Week 21: Still tweaking

We're still settling into our new schedule this week. I shuffled our days around a couple of times in order to go into town just before lunch. Thursday, I decided to tweak the schedule one last time (hopefully) to split Jessie's CW lessons up into 2 30 minute time blocks to bring us in line with the recommendations in the core manual. I'm hopeful that next week, we'll settle in and finally get around to all of our work. Here's a look at our week.

MATH

Jessie started the first unit in her 5B textbook and workbook this week on decimals. She started by multiplying with 10, 100, or 1000 and moving decimals to the right. By midweek, she had problems like 0.56 x 60 to solve by breaking the problem down into 0.56 x 6 x 10. Friday, she started practicing dividing decimals by 10, 100, or 1000 moving the decimal place to the left and dividing by multiples of these numbers by breaking the problem into steps. Overall her math lessons have gone fairly quickly this week. We even squeezed in an extra lesson.

Violet has been working mostly on review this week. She completed the last unit on money in her IP book. Friday, she finished the last page in her 3A textbook. She has a few more review pages in the 3A workbook and IP before she'll be ready to move on to the 3B books the following week.

Benny continued to work with addition and subtraction by number lines in his Miquon Orange book. In Singapore we finished everything in the IP unit on subtraction within 10 except for the work problems, which we'll do on Monday. He's figured out how to consistently add and subtract by 0, 1, or 2 in his head. 3 is still a little iffy, and anything above that requires either the rods or a number line. Overall, I'm pleased with the progress he's making and the slow increase in his confidence.


LANGUAGE ARTS

Jessie finished her 3rd lesson in SWO H. In grammar, we continued working with adjectives discussing adjectives in the appositive position. We learned some more terminology: positive adjective, comparative adjective, and superlative adjective. I'm not sure I consider the terminology essential since she can already use the adjectives correctly in sentences. In CW, this was our first week of completing both the analysis and writing sections in one week. I learned the wisdom of splitting the work over two separate time periods and have revised the schedule for next week. In literature, she began reading The Hobbit by Tolkein and is nearing the end of Age of the Fable.

Violet continues to do well on her spelling tests. In grammar, we finally finished the unit on pronouns! YEAH!! Part of the week was spent discussing paragraphs, topic sentences, and arranging the sentences in a paragraph in order. The remainder was spent reviewing. I think next week we start on adjectives. In handwriting, she's copying from The Secret Garden. We're currently working on the scene where Mary first discovers the garden with some help from the robin. In CW Aesop, we analyzed the fable "Mercury and the Woodman". In literature, we're waiting for a copy of The Children's Homer to be returned to the library, so she read additional chapters of The Red Fairy Book and The Complete Peterkin Papers in the meantime.

Benny finished up the pages with the long a sound and began working on the long i sound. In our read alouds we read another Pooh story, "The Story of Pigling Bland", more Aesop's fables, and a few more chapters of Surprise Island. For handwriting this week, he copied some lines from "Mary Had a Little Lamb".

HISTORY / ART

Our focus for Old Testament history this week for all three kids was King Solomon. Jessie did have 2 final chapters relating to King David to read on Monday before she finished her summary of him. Both girls completed written narrations of King Solomon, drew maps showing Solomon's kingdom and area of influence, and added David and Solomon to their timelines.

In Greece, we covered the war between the Greeks and the Persians. Jessie read several chapters in The Story of the Greeks and wrote 3 separate summaries this week. The first covered the battle of Marathon and the events leading up to it. The second covered the two Spartan youths who offered their lives to Xerxes in exchange for the lives of the Persian messengers who had been killed. The last covered the remaining events including the battle at Thermopylae, the burning of Athens, and the Greek victories at sea against the Persian fleet. Violet wrote summaries of Miltiades (the general at Marathon), Leonidas (the general at Thermopylae), Themistocles, and Aristides. Both completed maps showing the locations of the various battles with Jessie map showing the routes of the Persian army as well. They also both read about Greek soldiers ad drew a soldier using the Draw and Write Through History book. I actually just realized, we forgot to put those on the notebooking pages, so I don't have a picture of them. Timeline figures included Xerxes, Miltiades, Leonidas, the Battle of Marathon, and the Battle at the Bay of Salamis.

GEOGRAPHY

Not this week. Hopefully next.

SCIENCE

We completed our egg experiment by soaking washing off the toothpaste and soaking the egg in vinegar for about 8 hours. Both ends of the egg were soft enough to push in, but the no toothpaste end was definitely softer. We completed lessons 9 and 10 and the unit 2 quiz.

LATIN / LOGIC

Jessie finished lesson 18 in LfC B, while Violet completed lesson 2 in LfC A. For Violet, I want to start reviewing her vocab as part of our memory work time either using the vocab cards or the chant CD. Both completed their critical thinking materials for the week.

OTHER

Henry continues to entertain all of us. A couple of times this week, he decided he was hungry, raided the pantry, pulled out a bag of Cheerios, and sat down to help himself to a snack. He's also become very good at asking for help whether it's from me or one of the girls. Basically, he taps us on the leg until he has our attention, gets us to follow him to what he wants, points at it, and waits for us to fix the problem for him whether it be a closed door, a toy that is out of reach, and another sibling who needs to be told to share.