by side comparison. At any rate, he's still adorable even when he's up to mischief.