Week 29: Getting Back to Normal

Jessie's 7th Grade

• Jessie continued working through review exercises covering the material of the first four chapters on NEM 1 this week.
• In Omnibus, we spent a third week on Tolkien's The Two Towers and also started our first week of Shakespeare's MacBeth.  Jessie and I both agree that this is not our favorite play.
• In R&S, she finished up her unit on conjunctions and began her 10th unit on capitalization and punctuation.
• In CW, she struggled a bit coming up with supporting paragraphs for her thesis statement in the theory section before beginning the analysis section of the last unit.
• We looked at arguments for and against women's suffrage in logic.  She did very well on her Art of Argument unit test.
• EG1 covered more deponent verbs, and Latin Alive 1 covered adverbs this week.

Violet's 5th Grade

• Violet completed her IP section on averaging and began learning about rates this week.
• She began reading Carry On, Mr. Bowditch while also continuing Kidnapped by Stevenson for literature.
• In CW, we looked more at rhyme and rhythm, and she wrote a heroic couplet. 
• She worked on prepositions and conjunctions for grammar and sailed through another SWO G lesson.
• Latin focused again on 3rd conjugation verbs as well as the imperative form of the verbs.  She's struggling with the vocabulary, so we'll take next week off to focus on catching up with that.

Benny's 2nd Grade

• Benny finished up working with money in his Singapore IP and did a couple of review exercises this week.  In Miquon, he was introduced to square numbers and basic exponential notation.
• He read Keep the Lights Burning, Abbie by Roop and 18 Penny Goose by Walker to me and began reading Ralph S. Mouse by Cleary.  I began reading A Spy in Williamsburg by Lawrence to him.
• His chosen topic for dictation this week was worms.  I gave him 1 3-5 word sentence each day trying to keep the spelling within his abilities.  He continued his cursive copywork and completed another one and a half lessons in spelling as well as his critical thinking books.

HISTORY

We continued making our way through the American Revolution this week.  We started off the week learning about George Rogers Clark.  The girls summarized George Rogers Clark: American General by Burgan, while Benny and I read George Rogers Clark: Frontier Fighter by de Leeuw.  For the mutiny at Morristown, the girls outlined from Guerber while Benny and I enjoyed This Time, Tempe Wick? by Gauch.  The last two books for the girls were Francis Marion: The Swamp Fox by Cornelius and Benedict Arnold: Traitor to the Cause by Lutz.  Benny and I read George Washington by D'Aulaires and a short fictional story called Katie's Trunk by Turner depicting the treatment of Tories by the Patriots.

SCIENCE

Jessie made her way steadily through chapter 23 of BJU Life Science this week.  We also checked on her bean plants.  So far the only noticeable differences are the number of plants that have sprouted and the fact that more roots can be seen in crowded pot.

Violet mixed popcorn, rice, and flour as dry ingredients then shook them gently and watched the flour sink to the bottom while the popcorn rose to the top.  This simulated the initial problems with creating gunpowder.  Then she made the mixture into more of a paste that kept the ingredient mixed.

She practiced calculating the depth of water based on sonar measurements, completed her unit three test, and leaned about light bulbs on Friday.

Benny and I finished the lesson on cephalopods and began learning about echinoderms this week.  So far we have covered sea star, brittle star, and sea urchins.  He also made a clay clam, octopus, and squid.

ART

Violet's art came from our 1-2-3 Draw Ocean Animals by Levin.  Jessie drew a cactus using Draw 50 Flowers, Trees, and Other Plants by Ames but didn't want me to take a picture.

HENRY'S CORNER

Henry and I got back up to speed this week as well.  We added the letter Ee and the number 4 to our games, read lots of books, and acted out the rhyme "Wee Willy Winky". (Any rhyme that involves running is always a hit.)

He also bravely defended his castle,

and was snuggling so nicely with Pooh bear until he heard me with the camera.

Birthdays, birthdays...

Violet celebrated her 11th birthday

and we all some delicious triple chocolate cake.

Jessie celebrated her 13th birthday

and Henry was very excited to tell her that she had a new bike just in case she couldn't see it herself.

The Boggart - Book 10 of 52 in 52

The Boggart by Susan Cooper, who is also the author of The Dark Is Rising sequence, tells the tale of an ancient mischievous spirit called a boggart, who has lived for years in a Scottish castle-keep on an island with generations of the MacDevon family.  When awake, he spends his hours plotting mischief to amuse both himself and those in the castle until the last inhabitant of the keep dies.  The last MacDevon had one sister whose only living descendant turns out to be a Canadian by the name of Robert Volnik.  He along with his wife Maggie and children Emily and Jessup travel to Scotland and stay briefly at the castle in order to arrange for its sale.  Each of the children is allowed to pick one item to take back home along with a total of 6 books from the library.  Emily chooses a roll up desk where unfortunately the tired boggart had curled up for a nap.  It is long before the Old Magic of the boggart finds himself suddenly thrust into the modern world opening up all kinds of magical, mischievous possibilities. 

This is an excellent read for ages 8 and up.  I have to say I thoroughly enjoyed this book.  It is delightfully humorous and thoroughly engrossing.

The History of the Kings of Britain - Book 9 of 52 in 52

The History of the Kings of Britain by Geoffrey of Monmouth traces the timeline of Britain from the founding of Brutus to the final fall of Britain to the Saxons.  Some call it history and others myth or legend, but there is no doubt that the tales have had a profound impact on the inhabitants of that island.  It is filled with legendary figures such as Brutus, King Leir, Merlin, Vortigern, Aurelius Ambrosius, King Arthur, Gawain, Guinevere, and Mordred.  There are tales of mighty warrior kings who subdue the lands around them, evil kings that are consumed by their own vice, battles with giants, prophecy and magic, honesty, treachery, and countless brave men who gave their lives in service to their king and country.  It definitely belongs among the great books.

I was actually pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed reading this book.  Like any historical piece some portions were more interesting than others, but overall I would recommend this to anyone 13 and up as a must read book.

Weeks 27 & 28:

It's been a long couple of weeks here.  The middle of last week, Violet discovered a bunch of "flying ants" in the basement around the double window.  They turned out to be termites, and they were also coming out in Henry's room around his window.  The kids were great sports about it.  Everybody pitched in; and we stomped, swatted, or sprayed them each time we found them coming out.  They also took turns going through and inspecting for more.  The exterminators finally came out Thursday of this week to spray around the house and foam the areas in the house.  We found a few more winged ones today, but hopefully we are almost done with them.  Needless to say, killing the flying termites took precedence over school work and blogging, but in the end we still managed to accomplish a majority of our work.  Here's a recap:

 Jessie's 7th Grade

• Jessie finished up the textbook section of NEM 1 on real numbers over the last couple weeks and began working on the workbook exercise at the end of this past week.
• She completed the R&S chapter on adverbs and worked on prepositions, conjunctions, and some poetry this week.
• In CW, she's working through the theory section of the last unit.  She did several lessons on writing a thesis statement, learned how to write an introductory paragraph, and began working on the supporting paragraphs on Friday.
• In Omnibus, we ended up dropping our lessons last week because I couldn't keep up with the reading, the termites, and the extra laundry for spring clothes.  This week, we managed to finish Geoffrey's The History of the Kings of Britain and complete another week of Tolkien's The Two Towers.  In addition to the regular discussion and recitation, I had Jessie complete a writing assignment as well.  She took the description of the story of Arthur battling the giant Retho and expanded it into a 2 and a half page story (and had fun doing it as well ;)) The picture on the right is the first page of the rough draft of the story. 
• She completed 2 weeks of EG2:  one was vocabulary review, and the other introduced deponent verbs.  We ended up dropping Latin for a several days.  She did some work with interrogative pronouns and translated her chapter reading, which I still need to check.
• We also dropped half of our logic only completed two weeks of work in Art of Argument on fallacies of presumption.

Violet's 5th Grade

• Violet has been working on averaging in Singapore 5B after completing her IP section on percentages last week.  She's been slacking a bit on her math drill but has kept up with her CWP 5 problems.
• She also completed her R&S unit on adverbs and has been working with prepositional phrases this week.

• She struggled a bit with last week's spelling lesson containing words ending in -ance and -ence, but I let her move on to a new lesson this week with words spelled with y.
• In literature, we skipped several days.  She did finish Forbes' Johnny Tremain on Friday, but we're only a few chapters into Kidnapped by Stevenson.
• In CW poetry, we tried to combine two weeks into one this week to catch up.  We worked some more with rhyme and rhythm, learned the Greek prefixes to use to name the rhythm pattern, discussed couplets and heroic couplets, and wrote a bit of poetry as seen on the right.  Dictation was also hit and miss, but we managed to squeeze in some.
• Last week in Latin she completed a review lesson.  This week she began learning about 3rd conjugation verbs.
• She did manage to keep up with her regular logic including BTS 2, MindBenders B4, and Think-a-Grams A2.

Benny's 2nd Grade

• Benny did an excellent job of keeping up with his school work (mainly because it had to be finished in order for him to go fishing). He's been working on money in Singapore 2B and in Miquon he finished with number lines and moved on to factor houses.
• He completed 3 spelling lessons over the past two weeks in SWO C, practiced identifying parts of speech, and learned about injunctions in FLL.
• We've been doing some dictation as well as cursive handwriting practice.  Last week we used short sentences about Harry Potter.  This week's sentences were about octopus.
• He's finished reading Encyclopedia Brown: Boy Detective aloud, and I finished reading George Washington's Socks to him.  We also finished up the last story in Egermeiers' Bible Story Book.
• He had a little bit of trouble with analogies in BTS 1 but finally figured out what they were asking and had no trouble with his Mind Benders (and even completed an extra puzzle).

HISTORY

For history, the girls outlined a chapter on the crossing of the Delaware and the Battle of Trenton from Guerber.  They learned about Betsy Ross.  Jessie read Betsy Ross and the Flag by Mayer.  Violet read Betsy Ross:  Patriot of Philadelphia by St. George, and Bennys and I read A Flag for Our Country by Spencer.  For northern locations such as Fort Ticonderoga, the girls read more Guerber, while Benny and I enjoyed Aaron and the Green Mountain Boys by Gauch.  We learned about the fall of Philadelphia.  Benny and I read Saving the Liberty Bell by McDonald and Buttons for General Washington by Roop.  This week Benny and I read Sybil's Night Ride by Winnick and Winter at Valley Forge by Knight.  The girls summarized The Story of Valley Forge by Stein, John Paul Jones by Lutz, and Molly Pitcher by Bertanzetti before outlining a section on the massacres in Cherry Valley and Wyoming Valley from Guerber.  Benny and I also read John Paul Jones: Naval Hero by Grant and Molly Pitcher by Gleiter and Thompson.  There really are so many great stories related to the Revolutionary War.

SCIENCE

Jessie completed chapter 21 on the ecosystem and chapter 22 on organism relationships.  She scored a 100% on the second test.  YEAH!!  The lab pictured above has he comparing beans sprouted with 3 plants per container versus 30 plants per container.  Needless to say it will be a couple of weeks before we finish this one.

 Violet has learned about all kinds of inventions.  Here she had some fun catapulting an eraser.

She compared the imprints from having the spools directly on the playdough versus running along Popsicle sticks to illustrate the advantage of the track system on tanks.

Benny and I finished up the section on shelled animals and have been reading about squid, cuttlefish, and octopus this week.  He'll make some more clay figures Monday after we finish the last bit of the chapter.

ART

 Violet decided to branch out on her own for art the past two weeks.  She drew a budding tree from the backyard,

and the shell house from the photo book that came with her Harry Potter movie.

Benny opted to work on his fishing skills rather than his art skills.  He also helped DH with some yard work and gardening.

HENRY'S CORNER

Henry and I did read lots of books and sang "Mary Had a Little Lamb", but I didn't get many other activities in over the past two weeks.  He watched way too many VeggieTales videos.

He also spent lots of time playing with siblings, following DH around, and getting into mischief as usual.

Curriculum Shopping for 2012-2013

Saving money on curriculum has become more difficult as the kids have gotten older, but last year we spent far more than I care to remember on curriculum.  This year I'm hoping to scale back our expeditures as much as is feasible either by buying used, purchasing items on sale, or using the library.  But first, I need a price list to do some comparison shopping.

Jessie's 8th Grade


Language Arts

• CW Diogenes Chreia - $29.95
• CW Intermediate Poetry - $22.95
• Rod & Staff English 8 Student and Teacher - $42.00
• Omnibus 3 Student and Teacher CD - $100
• Omnibus 3 Primary Books - $84.51 
• 1984 by Orwell
• Abraham Lincoln:  Speeches and Writings by Fehrenbacher 
• The Anti-Federalist Papaers by Ketcham
• The Communist Manifesto by Engels
• The Federalist Papers
• The Great Gatsby by Fitzgerland
• Mein Kampf by Hitler
• Of Plymouth Plantation by Bradford
• The Pilgrim's Progress by Bunyan
• Reflections on the Revolution in France by Burke
• The Social Contract by Cranston
• A Tale of Two Cities by Dickens
• Uncle Tom's Cabin by Stowe
• The Westminster Confession of Faith
• Omnibus 3 Secondary Books - $112.47 
• The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Twain
• Animal Farm by Orwell
• The Autobiography of Charles G. Finney by Finney
• Benjamin Franklin:  The Autobiography and Other Writings by Franklin
• Christianity and Liberalism by Machen
• Death of a Salesman by Miller
• Frankenstein by Shelley
• Gulliver's Travels by Swift
• How Should We Then Live by Schaeffer
• The Killer Angels by Shaara
• Little Women by Alcott
• The New Foxe's Book of Martyrs
• Old Man and the Sea by Hemingway
• Postmodern Times by Veith
• Pride and Prejudice by Austen
• Word Within a Word 1 Student and Teacher - $30.00

Math

• Foerster's Algebra 1 (student, teacher, solutions) - $156.41   

History

• Critical Thinking in U.S. History: Reconstruction to Progressivism - $23.99
• Critical Thinking in U.S. History: Spanish-American War to Vietnam War- $23.99

Science

• BJU Physical Science Student, Teacher, CD, Labs, Tests, Key 4th edition - $181.50
• Physical Science Lab Kit - $203.95

Electives

• Latin Alive 2 Bundle - $155.25
• Elementary Greek 3 set - $49.99
• Building Thinking Skills 3 Verbal - $29.99
• Traditional Logic 1 Teacher, Student, DVD - $63.95

OTHER GRADES

• Latin for Children C DVDs - $48.95 

Total Cost:  $1359.85

My final goal is to spend close to half that much.

Planning for 2012-13

Getting a curriculum list together for the upcoming year has proven much easier than last year.  Jessie and I sat down and discussed the new curriculum that we began in 7th grade; and while she likes some programs more than others, she's overall happy with our choices.  Violet and Benny and both doing well with their current curriculum; so while I may tweak our programs to better fit their needs, I don't see any need for major changes.  Here's our current plan for the upcoming year:

Jessie's 8th Grade:

• MATH - Foerster's Algebra I
• LA - Rod & Staff 8, Word Within a Word 1, Classical Writing Chreia & Intermediate Poetry, Omnibus 3
• HISTORY - TruthQuest AOR 2 (finish) and 3 (I do need to raise my expectations for output, but the curriculum itself is working)
• SCIENCE - BJU Physical Science
• FOREIGN LANGUAGE - Latin Alive 2, Elementary Greek 3
• LOGIC - Traditional Logic 1

Violet's 6th Grade:

• MATH - Singapore 6
• LA - Rod and Staff 6, SWO H, Classical Writing Homer & Poetry for Beginners, lots of library books with a shift from narration to discussion
• HISTORY - same as above
• SCIENCE - God's Design for Chemistry and Ecology
• FOREIGN LANGUAGE - LfC C, Elementary Greek 1
• LOGIC - Building Thinking Skills 2, ???

Benny's 3rd Grade:

• MATH - Singapore 3 and Miquon Yellow/Purple
• LA - Rod and Staff 3, SWO C (finish) and D, Classical Writing Aesop w/ copywork and dictation, lots of library books with a shift to reading and narrating
• HISTORY - TruthQuest AHYS 2 and 3
• SCIENCE - God's Design for Chemistry and Ecology
• LOGIC - Building Thinking Skills 1, ???

Henry's PreK:

• letters and phonics as able
• math and number games
• lots and lots of library books
• basic skills:  cutting, coloring, sorting, etc.

Week 26: Working round a snow day

Jessie's 7th Grade

• Jessie finished her Lial's Prealgebra book on Tuesday, has switched back over to NEM 1 for math, and is currently working with integers once again.
• In R&S, she completed the unit on adverbs Wednesday and began working on the ninth chapter covering prepositions and poetry so far.  She also took the last quiz in CE2 on Friday making vocabulary her first subject that is completed for the year!
• Her CW work for the week consisted of analysis of an article from the Spectator that was admired by Benjamin Franklin.  The sentence selected for diagramming on Wednesday was particularly challenging, and I wished for the first time that we had bought the student guide just for the answer key.  Still in the end, diagramming is subjective to a certain extent, and we could at least explain why we chose to diagram it as we did.
• We read more of The History of the Kings of Britain by Monmouth and began The Two Towers by Tolkien for Omnibus.
• I gave Jessie the week off from Latin to work on just vocabulary, so she played lots of FlashDash online this week.  Her Greek chapter was also a vocabulary review.
• As part of logic this week we discussed changes associated with the Industrial Revolution as well as the fallacy of composition.

Violet's 5th Grade

• Violet continued to work with percentages this week with a greater focus on solving word problems.
• She zipped through her grammar lessons on direct quotations and completed a short book report, but she struggled some with her spelling chapter and its combination of ei and ie words.  We'll spend another week on that lesson.
• In poetry one of her challenges for the week was to take two couplets and keep the same meaning and rhyme scheme but change the wording.  Her dictation for the week came from various books in "The Dark is Rising" series.
• Her literature remained the same: The Wolves of Willoughby Chase by Aiken and Johnny Tremain.
• In LfC she studied four basic sentence patterns.

Benny's 2nd Grade

• Benny finished his IP section on multiplying by 4, 5, and 10 and began a new textbook section on money this week.  He continues to work with place value in Miquon.
• In LA, he completed 2 more spelling chapters in SWO C, wrote a few more short dictated sentences, and continued his cursive copywork.  HE began learning about adjectives in FLL.
• After finishing The Bears on Hemlock Mountain on Monday, he began reading Encyclopedia Brown:  Boy Detective aloud to me.  I read the remainder of Warner's  The Mystery of the Lake Monster and began George Washington's Socks.

HISTORY

Our history topics for the week included Thomas Paine, Benjamin Franklin, the Declaration of Independence, the battle of Long Island, and Nathan Hale.  The girls summarized Thomas Paine: Political Writer by Fish and Nathan Hale by Lough, outlined 2 chapters from Guerber, and wrote about Benjamin Franklin.  Jessie's information came from Daugherty's Poor Richard, while Violet read Fritz's What's the Big Idea, Ben Franklin?.  Benny and I spent two days on Franklin reading Benjamin Franklin by D'Aulaire, The Whistle by Franklin, and Poor Richard in France by Monjo.  We read a portion of Dagliesh's The Fourth of July Story to cover the Declaration and Voight's Nathan Hale to finish up his week.  The girls also caught up with their timelines on Friday.

SCIENCE

Jessie did well on her chapter 20 test Monday.  She's been studying about biotic and a biotic communities as well as the carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen cycles.

Violet learned about airplanes, the Wright brothers, rockets, spacecraft, and hovercraft this week.  She tried various paper airplane designs to see which flew the farthest.  We still have to complete the rocket experiment since I didn't realize the kids had taken the last of my balloon stash.  Our hovercraft plate didn't work.

Benny and I read about conchology and different kinds of shells this week.  No hands on unfortunately.

GEOGRAPHY / ART

Same geography this week.

Violet practiced adding depth to her drawing by overlapping rings this week.

HENRY'S CORNER

Henry and I just read lots of books this week.  I was too busy preparing the last items for consignment, making a list of what we needed this spring/summer for kids' clothes, and then cleaning up afterward to be creative this week.  He was very proud of his gear creation this afternoon and insisted I come take a picture.

The Wolves of Willoughby Chase - Book 8 of 52 in 52

The Wolves of Willoughby Chase by Aiken is a delightful tale of the adventures of two young girls in England.  Silvia is sent by her aging aunt to live at Willoughby Chase with her cousin Bonnie.  Sir Willoughby has hired a governess to teach and care for the children as well as look after his estate while he takes his wife on a sea voyage to restore her health.  But if Silvia thought the most frightening part of Willoughby Chase was the wolves that roamed at night, she is sadly mistaken.  Within days of the parents leaving, Miss Slightcarp begin wearing Lady Willoughby's dresses, dismissing servants, selling furniture, and treating the girls like servants.  The girls attempt to get a message to the doctor's house for help, but it is intercepted.  They are told that the Willoughbys died in a shipwreck and sent to an orphan school that is truly more like a workhouse and prison.  With the help of a friends, they are finally able to escape and set out for the apartment Sylvia's aunt.  Will they make it to London?  Will they ever be able to return to Willoughby Chase?  How can they free their home from the grasp of the cruel Miss Slightcarp?

The Wolves of Willoughby Chase would make an excellent read aloud for ages 7-8, an independent read for 8+, or at about 160 pages a quick afternoon read for older children and adults.  I thoroughly enjoyed it and would highly recommend it to others. 

Week 25: Wacky Weather

The weather has been wacky this week.  One day feels like winter and the next it's looking like spring outside.  We've even had a couple of thunderstorms.  Inside we kept plugging away at our school and completed all of our scheduled work for the week.

 Jessie's 7th Grade

• Jessie and I backed up and did some more practicing with exponents at the beginning of the week before moving on to adding and multiplying polynomials at the end of the week in Lial's Prealgebra.
• In R&S, she spent 4 days practicing with adjectives and adverbs as single words, phrases, and clauses and differentiating between them in a sentence.  She also did a brief oral presentation on making cookies.  She began the final lesson in CE2 this week, and began working on the 4th analysis and imitation section of CW.
• In Omnibus, she continued to work through The History of the Kings of Britain by Monmouth covering the introduction of Christianity, the abandonment by the Romans, the treachery of Vortigern, and the introduction of the boy Merlin.  We also finished Henty's Winning His Spurs.
• In Latin, she worked on reflexive pronouns.  She continued working on the imperfect tense in EG2.
• We looked at cause and effect in Critical Thinking in US History and learned the fallacy of moderation and the is-ought fallacy in The Art of Argument.

Violet's 5th Grade

• Violet worked very hard this week converting between fractions, decimals, and percentages as well as solving problems with percentages in Singapore 5.
• In LA, she reviewed punctuation with commas and apostrophes in R&S, completed a review lesson in SWO, and did more dictation.  She continued to analyze rhyme, rhythm, and stanzas in CW poetry and did some synonym substitution to complete the rewritten poem on the right.
• In addition to continuing to read Johnny Tremain, she completed reading Little Lord Fauntleroy by Burnett and began The Wolves of Willoughby Place by Aiken.
• Her Latin lesson for this week covered the final demonstrative pronoun iste, ista, istud along with additional vocabulary.  She worked with Venn diagrams in BTS2 and completed another Mind Benders puzzle from the B3 book.

Benny's 2nd Grade

• Benny completed a couple of review pages in his Singapore textbook and began the corresponding IP section on multiplying and dividing with 4, 5, and 10.  His Miquon continues to center around place value, and we discussed being more careful in reading word problems to make sure the answer actually answers the question.
• He finished writing out the cursive alphabet, and we began cursive copywork using Dr. Seuss' ABCs.  He completed some grammar copywork on contractions and had his first try at dictation on Friday.
• Grammar covered contractions.  In SWO B, he finished lesson 1, completed lesson 2, and started the third lesson this week.
• We continue to read Warner's The Mystery of the Lake Monster together.  This week he has been reading The Bears on Hemlock Mountain by Dagliesh to me.
• His BTS 1 has centered on Venn diagrams and categorizing items by their characteristics.  He completed 2 more Mind Benders puzzles as well.

HISTORY

This week in history, we learned about the battles of Lexington and Concord, Samuel Adams, Ethan Allen, Henry Knox, and the battle of Bunker Hill.  This girls read about Lexington and Concord from The Story of the Thirteen Colonies by Guerber.  Jessie outlined the two chapters, and Violet wrote a summary.  Benny and I looked at the battle from both sides by reading Benchley's George the Drummer Boy and Sam the Minuteman.  We also enjoyed The Remarkable Ride of Israel Bissell by Schick for fun.  Everyone read Why Don't You Ride a Horse, Sam Adams? by Fritz.  Jessie read Ethan Allen by Aronson, while Violet outlined a potion on Ethan Allen from This Country of Ours.  We all enjoyed the story of Henry Know bringing cannons from Fort Ticonderoga to Boston reading Henry Knox:  Bookseller, Soldier, Patriot by Silvey.  An even better book on the subject is Reit's  Guns for General Washington which sadly our library no longer has a copy of, but I highly recommend.  Finally, while the girls read about Bunker Hill from Guerber, Benny and I enjoyed King George's Head Was Made of Lead by Monjo for an interesting British perspective on the war.

SCIENCE

Jessie's been studying sexual reproduction this week in life science.

Violet built a bridge to hold a toy train,

completed a paper model of a cylinder in an engine, and learned how a jet engine works.

Benny and I read about mollusks, crabs, hermit crabs, scallops, barnacles, and sea snails.  He also caught up on his figure making complete a ray, a lobster

a manta ray, and a spider crab.

ART / GEOGRAPHY

Jessie continues to work on South America, and Violet on North America.  Benny and I continued working on the southeastern United States.

Violet decided to skip the regular art lessons and draw a budding maple tree in our yard instead.

HENRY'S CORNER

Henry and I continue to work on the letters A-D.  At the beginning of the week, he was still mixing up B and D and couldn't seem to remember C at all.  We spent two days playing a game where I called out a letter and he ran to the fridge and brought back the magnet.  We also outlined the letters C, c, D, and d with Sequence Jr. chips on our drawing board.  Our nursery rhyme for the week was "Hickory, Dickory, Dock", and we played mice running back and forth across the room to climb up and down our clock.  His favorite game of the week was for number practice.  I wrote the numbers 1, 2, and 3 on separate index card.  After turning the cards face down, he turned one over, and we jumped how ever many times the number on the card says.  He actually had so much fun that he asked Benny to play with him again later.  After 2 days he has those numbers down so we can move on to the number 4 next week.

His favorite story of the week has been Jack and the Beanstalk which he calls the stomping book.  After I read it in the morning, he bring it to Jessie to read for their play time and then hits up DH for a third reading in the evening.