Week 6: Adding On...

It's been a busy week so all of our work isn't quite done, but we're close. Violet started swim class on Monday, and Jessie starts today. Wednesday, it was so nice that we only worked half the morning then met some friends at a playground. Amazingly all of the basics got done. We have a little more history reading to catch up, and the corresponding map and booklet we'll finish up next week. Here's our week:

LANGUAGE ARTS

Language arts is basically on autopilot. It's nice to have one area that only requires a minimal amount of planning. We had no knew poems or scriptures this week, so Jessie and Violet both copied a passage from Little Pilgrims Progress for handwriting. We're almost finished memorizing An Evening Hymn. Hopefully we'll be ready to start a new poem by the middle of next week. Today the last few chapters of the first section of Little Pilgrims Progress about Christian's journey were completed. I haven't decided if we'll try to read the entire section of Christiana's journey next week or just take the week off from literature. The picture on the left is Violet's spelling lesson, and on the right is the final draft of Jessie's retelling of The Crow and the Pitcher for CW.

MATH

Jessie's had some review and has now started working on multiplying and dividing by 8. I really like the way Singapore teaches x8 as being a double of x4. Jessie is good with mental addition so saying 4x8 is 32, 8x8 is double 32 or 64 has helped her a lot. She didn't needed any outside manipulatives this week until Friday when she used her x8 key as a reference for multiplying two and three digit numbers by 8. (She loves it when she can do all the work in her head.) On the left you see 2 of Jessie's Miquon pages for the week. Violet has breezed through the intro to multiplication section and done a bit of review. She even took the first 4 pages of the corresponding IP section in stride . Sometimes IP doesn't have as many pictures, and she has trouble with the problems. Our daily math drill is starting to pay off as well. Her confidence on her addition facts is back up so we may add on a few new ones next week. That's her Big Book of Time and Money on the right. It's quick and easy enough that she enjoys doing several pages on Fridays.

HISTORY / GEOGRAPHY

We finished all the A states this week. With Arizona and Arkansas complete, we'll be moving on to California next week. I asked the girl's twice this week to work on their geography booklets independently, and they did great. (They actually did more pages than they were assigned.) I forgot to read from the Wish You Were Here book. We'll try that next week. If Violet still doesn't show any interest, I'll just let Jessie continue to read from it in her free time. (She loves it and anything else geography related). She and Violet also pulled out the World Geography book that goes with their LeapPad this week. I didn't realize that it had a page for the states with a game to play.

I didn't have all the library books that I wanted this week for history. (The best laid plans...) Monday and Tuesday, we read a biography of Francisco Coronado and a quick picture book on Sir Francis Drake. The girls were thrilled to see that Coronado tried to do what was right and wasn't cruel or greedy like the conquistadors from last week. I also added a biography of Samuel de Champlain because I wanted to introduce the girls to the French settlements. We're reading Champlain: Father of New France by Cecil Pepin Edwards. This is the second book from the series Makers of America that we have read. Both have been excellent. After 30 minutes and 4 chapters, they were still asking for another chapter on Thursday. (Sadly, my poor voice could take no more.) I added the Champlain biography to give us a point for comparison later to look at the differences between the French and the English in how they related to the Indians. We were also scheduled to read a biography of Henry Hudson this week. (The first two books came from ILL so I wasn't sure we would have them available). The Hudson book is still checked out, so we'll have to fit it in later (maybe when we talk about New Amsterdam). We did finally make and put together a tabbed booklet to hold all of the maps we've been drawing with each explorer's route. We'll finish it up next week with some decorations, labels, and a couple of final maps.

ART / MUSIC

We got to art and music this week. We're still trying to work through Drawing with Children. We reviewed at the shape families (dots, circles, straight lines, curved lines, and angled lines). The girls had actually covered this material before at an art class they attended during our church Bible study. They really wanted to draw something real so we jumped ahead and did some drawings of birds. They were both very happy with the results. Now I just have to come up with something new along the same lines for next week. (They drew birds a couple of years ago as well).

For music we listened to Masters of Classical Music: Vivaldi with mixed results. Jessie loved all the music. Violet was mostly interested in the parts that she recognized from the Classical Kids tape. Benny wanted to know when I was going to turn it off (mainly because he was ready for his nap).

PRESCHOOL

Our preschool wasn't quite as consistent this week. Violet kept finishing her math early, and Benny just wanted to go off with her and play. We did manage to add the letters Ee; however, the allure of the sidewalk has worn off so we'll have to come up with something new for next week. Our number frogs have also disappeared. Hopefully, I'll find them under the living room furniture when I shampoo the carpet tomorrow. He's taken an interest in drawing and coloring all of a sudden. We put it to use tracing our alphabet letters on the sidewalk today and coloring 4-5 pages from his Kumon book. (see pictures below). This morning he also asked the girls for every scrap of paper they didn't need while they were making booklets, sat down on the kitchen floor, and proceeded to cut them into tiny pieces. I think I'll try to find a real craft for him next week. Maybe he can make some star Christmas ornaments to give as gifts. (I know it's only September. Blame the Veggietales Christmas video Benny picked yesterday morning, and my mom and sister wanting to know our plans for the holidays already.)


"The Lord gives strength to His people; the Lord blesses is people with peace." Psalm 29:11