MATH
Jessie start NEM 1 this week. It has been a large jump in difficulty from the Primary series. We covered order of operation, prime numbers, prime factorization, and highest common multiple. After the normal start of the year, you have to read the directions carefully reminders and a few discussions about the importance of showing your work. She seems to have adjusted to the new level expected (although I keep hearing sporadic comments about having to think too hard.)
Violet began her Singapore Primary 5A series with an easy topic of numbers to a million. We reviewed place value up to ten thousands, learned the hundred thousands and millions places, practiced some rounding, and worked on estimating. After the same discussions about reading directions carefully, she did very well overall. Estimating with division was the only tricky part for her since the number is rounded based on the nearest multiple and not the normal rounding rules. She also picked back up with her CWP 4 book and began working through the final two review sections.
LANGUAGE ARTS
Violet began R&S 5 with a review of sentence parts similar to Jessie, although at a slower pace. We focused on subjects and predicates (complete and simple). For CW Homer, we did analysis and rewriting of the fable "Hercules and the Waggoner". She successfully completed her first lesson in SWO G and began reading Swiss Family Robinson
by Wyss and The Sign of the Beaver
by Speare. Right now, she is narrating both stories to me, but I plan to switch over to just having her narrate the literature selection and to complete book reports on the historical fiction in the next few weeks. We still need to add in dictation next week to round out her language arts.
LATIN / GREEK
Jessie completed lesson 1 of Latin Alive and began lesson 2. She reviewed her Greek vocabulary and grammar from last year. Violet spent the week reviewing her Latin voacabulary and grammar from last year and will begin Latin for Chidren B next week.
HISTORY
by Daugherty and wrote 1 paragraph summaries of the Pilgrims in England and their move to Holland.
After reading several chapters from The Story of the Renaissance and Reformation, I discussed King James separately with each of them. (Violet had been given some questions to get started.) I gave Jessie a set of parameters for what to write and talked through the writing process with Violet creating a brief outline to get her started. They also did some corresponding mapwork and added King James and Guy Fawkes to their timeline notebooks.
SCIENCE
Jessie is studying Life Science this year using BJU's 7th grade program. This week we covered and tested chapter one which was a very basic introduction to science, worldview, and the scientific method. I had her complete a portion of the lab on measuring and gave her some class data so she could work through the questions. Then for lab 1D I introduced the basics of writing a lab report.
Afterwards, we popped enough additional popcorn for the afternoon snack.
Violet is using God's Design for the Physical World this year and completed the first 5 lessons in the Heat and Energy text. She learned about the different forms of energy, mechanical energy, chemical energy, nuclear energy, and nuclear weapons. Most of the labs were worksheets except for Tuesday.
ART & MUSIC
Violet learned about the five elements of shape and filled in each section of the maple leaf with different elements. I gave her a lot of leeway in the project. She chose to use colored pencils and make her leaf symmetrical instead of making each individual section unique.
We'll start up music next week.
by Lobel. He's had a tremendous increase in fluency over the summer, so we're going to try increasing the difficulty level slightly next week. Together we're reading aloud 
by DeJong, which loosely connects to our history since it is set in Holland. For copywork, we reviewed the alphabet, so I could note any letters that were not being formed correctly. He also copied the definition of a noun and his name and initials for his grammar lessons. Using FLL, we talked about what a noun is and the different between common and proper nouns for grammar. He also completed lesson 1 of SWO B and began lesson 2 this week.
by Kimmel to get a taste of the classic.
by Fulbright since I already had it on hand.
by Levin. 
by Brookes and practiced using the different shapes in a maple leaf outline based on 
by Taylor. We also did the creation fingerplay, learned Genesis 1:1, and sang "This is the Day" and "Do You Know Who Made the World?" from the curriculum page. I added two books 
by Zobel-Nolan which has puzzle pieces to move during the story and a small flap book called All Things Bright and Beautiful with the lyrics of the first verse. Henry had fun adding stars stickers for his craft on Thursday.
by Raffi, 
by Flack, 
by Crozat, 
by Tafuri, 
by Hindley, and 
by Thompson. We also made the cute paper plate duck with the handprint tale feathers.
