Week 25: Seeking Some Balance

School has been a bit scattered this week. I confess I spent a good deal of time during the first part of the week figuring out what I wanted to get from HT this week while they were doubling coupons up to $1.98. Well we saved a good deal of money, my lack of focus on housework and school have made it a frustrating end of the week as I try to get caught up (and get the girls caught up as well). Here's what did get done.


MATH

Jessie continues to breeze through the section on percentages in her Singapore textbook and workbook. Some of this week's exercises included converting between percentages and decimals or percentages and fractions, solving word problems with percentages, and a day of review. She has struggled a bit with her word problems this week partially because she hasn't been drawing the diagrams. I think we'll take some time Monday to review the example problems in the current section before she starts working on the more challenging problems.

Violet has spent most of the week working with meters and kilometers. The converting between the two units went fairly smoothly. Then there was addition and subtraction of mixed km and m measurements which was supposed to be done mentally. Violet found it easier to do the work on paper (and her answers were more accurate that way). In Miquon, she's been working with maps and grids drawing routes and determining how many square units a given area is.


In Singapore, Benny has been doing three review exercises in the workbook. All I really did was read the directions for him. He did very well at solving all of the problems and even did most of the adding and subtracting in his head. I was very proud of him. In Miquon, he's been working on multiplication and how it relates to addition. The problems were all written in pairs like 3x3 and 3+3+3. There were also some problems with answers larger than ten, so I gave him a preliminary explanation of place value using the rods. He caught on quickly and even did a few problems without my help.


LANGUAGE ARTS


Jessie completed lesson 7 in SWO H with a perfect test. In grammar, she's continued through the section on punctuation. I have to confess that I've let her skip a lot of the exercises in the book because most of the material was review for her. A couple of days I let her complete the worksheet instead of the exercises in the book. In CW, she did analysis and writing based on the model "How the Camel Got It's Hump". This is definitely my least favorite model so far. I had a harder time finding appropriate sentences and paragraphs for the analysis work and just really had no desire to do anything beyond basic editing with the draft. I think I'll replace the model with something else next time around. In reading, she finished reading The Hobbit. She tried doing the story chart on her own Wednesday. (I had forgotten about it.) On Thursday, she started typing a book report, but when I checked on her she had almost 3 pages and hadn't even gotten Bilbo started on his journey yet. Needless to say, we'll have to try again next week with a "must be done with Mom" note on the checksheet.

Violet completed her 1st lesson in SWO F. I forgot to check her lesson on Wednesday, so she missed a couple of words that she had misspelled in the exercises. In grammar, we've been continuing with adverbs and the different questions they answer. So far we've covered identifying and diagramming adverbs that answer how, when, and where as well as those question words. In CW, she did analysis on the model "Cornelia's Jewels". That is her dictation exercise from Thursday on the left. In literature, I had her back up and start over with The Children's Homer. She was getting characters mixed up and was unable to answer basic questions. A couple of days I think she just read a couple of names and assumed she knew the story from the myths she read at the beginning of our study of Greece. At any rate, we're trying one more time at a slower pace with Mom trying to pay closer attention this time.

Benny has finished learning about the long u sound this week. He can sound out words with the long a, i, o, and u now, but he usually says the short sound first until I point out the e at the end. I'm not sure what we're going to do next week. We may just go back through all the long sounds again to review. He also started randomly floating some of his letters in his handwriting lesson, so I've decided I need to go back to sitting beside him rather than letting him do it on his own.

HISTORY


This week in OT history we covered the more of the events during the lifetime of Elisha. Jessie continued charting the different rulers in Israel and Judah. (Actually, she filled in the charts for all of them on Friday once I realized she hadn't been doing them on her own.) Violet gave me oral narrations on Naaman, Joash, and the troubles with the Syrians. We're still working on improving her narrations. I think part of the issue is that she is not reading carefully. I'm considering having her read the story aloud to Benny to see if that helps any. Both girls completed a map showing Israel, Judah, and the land Israel reclaimed from Aram.

In ancient Greece, Jessie wrote summaries covering the battles between Sparta and Thebes, the friendship of Damon and Pythias, and rule of Dionysius. Her map is supposed to show Laconia, the city of Sparta, Boetia, the city of Thebes, and the sites of the two battles, Leuctra and Mantinea. We're going to have to up our standard for acceptable mapwork starting next week. Violet read about Epaminondas and Pelopidas. Again her summary was so short, I'm not sure she is fully understanding the material. We may try reading her Famous Men book as a read aloud next week to see if it makes any difference. Her map simply show Sparta and Thebes. No art this week.

SCIENCE

We've completed the 3rd unit in Properties of Atoms and Molecules. The test went so-so. The girls are loving the experiments, but I'm not sure how much of the material is sinking in, but then I could say that of our science every year. We were supposed to complete the first lesson of the next unit, but didn't get that far. I did get pictures of our Epsom salt and table salt crystals from the end of last week.

LATIN / LOGIC

Jessie completed lesson 21 of LfC B, which was a review. Violet has started lesson 4 of LfC A. Both completed their normal critical thinking work for the week.

OTHER

Henry has been into everything this week. He's driving me a little nuts. He managed to get hold of and eat portions of the olders Valentine's Day candy three times this week (which could possibly explain why he's driving me bonkers). I've also realized that Violet and Benny haven't been playing with him when they are supposed to, so I'll have to be stricter about enforcing our schedule next week. For cute pictures, she Wednesday's post. I have no messy chocolate face pictures since I opted to clean him up before he left any more chocolate stains on the furniture or floor.