Weeks 28 & 29

We finished our shopping for summer clothes and gotten them washed.  The taxes have been submitted.  The house was cleaned prior to my parents visiting, and we took our spring break while they were visiting.  Hopefully, we can settle back into our regular routine next week without any more outside distractions.  Here's a quick recap of the last two school weeks.

Jessie's 8th Grade

• Jessie finished chapter 11 on rational algebraic expressions, scored well on her test, and began working with radical algebraic expressions. She completed assignments involving adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing radicals as well as working on radical binomials.
• In grammar, she continued working with adverbs, learned about persuasive arguments, and wrote a rough draft on the importance of geography.  She completed lesson 23 and 24 in vocabulary.
• It took 3 weeks, but she finally completed her final lessons and writing project in CW Diogenes Chreia and will be moving on to the second half of the poetry book next week.  In literature, she finished reading both The Coral Island and The Tale of Two Cities.  We discussed the former and she completed a book report on it.  The latter, we'll discuss and finish up next week.
• In Latin, she completed chapter 16 and then had a week break.  She did completed another two weeks of Greek less

Violet's 6th Grade

• Violet completed her unit on volume, the corresponding IP section, and several review lessons over the past two weeks.
• She finished her grammar unit on adjectives and began working on adverbs.  In spelling, she completed another 2 lessons.
• For literature, she began reading The Hobbit by Tolkien.  In CW poetry, she had lessons that included  personification and common meter hymns.
• She completed lessons 26 & 27 in LfC C, which leaves her with 3 remaining review chapters for the year.  She continued working with 1st declension nouns in EG1.

Benny's 3rd Grade

• Benny completed several review exercises in his textbook and workbook and began learning about capacity working with liters and milliliters. In Miquon, he continues to work on plotting points on a coordinate system.
• Benny has also been working with adverbs in his grammar lessons.  In spelling, he completed two lessons that contained words with suffixes first with ending consonants to double and then requiring the dropping of a silent e.
• He completed a narration of  "The Ant and the Grasshopper" for CW and did some analysis of  "The City Mouse and the Country Mouse".  He also did his regular cursive copywork and dictation exercises. 
• In literature, he finished reading I, Houdini by Reid and began Homer Price.  Together, we've been reading The Wolves of Willoughby Chase by Aiken.

HISTORY

In history, the girls covered the suffrage movement, humanism, and the progressive movement using the TruthQuest guide.  They outlined a chapter of This Country of Ours covering Teddy Roosevelt and wrote a summary of the Spanish-America War using The Story o the Great Republic.  Benny covered the latter two topics using Don't You Dare Shoot That Bear by Quackenbush and a section of SOTW 4.  Then we covered art and music at the turn of the century using books by Venezia about Monet, Cezanne, Cassatt, Homer, Gauguin, Van Gogh, Seurat, Stravinsky, and Copland.

No science the past two weeks.

OTHER

See the previous two posts for art.

HENRY'S CORNER

Henry and I began working on some letter blending in Phonics Pathways.  The first couple of days, he gave me a lot of resistance, but then he settled into the new lessons.  We'll give it another week or two to see if the new skill clicks.  If not, we can always take a break.  For read-alouds, we went with a week of chicken books including Henny Penny and The Little Red Hen and others followed by bunny week with The Complete Tales of Peter Rabbit and a cute picture book called Muncha!  Muncha!  Muncha!