Week 14: Completing a history term

It's been a good week. The girls have done well. Benny's school has been a bit hit and miss since DH has been home more than he's been hunting. I personally have had a hard time focusing on school. I have Christmas lists to finalize so I know what needs to be ordered. DH wants to paint the living room and hall, so I went to Lowe's to get a bunch of color swatches. Add housework, meals, school, paperwork, etc. and it all becomes a big blur. Anyway, here's a look at what we accomplished.

MATH

Jessie finished up fractions in her IP book. YEAH!!!!! She spent two days on a review exercise in the textbook. Friday we started a new unit on the area of triangles in the textbook and workbook. One page had her drawing lines to show the height of a triangle. She had a bit of trouble getting the lines perpendicular, but I think she finally got the idea. The next showed the height and asked her to find the base. The last two were actually calculating some area. Overall, she did very well.

Violet also started a new unit in Singapore this week. She's working on multiplying and dividing by 6, 7, 8 and 9. So far this week, she's only worked with 6s. We also discussed some mental math tricks that she can use to figure out some of the problems like 6x6 is 6 more than 5x6 or 8x6 is double 4x6. The most exciting part to her is that she has finished the Miquon Yellow book and started on the Purple book (which is the final book in the series).

Benny has completed some more of his IP unit on addition. In Miquon, he finished up the section on subtracting and has started a new section with a mix of both addition and subtraction. The first page was a bit trickier since he had to decide what type of problem it was and how to set up the blocks, but he had it figured out by the end of the page.

LANGUAGE ARTS

Jessie successfully completed another SWO lesson. In grammar, she still working on verbs. This week has mostly been differentiating between verbs like sit and set, let and leave, and lie and lay. She covered what each verb meant, whether or not it took a direct object or was used in conjunction with another verb, and the 3 principle parts of each verb. In CW, she rewrote "The Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard." She has completed reading Rip Van Winkle. We still have to finish discussing it next week.

Violet's spelling went well. In grammar, she close to finishing up the section on pronouns. This week we covered thou, thee, and thine. She also learned about the demonstrative pronouns this, that, these, and those and how to use them correctly in a sentence. In CW, she rewrote the fable "The Fox and the Crow." To make it a bit more fun, I typed up her final draft rather than have her rewrite it and then let her illustrate it. For literature, she completed read The Dragon of Lonely Island and is continuing with her other selections.

Benny's language arts was a bit on the spotty side this week. We did finish the phonics pages on the /sh/ and /th/ sounds. Friday, we took a dry erase board and did a bit of letter substitution to make words to read. (ie. mash to rash to rush to lush etc.) He only ended up doing a couple of days of handwriting so I don't have any pictures. Truthfully, with DH home, he just wants to finish as fast as possible to go do something with him so even the handwriting he did complete was a bit on the sloppy side. We've only done read alouds a couple of days, but we can catch up next week.

HISTORY

In OT times, we finished up the book of Judges covering Gideon's defeat of the Midianites and Samson's battles with the Philistines with a couple of minor judges in between. Violet wrote short summaries on the main judges. I gave Jessie a 4 column chart to fill in. The columns were Israel's mistakes, Israel's punishment, God's judge, and the judge's actions. Both girls also completed a map of the land that was supposed to belong to each of the tribes. On Jessie's map, she marked the location of the major judges. Samson and the Philistines went on the timeline.
In the Near East, we wrapped up our first history unit with the Babylonians and the Persians. The girls wrote about Nebuchadnezzar II. Violet picked 5 things she found interesting. Jessie wrote three paragraphs discussing his expansion of Babylon as an empire, the Hanging Gardens, and the steps he took to make the city of Babylon more secure. Basically, it was a summary of a portion of one chapter in The Babylonians by Landau. They made maps of the empire at its largest and used Draw and Write Through History: Greeks and Romans to complete a picture of the Hanging Gardens. For the Persian empire, Jessie outlined from Usborne Encyclopedia of the Ancient World and Violet wrote 5 more facts from Kingfisher Book of the Ancient World. Both girls also completed a map showing Persia and the Persian empire. Timeline figures for Nebuchadnezzar II and the Hanging Gardens were added as well.
GEOGRAPHY

The girls completed a page on Yemen.

SCIENCE

We're studying trees in lesson 9. The girl's completed booklets identifying the different parts of twigs. We then went outside and identified the parts on a real tree and measured the growth of a few twigs of the last two years to compare which year had the most growth. We were supposed to estimated tree height on Thursday, but it was pouring down rain so we'll wait until next week.

OTHER

Baby Henry has completed his schooling on how to act like a bear. Previously, he had established his cave in the school cabinet and practiced his growling. This week he mastered walking on his hands and feet like a bear.