Week 35: Strugglin with Spring Fever

I seriously think I spent more time corralling my kids back to week this week than teaching.  We did manage to make some progress.

MATH
Jessie spent a couple of days with review this week before starting a new section in the textbook on more complex word problems. Each day she's had 3-4 pages of example problems followed by one page of problem to solve. I would say the problems have been comparable to the word problems in the CWP 6, and she's done very well with them.

Violet has also been completing review exercises for part of the week.  She also covered the textbook and workbook section on measuring and began the corresponding IP section on Friday.

Benny spent the first part of the week on addition of numbers within 100 before moving on to subtraction of numbers within 100 in his textbook and workbook.  He continues to work on multiple operations in the same problem in his Miquon book as shown on the left.

LANGUAGE ARTS

Jessie read The Hero and the Crown by McKinley for literature this week, worked with proper placement of phrases and clauses in grammar, and completed lesson 11 in CE1.

Violet completed lesson 32 in spelling, worked with dictionary skills in grammar, continued her regular dictation and copywork, and began reading Swiss Family Robinson by Wyss for literature.

Benny completed his regular phonics and copywork.  We finished up The Schoolhouse Mystery by Warner and began The Happy Hollisters on a River Trip for literature.  He also read to me Flap Your Wings by Eastman and Wings on Things by Brown.  I finally caught him voluntarily reading a picture book to himself one afternoon.  YEAH!!!

HISTORY

This week covered Shakespeare, more Counter-Reformation figures, the Dutch War of Liberation, and the artist Pieter Bruegel.

 Jessie read Bard of Avon by Stanley, William Shakespeare & the Globe by Aliki, and Shakespeare's Theatre by Morley for her first summary.  The Dutch information came from her regular Miller book, and she read Pieter Bruegel by Venezia on Thursday.

Violet and Benny learned about Shakespeare from SOTW 2.  We read The Sea-Beggar's Son by Monjo to cover the Dutch and the same Venezia book as Jessie.  I only required a summary for the first topic.

Our only hands on this week was to act out the forest approaching the castle in Macbeth.  Benny and Henry made a pretty good army.

Benny went all out and even donned some camouflage for the event.

Henry kept forgetting to hide behind his branch.

Violet agreed to pose for one picture but complained that the branches scratched her hands.

SCIENCE

The only science completed this week was by Jessie independently.

She practiced measuring the volume of various items.  Here we used water displacement to determine the volume of one of Jack's tennis ball.  (Yes, he sat on the floor and stared at us the whole time.)

She made a homemade balance and scale on Tuesday and used the balance to measure the mass of a few items.  On Friday, she took those measurements and calculated density.

HENRY'S CORNER

Henry had a great week!

He talked Jessie into plenty of horse rides and

took a few tumbles when his horse reared.

He and Benny played some tug-o-war in addition to their cowboy antics pictured in Wednesday's post.

They even read a book together.