Wednesday, June 19, 2013

WW: Our Newest Additions

We rescued Freckles and Snowy from the neighborhood stray cats.
 After a couple of days getting used to us, they are turning out to be very snuggly,
curious about everything (naturally),
and lots of fun. (They are also great alarm clocks, and get me up at 5:30 every morning.)

Saturday, June 15, 2013

Year End Wrap Up

It's been a crazy couple of weeks since my last report, but we have managed to finish most of our subjects.  I've been working on some spring cleaning, trying to order the remainder of our curriculum, and getting ready for VBS at church.  We've also adopted two adorable kittens that belonged to one of the stray cats my FIL feeds.  (Benny is so excited that he was finally able to catch some.  He's been trying for over a year now.)  They are settling in very well, and the kids are having a blast for them.  Our poor golden retriever keeps trying to make friends with them, but they have yet to decide whether they should consider him friend or foe.

Jessie's 8th Grade
  • Jessie finished up her last CW lesson and her final vocabulary lesson.  She wrote a book report for White Fang by London, so her math and language arts work is now complete.
  • She has also finished up Building Thinking Skills 3 Figural and Traditional Logic 1 completing her scheduled logic for the year.
  • In Latin, she has done a few lessons in chapter 20 alternating with some grammar memorization review.
  • She has completed chapters 7 and 8 in science as well.
  • Her plan for the summer is to complete Traditional Logic 2 and science by mid-July hopefully.  She will also continue her Latin work over the summer alternating with some review/reinforcement of grammar charts.  I want to make sure she has mastered all of the grammar before we move on to book 3 of Latin Alive.  In hindsight, we should have spent more time doing this over the year.
Violet's 6th Grade
  • Violet finished up the last of the IP year end review section and her final challenging word problems book over the past couple of weeks.
  • She also finished her grammar, spelling, and final literature selection, The Winged Watchman, with an accompanying book report.
  • Her summer plan will be to work on some outlining skills and play some Latin games at Headventureland.com to keep her Latin skills up.
Benny's 3rd Grade
  • Benny has also finished up the last of his math for the year.
  • In spelling we worked through lesson 30 of SWO D and will pick back up with the last few chapters after summer.  His literature and read alouds are also done for the year.
  • For the summer, I just want him to continue his memory work and do some math drill on the Flashmaster.
History

We've been using just SOTW 4 for history to wrap up our year.  Over the past couple of weeks we covered the Korean War, the Cold War, the Cuban Missile Crisis, Mao's takeover of China, the assassination of Kennedy, the Civil Rights Movement, and the Vietnam War.  I'm calling Benny done for the year after he puts the last few notebook pages together on Monday.  I'll ask the girls to simply read through the remaining SOTW chapters during the next week with no required additional writing, and we're going to call history done.

Henry's PreK

Henry is still doing very well with his phonics, so I want to continue working with him over the summer each day.  We'll continue our half hour of Bible reading, picture books, phonics book, and math activity.  I'll have each of the older kids take turns playing with him as well because he enjoys it so much.