Week 17: A Great Week!!

It's been a great week. Things didn't go exactly as I planned, but we accomplished our school work. I caught up on the laundry, and we picked out a Christmas tree on Wednesday after DH got off from work. But the best part of the week by far has been getting TWO FULL NIGHT'S of sleep. WAHOO!!! My brain's beginning to work again. Now that our week is done, we can concentrate on setting up the rest of the Christmas decorations and decorating the tree.

MATH

This has been a lightning fast week as far as math goes. Jessie finished up the Intensive Practice section on angles and began a new section in the textbook on perpendicular and parallel lines. Wednesday's math assignment took her all of 10 minutes maybe. Thursday she ended up doing 3 assignments. Basically she's been identifying which lines are perpendicular and which are not, which are parallel and which are not, sometimes as just two lines and sometimes as part of a figure. She's also been drawing both types of lines. We don't have a square so the lines she drew weren't as precise as they could have been, but I figured it was a math lesson not a drafting lesson.

Violet has started a new section on fractions this week. We talked about what 1/2 and 1/4 meant and what each number in the fraction tells us. Basically she either took a fraction and shaded the figure or looked at a figure to determine the fraction. She had so much fun "playing" with the fractions in her math lesson that she went downstairs to play with some more fractions on the dry erase board. She showed DH what she had been doing and they started adding and subtracting fractions as well. So YEAH!! it's been a good math week. I love the easy chapters.

LANGUAGE ARTS

In grammar, we moved on from direct objects to predicate nouns. Jessie did very well in the initial lessons where all of the sentences had one or the other. Once we reached a point where sentences could have either a direct object or a predicate noun or neither she struggled. I think we'll try adding a sentence or two of daily review next week. In reading, Jessie has started Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh and was so engrossed in the story on Monday that she read an extra chapter. I also haven't had to remind her to do her reading this week although I'm not sure if that's due to her interest in the new book or all of our discussions on responsibility. In CW, Jessie rewrote "The Story of William Tell". She did an excellent job of outlining on her own. To be quite honest, I believe it's the best retelling she's done to date. I really couldn't find that much editing to do. Spelling and dictation are still progressing well.

Violet did some grammar catch up this week. We finished off sentence types, introduce the definition of a verb, and discussed action verbs. In handwriting, we learned the cursive R, S, T, and U. Friday I gave her another quiz to see how many of the letters she could remember. She did very well with the lowercase letters only forgetting p and q. She left a few more of the capital letters blank. I'm not sure if she didn't remember them at all or just didn't want to write down the wrong thing. In reading, Violet has also begun a new book, The Wheel on the School, in addition to her weekly reading from The Blue Fairy Book.

HISTORY

In history this week we started learning about the American Civil War. We discussed the attacks on Fort Sumter. I tried to get the girls to look at the situation from both sides. They gravitate towards making it black and white with good guys and bad guys, so it's harder to make them understand that sometimes it's just not that simple. Independently they read a biography of Jefferson Davis. On Wednesday we read (with Mom editing on the fly) about the Battle of Bull Run. We noted the mistakes that the Union troops made by going in without a plan and with untrained troops. We discussed Stonewall Jackson since I couldn't find a good elementary level biography on him. Our map work shows the secession of states from the Union after Lincoln's election and after the first shots were fired. It also shows which slave states did not leave the Union. The booklets cover Fort Sumter, Bull Run, and Jefferson Davis. In addition to these we also added Stonewall Jackson and a general Civil War figure to our time lines.

SCIENCE

In Zoology 2, we took one day to do the Lesson 1 experiment testing whether hot water or cold water was heavier. Jessie voted for cold water. Violet thought they would be about the same. Benny just wanted to start the experiment. It actually worked better than I thought. When we added the yellow cold water to the blue hot water, you could definitely tell that the bottom was turning green first. We also started lesson 2 this week on Cetaceans. We filled out one booklet with some general information on whales.

LATIN / MUSIC / ART

Yes, we actually got all three of these in this week. YEAH!! In Latin Jessie completed lesson 14 covering second conjugation verbs and first declension masculine nouns. In art this week, both of the girls drew dolphins. Violet decided to draw a whole family of them so they wouldn't be lonely. For music, we began learning about the woodwind section of the orchestra by covering the flute and the piccolo.

BENNY'S PREK

Benny is still working on counting to 50. He still skips 15 sometimes when he gets in a hurry, but he's definitely improving. In phonics we covered the letter sounds for j, g, and v this week. We read several Christmas books in addition to a few titles that I found relating to the Netherlands and turkeys. For art this week Benny used fingerpaints to make some handprint turkeys. After our science experiment with the girls, he spent quite a bit of time mixing warm and cold water and blowing bubbles through a straw. I told him that his bubble "experiment" showed that air was lighter than water, and he just beamed to be doing his own "real" science experiment.

WW: Santa Baby

Henry's Version of Crawling

Here's my first attempt at a blog video. Sorry it's sideways. I'll have to come back and try again later, but it's still very cute to watch. (Yes, I shamelessly baited him with Jessie's library book to get this video.)

Week 16: Short and light

We had a three day school week here. The kids wanted to watch the Macy's parade on Thursday. I had a list of cleaning, shopping, wrapping, shipping, and organizing that I wanted a few days to work on . (I got the wrapping and shipping accomplished. The rest still needs some work.) Here's a brief look at our week.

MATH

Jessie spent the week working on the angle section of the Intensive Practice book. She did some angle measuring and identified different types of angles in various figures. We ran into a few unexpected snags with the latter assignment. Once I explained that she could only count angles on the inside of the figure and modeled what she needed to do, she did very well. She also finished her first section in her CWP 4 book this week. She got the week off from math drill since I hadn't made a drill sheet for her and the wrap up developed a very large tangle in its cord (seemingly all on its own while it was in the school cabinet). Hmm. I still need to go take care of that.

Violet finished up the money section of her Intensive Practice book on Tuesday and did a general review exercise on Wednesday. Her borrowing has improved quite a bit over the past week. She still brings me her problems frequently just to hear me say that her borrowing is fine. My plan for now is to continue through the book. We can revisit the hows and whys of borrowing later if we run into problems again. Her Miquon assignments are still covering square numbers. This week she switched to the abacus in order to come up with her answers. Hopefully by next week, she start to remember the answers. Her CWP problems are going very well.

LANGUAGE ARTS

In grammar Jessie finished up her 4th unit on Monday. Tuesday and Wednesday were spent identifying and then diagramming direct objects. In spelling we squeezed in a full week by taking the week off from critical thinking. That will allow us to take off spelling completely the week of Christmas. In dictation, we're still plugging away. No assigned reading. For CW, we completed our retelling of "Bruce and the Spider".

Violet also completed a full week of spelling. We forgot (technically I forgot and she didn't bother to remind me) to do her grammar lesson on Tuesday, so she got the week off from that. In cursive, she learned the letters P, Q, and R. I'm excited to think that in a couple of weeks we can switch over to cursive copywork. No assigned reading this week.

HISTORY / SCIENCE

We took the week off from both.

LATIN / OTHER

Instead of starting the next lesson in Latin, we spent a few days reviewing. All three days Jessie went through her Latin vocabulary cards. On Monday, I gave her 3 verbs to conjugate in the present tense. Tuesday, she declined 3 nouns. She also had 4 sentences each day where she had to choose the correct form of the verb and predicate noun or adjective if included before translating.

No music this week. (I did finally get the book from the library so we can start again next week.) For art the girls each drew an anglerfish.

BENNY'S PREK

Benny and I played with the letter magnets this week to practice his phonics. In counting he made it to 50 on Wednesday. YEAH! No themes or crafts this week. We read a few books, and he spent as much time as he could helping DH.

Exploring the world with Benny, weeks 10 and 11

I noticed on Friday when I uploaded my last weekly report that I had forgotten to list the books that Benny and I had read the week before so I'll do two weeks today. We actually ended up spending about a week and a half on Germany and dogs. There are so many adaptations of fairy tales from the Brothers Grimm that the list could have been much longer than it was. The numbers of books about dogs is equally lengthy so I simply stuck to some of the books that I remembered the girls enjoying when they were younger. The second half of last week and this week we are reading books about Spain and dinosaurs. There are a lot of books that have kids pretending to be or play with dinosaurs. I chose to limit our selections to books that actually had a dinosaur as a character as a means of simply reducing the number of choices. Here are the books that we enjoyed.

Week 10

Germany

• The Fisherman and His Wife by the Brothers Grimm
• The Frog Prince by Paul Galdone
  
• The Goose Girl : A Story from the Brothers Grimm by Eric A. Kimmel
  
• Hansel and Gretel by James Marshall
• Iron John by Eric A. Kimmel
  
• Little Red Riding Hood by Jerry Pinkney
  
• Mrs. Goat and Her Seven Little Kids by Tony Ross
  
• Seven at One Blow : A Tale from the Brothers Grimm by Eric A. Kimmel
  
• The Three Spinning Fairies : A Tale from the Brothers Grimm by Lisa Campbell Ernst
  
• The Turnip by Walter de la Mare
  

Dogs

• Angus and the Cat by Marjorie Flack
  
• Angus and the Ducks by Marjorie Flack
  
• Angus Lost by Marjorie Flack
• Bark, George by Jules Feiffer
  
• Harry, the Dirty Dog by Gene Zion
  
• McDuff Comes Home by Rosemary Wells
• McDuff Moves In by Rosemary Wells
  
• McDuff's Wild Romp by Rosemary Wells
  
• Pinkerton, Behave! by Steven Kellogg
  
• A Rose for Pinkerton by Steven Kellogg
  

Dalmation Craft

Week 11

Spain

• The Beautiful Butterfly : A Folktale from Spain by Judy Sierra
  
• Don Quixote and the Windmills by Eric A. Kimmel
  
• The Girl, the Fish & the Crown : A Spanish Folktale by Marilee Heyer
  
• Squash It! : A True and Ridiculous Tale by Eric A. Kimmel
  

Dinosaurs

• Danny and the Dinosaur by Syd Hoff
  
• Danny and the Dinosaur Go to Camp by Syd Hoff
  
• Dinosaur Roar! by Paul and Henrietta Stickland
  
• Dinosaurs, Dinosaurs by Byron Barton
  
• Happy Birthday, Danny and the Dinosaur! by Syd Hoff
• Sammy and the Dinosaurs by Ian Whybrow
  
• Too Big! by Claire Masurel
  
• The Trouble with Tyrannosaurus Rex by Lorinda Bryan Cauley

Our pattern came from T-Rex Paper Craft. Instead of following the directions and using string or straws to make the parts movable, Benny chose to simply use a few brads.

Week 15: Improving Our Responsibility

It's been a good week. We've gotten the bulk of our school work done. Both girls have improved this week in being more responsible for their own work and have done a much better job of staying focused as it went along. I feel like we're in a good position to lighten up next week instead of trying to play catch up before the holiday. Here a look at our week.

MATH

We finished fractions! WooHoo!! Jessie has started a new unit in math Wednesday and is working on angles. Wednesday, she practiced reading the protractor that was drawn on the page. Thursday, she measured her own angles between zero and 180 degrees. Friday she learned how to figure out angles larger than 180. Her CWP is still going well. She still working through a section of challenging problems this week. She needed my help a couple of days with the problem set up. Today, even I couldn't set up the diagrams correctly without working the problem algebraically first.

Violet is still plugging away at the money topic. After a couple of review pages in the text, she has begun the money section in the Intensive Practice book, and has done very well. In Miquon, she been working with square numbers. The first two days, she was only working with numbers up to 5 squared. Wednesday, she had to figured out 6 through 10 squared. She pulled out the cuisenaire rods and worked through the page all by herself without asking for my help. I love to see her confident enough to try to work a problem out on her own.

LANGUAGE ARTS

The one area that isn't quite finished yet this week is Jessie's language arts. In CW, we were supposed to be rewriting "Bruce and the Spider". We did get it outlined on Monday, but that was the only day we got to it. Spelling is going well. In grammar, she has almost finished the unit on verbs. She did finish reading Little Lord Fauntleroy, and her Shakespeare story for the week was "Much Ado About Nothing". Dictation is still going well. I think we'll finish up the battle scene in The Horse and His Boy sometime next month. (I wonder what she'll pick next?)

Violet is continuing to do well with spelling. She's done a better job this week of looking up words that she doesn't know in the dictionary at the back of the spelling book. In grammar, we discussed exclamatory sentences on Tuesday and practiced identifying types of sentences on Thursday. In reading, she has finished up Follow My Leader today and will be ready for a new selection after Thanksgiving. Her cursive handwriting is coming along very well. We're up to the letter O now. On the right are her sentences we used to review today. Not the best sentences in the world, but I did manage to use all of the upper and lowercase letters that we had learned so far. The only letter that gave her any problem was the uppercase K. I'll have to make an effort to work it in more next week for some additional practice.

HISTORY

History this week was all about Abraham Lincoln. We read about his boyhood up through the point where he became president. Independently, the girls read a biography of Allan Pinkerton, the first American detective. We made booklets for both men and added Lincoln and a figure for the new states added in the 1860s to our time lines. For map work this week, we did an updated map of what America looked like in 1860.

We finally finished the first chapter of Zoology 2 this week. Our topics were the ocean floor and the abyss. After we finally found a balloon and a two liter bottle, I demonstrated how an increase in pressure can cause the balloon to shrink in size. There is one other experiment at the end of the chapter that we might try next week for fun, but I don't think we'll do a write up on it.
OTHER

No music or art. Maybe next week. In Latin, we've completed lesson 13. Our memory work is still plugging along.

BENNY'S PREK

Benny has done very well this week. We're still working on counting to 40. Sometimes he goes too fast and skips a few numbers. When he gets to 39, he usually stops and looks at me. All I have to do is repeat 39 to prompt him to remember the last number. In phonics, he learned the sounds for the letters b, d, p, and t this week. He still mixes up the letters b and d sometimes, but once I tell him which letter it is he chooses the correct sound. His blending is improving. He doesn't always want to take time to sound things out and tends to make more mistakes when he's in a hurry. I think we'll probably just scramble some letters with the magnets next week before introducing more new sounds. Our reading topics for this week and into next week have been Spain and dinosaurs. I only found a couple of tales from Spain, but we've had plenty of dinosaur books to choose from. Below is the T Rex we made together this morning.

WW: His Little Highness

aka - DH's way to entertain boys while still getting work done