Week 6: Finding Traction

It has been another very busy week here. The goal on Monday was to finish up five days of work in four days so we could shop at the local consignment sale Friday morning. We came close. Jessie's finishing up her last few items. Violet is wandering around the house searching for yesterday's science booklet which has gone MIA. She has a bit more to finish up than Jessie since she claimed to be finished a couple of days but actually was not.

MATH

Jessie finally finished up unit 2 in the Intensive Practice with a lot fewer computation mistakes than last week. She's moved on to unit 3 which covers fractions. Much shorter times at math lessons have made for a much calmer homeschool this week. After a quick reminder to go back through her work and simplify all the fractions that needed it, she completed all of her work with no mistakes. The picture on the left shows some of her work for her CWP problems this week.

Violet has also completed up her second unit in the 3A Intensive Practice. Wednesday she began unit 3 on multiplication in the textbook and workbook. Her assignments have also been completed much more quickly this week allowing us some time to work ahead.

Benny finished up the textbook and workbook section covering number bonds and has begun the corresponding section in the Intensive Practice. His Miquon work included some introductory adding and another number line. I only had him write the numbers for half of the page, then we finished it up orally so the writing wouldn't bog him down.



LANGUAGE ARTS

Jessie completed her first review unit in SWO G for this year. In R&S, she finished up unit 2 with an A on her test and began unit 3 on nouns. For CW Homer this week, we rewrote "The Wind and the Sun". She did an excellent job on her rough draft so we didn't really have much editing to complete. For literature, she finished reading The Phantom Tollbooth. We completed a story chart from Teaching the Classics again focusing on plot and conflict, and she wrote a book report. (This book report went much more smoothly than the first one.) She's continuing to enjoy Bulfinch's Age of the Fable and has read through chapter 6.

After realizing that Violet had skipped her spelling assignments on Tuesday and the previous Friday, I made her complete and test lesson 8 on Tuesday. In grammar, she is close to finishing the first section of R&S 3. Her diagramming is going very well, but she keeps forgetting the helping verb in the questions. In CW Aesop, she rewrote the story "The Crow and the Pitcher". For literature, she has begun reading The Whipping Boy three days a week and continues to enjoy The Red Fairy Book and The Complete Peterkin Papers.

Benny's starting to gain some confidence with his 4 letter words. It's still slow going, but I'm definitely starting to see some improvement. Most days, we completed a half a page from Phonics Pathways. His handwriting fell by the wayside a bit this week. What he didn't complete as part of school, he made up for with his sisters while writing out a list of things to take to the beach.(with the girls taking turns spelling the words for him). This week we read Cappyboppy during our read aloud time in addition to our regular Aesop, Pooh, and Potter stories.

HISTORY

This week for OT history, we read about Isaac, Jacob, and Esau. The girls completed summaries of Isaac and Jacob and maps of Jacob's journey. Jessie also made a chart of Jacob's children by each of his wives. For ancient history, we covered Sargon and the Akkadian civilization, Hammurabi and Babylon, and the Indus Valley. Jessie outlined Sargon and wrote summaries of the other two topics. For Hammurabi, I wrote up questions for her to answer as she was reading, and then we tried to turn the answers into an essay format. It wasn't the best essay ever, but it was a good first try. Violet wrote about Hammurabi and the Indus Valley. Both girls completed a map of Hammurabi's empire. All of it went into our notebook pages. For our timelines, we added figures for Isaac, Jacob and Esau, the Akkadian civilization, and Hammurabi.

SCIENCE / ART

In Apologia Botany this week, we began learning about pollination in lesson 4. Tuesday, the girls made the model flowers that we didn't get to last week which we're counting as art. Benny opted not to participate although he did several pages from his Kumon pasting book throughout the course of the week. Thursday, it rained all day so we didn't get a chance to go on a nature walk. My plan is to try and take a short walk either later this afternoon or early tomorrow. I'm hoping we can still find some bees to watch down around our grapevines.

LATIN / LOGIC / OTHER

We completed lesson 5 in LfC B. Jessie doing much better with the vocabulary than I am. We're still struggling with the translation work in the History Reader. I think I need to go back and look at how they recommend completing the translation, so we can work on more of a step by step routine to get it completed. Jessie's continuing to do very well with her logic assignments.

Violet and I completed lesson 4 in Prima Latina. I'm finding that she needs a bit more practice than what is in the book. I'll have to see if there are any free worksheets or if I need to make something.

HENRY

Henry decided this week that he was ready to graduate from washable markers to the permanent Sharpie markers in my desk drawer. Luckily for me, he chose only to color on himself this time. You can see some of the darker colors on his leg in the picture below.