Week 18: Tying up loose ends

It has been a wacky week. Grocery shopping last Friday before the snow was a nightmare. Now I have a crack in my corner bumper that will have to be repaired. Happily, I didn't cause any damage to anything else. Instead of 8-14 inches of snow on Saturday, at our house we measured 27 inches when it was all finished. With church cancelled and no cable, I ended up helping DH finishing digging out the vehicles and making a path to the road on Sunday. (Digging snow with a regular shovel is no fun.) Monday afternoon I went out to finish Christmas shopping, look for snow boots for Jessie and Benny (Jessie's been wearing my boots, while Benny's been wearing a pair one and a half sizes too small.), and pick up a few grocery items that I was unable to get the previous Friday. Still we somehow managed to accomplish our three days of work and still get the kids out to play for a couple of hours each day.

MATH

Jessie finished the last lesson on angles in the workbook and spent Tuesday and Wednesday on a general review exercise in the textbook. That will leave her the IP section on angles and some general review for the first few weeks of January to finish up with the 5A books.

Violet spent two days doing the last practice pages in the textbook for the section on multiplying by 6, 7, 8, and 9. On Wednesday, she started the corresponding IP section. She had the week off from Miquon.

Benny completed another Miquon page that required filling in blanks based on a set of blocks all by himself. He actually told me to leave him alone because he could do it himself, and he did. The Singapore page on the left was more of a combined effort. Benny solved the problems and colored in the sections while I wrote the numbers down for him. He had Wednesday off from math.

LANGUAGE ARTS

Jessie finished the last lesson in SWO G. YEAH!! In grammar, she covered demonstrative pronouns, more friendly letters, and indefinite pronouns. She was off again from CW this week. In literature, she finished reading The Children's Homer and also read the second chapter in Age of the Fable covering the Odyssey. I guess that gives me a week and a half to decide what to have her read next.

Violet finished copying Infant Holy, Infant Lowly and completed lesson 27 in her spelling book. In grammar, she reviewed subjects and predicates and was introduced to the concept of direct objects. She was also off from CW. For literature, she just read a chapter each from The Red Fairy Book and The Complete Peterkin Papers.

Benny finished up the phonics page covering words ending with -ink, -ank, and -unk on Tuesday, so I gave him Wednesday off from phonics. We spent Wednesday doing lots of reading aloud since he was out playing in the snow the first two days after lunch, and we didn't do any reading. He also did a couple of days of handwriting.

HISTORY / ART

The goal for OT history this week was to finish up with the reign of King Saul, so we could start fresh in January with King David. The girls both completed their summaries of Saul and David during that time and drew a picture of David using the Draw and Write books. (Actually, I think they traced it again because they both found it to be difficult and therefore frustrating.)

The only one with ancient history this week was Jessie. She read two chapters from The story of the Greeks covering the Dorian invasion and Homer. I had her write a summary of the former and complete a map showing the different Greek tribes. She also put together a corresponding notebook page.

GEOGRAPHY

The girls finished up the Middle East by completing maps of Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan.

SCIENCE

We finished up our botany study this week by assembling our lapbooks.

OTHER

There was no Latin or logic this week. While inside, Benny has been practicing his bike riding skills. DH took his training wheels off a couple of weeks ago, and he's getting really fast.

Henry as usual wants to copy what his big brother is doing. He spent some time this week practicing on the tricycle downstairs. He can move the pedals in a complete circle now. Sometimes he rides forwards, and other times he goes backward; but it's a huge improvement from rocking back and forth.