Week 33: Plodding through...

It's been a crazy week. I actually think Jessie is probably the only one that stayed on schedule. I kept slipping in chapters of the 5th Harry Potter book here and there, made Benny's birthday cake, worked on helping Benny clean his room, and packed away the rest of the girls' winter clothes. Violet, well, let's just say she's been very easily distracted this week which has led to some very long school days. After his birthday, Benny would disappear into his room to play with his new toys, so it was easy for me to get sidetracked and forget to do some of his lessons. It's not a stellar week, but we still got a fair amount done.

MATH

Jessie worked on a new section in her textbook and workbook on parallelograms, rhombuses, and trapezoids. It covered different ways to figure out unknown angles in the different figures. There was also a lesson on drawing the different figures. By Friday, she had finished up the unit in the textbook and workbook and began the corresponding unit in the IP book.









Violet started a new unit on fractions. She had pictures where she had to determine what fraction of the picture was shaded and problems where she had to match up the two fractions that would add up to 1. It introduced the concept of equivalent fractions and how to make them by either multiplying or dividing both the numerator and the denominator by the same number. There were also lots of comparisons of which fraction was larger or smaller and putting fractions in order by size. The last part gave her the most trouble because she was trying to do it without first finding a common denominator. We talked through a few of them, and the rest she completed using the fraction strips I made last year for Jessie. She also finished the workbook unit and started the IP unit on Friday.

Benny is continuing to work on the IP unit for adding and subtracting within 20. His Miquon is still a big number with lots of equations around it to be matched up. Nothing new this week. He really only did 3 days of math since I gave him his birthday off and Thursday he was helping clean up his room.

LANGUAGE ARTS

Jessie successfully finished another spelling lesson leaving 3 to go for the year. In grammar, the topics are fairly random at this point. There were two worksheets on diagramming review, a lesson on using a Bible dictionary and concordance, and a couple of others that I can't think of off the top of my head. In CW Poetry, we completed the work for weeks 3 and 4. Really it was not all that different from last week's lesson. In literature, she has begun reading The Bronze Bow by Speare and seems to be enjoying it so far.

Violet's grammar this week was all about letters: friendly letter, parts of a letter, thank you letters, and addressing envelopes. She got the week off of CW simply because I never got the assignments written down. By the time she had finished her other work, I was usually fixing dinner. I'll have her double up next week and do both analysis and imitation so we can still finish on time. We're still struggling with copying directly from a book simply due to a lack of concentration. She also got the week off of literature since I forgot to get a new book from the library.


Benny finished up the review in Phonics Pathways covering a combination of short and long vowel words. We're also still working our way through the A2 series of Bob books. Not a lot done since he only worked three days. No handwriting this week.

HISTORY

NT history is a continuation of the ministry of Jesus.

In ancient Rome, the girls both covered the invasion of the Gauls and the Pyrrhic Wars. Jessie typed up another summary for each topic, completed a map showing Roman land and allies versus enemies, and wrote down an outline of early Rome using the Usbourne Encyclopedia of the Ancient World. Violet wrote summaries of Manlius Torquatus and Appius Claudius Caecus. Both girls read City by MacCauley. Violet was assigned to write 5 interesting things. For Jessie it was just reading for her own interest since I felt like she already had enough assigned history writing for the week. Jessie's notebook page is below. Violet has yet to assemble hers and at the current rate they'll probably be done on Saturday. We didn't get around to timeline figures, so we'll do them next week.


LATIN / LOGIC

Jessie completed lesson 29 in LfC B. She's one puzzle away from finishing up her MindBenders B4 book. Violet finished lesson 8 in LfC A and started lesson 9. This will probably be the last lesson that I have her do for this year, and we'll spend the summary parsing, conjugating, and declining to get her more comfortable recognizing the stem of Latin words and figuring out what they mean.

OTHER


Henry has been up to his usual tricks. His favorite past time is still taking apart the tv remote and pulling out the battering. He's also getting very good at expressing himself. One minute he was happy and smiling and the next, well, you can see for yourself. I don't remember exactly what it was the DH said no about, but it was obviously a tragedy to Henry.