Week 22: Working Around Interruptions

It's been a very busy week this week as evidenced by my lack of blogging. Monday went beautifully with our new schedule. Then I had to do some rearranging on Tuesday and Thursday to drop off and pick up my van from the shop (where they couldn't seem to get in the right part so it still needs a new bumper). I've also been distracted by work around the house
that needed to be caught up when I wasn't chasing down Violet to send her back to finish her school work. Henry is also running a fever at the end of the week and has required a lot more Mom snuggle time than usual. We did manage to accomplish most of our work anyway.

MATH

Jessie began her second week in her 5B textbook and workbook. She completed 7 days worth of assignments since a lot of the workbook pages were only 1 page instead of the regular two pages. She worked on multiplying and dividing with decimals. She also spent two days applying her decimal skills to conversions between various units of measurement. Most of the units were metric (kg and g, m and cm, l and ml) but there were also some non-metric units (lb and oz, qt and cups, ft and in) where she found it a bit tricky to figure out the decimals. She would much rather have written the answers in fraction form I believe.





Violet finished her 3A workbook and her IP book this week. YEAH!! Next week she'll move on to the 3B books where we can work on catching up. She's doing very well with all of her calculations, although we still need to work on her math facts. In Miquon, she was introduce to fractions this week. I did have to take some time each day to explain how to complete the page, but once she had the instructions she did an excellent job with the work.

Benny finished up his IP section on subtraction this week. He did a great job with the word problems in the IP book with me reading to him. In Miquon, he continues to work with a combination of addition and subtraction. The pages this week had several related problems (ie. 5+3, 5+4, 5+5, etc.) in a series so that he could see the pattern and use it to solve the problems with answers larger than 10. He completed all of his Miquon work without any help from me this week and would just grab the book and get started on the next page without even waiting for me.

LANGUAGE ARTS

Jessie completed her 4th spelling lesson in SWO H with flying colors. In grammar, we've worked most of the week with adverbs either identifying or diagramming. She did an excellent job with her diagramming worksheet on Friday. In CW Homer, we finally finished an entire lesson in one week as scheduled. She analyzed and rewrote "The Golden Apple". The picture to the right is from our day 4 analysis where we chose a sentence, diagrammed it, paraphrased by using synonyms, paraphrased by altering the grammar, and then condensed the sentence. Don't ask me why the 3rd sentence says Hera and Juno instead of Hera and Athene. Neither Jessie not I noticed until the picture went up today for the weekly report. In literature, she's thoroughly enjoying The Hobbit (I've caught her rereading chapters during her free time already.) and has finished Age of the Fable at long last.

Violet completed her spelling work and began a unit on adjectives in R&S 3. In CW, she rewrote and illustrated her own version of "Mercury and the Woodman". Her copywork from The Secret Garden finally reached the point where Mary finds the garden and will continue with a description of that find next week. In literature, it was more Red Fairy Book and Complete Peterkin Papers while we wait for The Children's Homer.

Benny spent most of the week working on the long i sound, first in Phonics Pathways and then in the Pyramids book. He's started to do more guessing so we may need to back up and review soon or add some readers for extra practice. He managed to go the whole week without any handwriting. (I don't know where my brain was.) We finished Surprise Island and did most of his Bible reading, but missed a few days due to interruptions.

HISTORY

In the Old Testament this week, we covered from the division of Israel under Rehoboam through the events under King Ahab in Israel. Jessie made a chart for the kings of Israel and another for the kings of Judah. For each king she listed some of their choices or actions and the resulting consequences. The final column is her evaluation of what kind of king each was (mainly bad, worse, and worst.) Violet gave me oral narrations of her reading each day, which I typed up. Both girls made a map of Israel and Judah. Timeline figures included the division of Israel, the kings of Israel, the kings f Judah, and Elijah.

In ancient Greece this week, our focus was Athens during its golden age. Violet read and wrote summaries for Cimon and Pericles using The Famous Men of Greece. Jessie read several chapters of The Story of the Greeks. She wrote a paragraph describing some of the disputes and conflicts between Sparta and Athens which set the stage for the Peloponnesian War. She also wrote about Pericles and what Athens was like during his rule. Both girls drew a picture of the Parthenon using our Draw and Write Through History books. On Violet's page above is her Greek soldier from last week as well. Jessie still has to find hers for her page next week. Timeline figures for Greece included Cimon, Pericles, the Golden Age of Athens, the Statue of Zeus, and the Parthenon.

SCIENCE

We did not finish all of our scheduled science lessons this week mostly because of interruptions. We did complete the last lesson of unit 2 covering oxygen, and the girls enjoyed watching a candle flame go out under the glass when it ran out of oxygen. Their second unit test went better than the first. We also completed the first lesson in unit 3 covering ionic bonds. They were really excited to make marshmallow models of lithium and fluorine. We opted to use saran wrap and a twist tie to hold the nucleus together rather than glue so that the kids would still be able to eat the marshmallows when we finished. (I also saved the toothpicks in a bag for the models for the following lesson, so I didn't have to go buy more.

LATIN

Jessie completed lesson 19 in LfC B this week. I finally broke down and used the answer key. I have some studying to do over the weekend. Violet started lesson 3 at the beginning of the week. I'm not sure she's really understanding the material. I may need to spend some more time covering the grammar portion with her.

OTHER

Henry continues to enjoy his playtime with Violet and Benny in the morning and has also been joining Jessie and Benny during part of their play time most days. Still there are times when everyone's busy, and he goes looking for something to do. At those times, (when he's not trying to sneak onto my computer) he goes looking for Jack. A dog that is napping in the morning must be really bored and need someone to wake him up and play with him.

Organizing from the Inside Out - 52 in 52 Week 3

I first read and applied the strategies of Organizing from the Inside Out by Morgenstern a few years back when we were getting ready to move into our new house. I put the most effort at the time into organizing my new kitchen, and it is still to this day the most organized room in my house. Since one of my goals for the year is to improve on my organization overall, I decided a second read of Organizing from the Inside Out would be a good place to start.

The basic process starts with analysis. After looking at a given area, you ask yourself the following: What's working? What's not working? What items are most essential to you? Why do you want to get organized? What is causing the problem? The next step is to determine how you want to use the space, what supplies you will need, and where you will store them. My kitchen for example has a food storage zone, a cooking zone, a meal preparation zone, etc. Once you've figured out what you want, then the next step is to sort, purge, assign a home, containerize, and equalize (which just means evaluate after a few weeks to see what needs adjusted and then maintain). The second half of the book covers different types of offices, rooms in the house, schedules, etc. There are plenty of ideas to get you started. Right now, I'm working on my desk. The sorting and purging part is going to take some time, but I'll try to post a summary of what I did with some pictures when I'm finished.

Confessions of an Organized Homemaker - 52 in 52 Week 3

Confessions of an Organized Homemaker by Schoefield is a book I checked out from the library after seeing it recommended on TWTM boards. I will say this. She is definitely organized. As with most organizing books where one person's system is explained, most of the information falls into one of three categories:

1. It's something I already do - many of the kitchen organizing ideas fell into this category

2. It's overkill for me - Personally, I found her menu planning system to complex, but I tend to fix simple meals with just a few ingredients anyway. Her system of putting all of her pantry items into plastic containers and putting numbered dots on the lid and container to keep track of them also definitely fell into this category. (I am never buying that many containers.)

3. It's useful to me or can be adapted to work for me. - Of all the information in her book, the section where she explains how her personal organizer is set up and how she uses it was by far the most interesting part of the book for me. She uses a combination of monthly and daily pages with a running to do list. She also has several suggestions for different items to include (book ideas, clothing & shoe sizes, etc).

Seeing someone else's system for organizing is always a great way to get some new ideas. This book is full of ideas to get you started.

Week 21: Still tweaking

We're still settling into our new schedule this week. I shuffled our days around a couple of times in order to go into town just before lunch. Thursday, I decided to tweak the schedule one last time (hopefully) to split Jessie's CW lessons up into 2 30 minute time blocks to bring us in line with the recommendations in the core manual. I'm hopeful that next week, we'll settle in and finally get around to all of our work. Here's a look at our week.

MATH

Jessie started the first unit in her 5B textbook and workbook this week on decimals. She started by multiplying with 10, 100, or 1000 and moving decimals to the right. By midweek, she had problems like 0.56 x 60 to solve by breaking the problem down into 0.56 x 6 x 10. Friday, she started practicing dividing decimals by 10, 100, or 1000 moving the decimal place to the left and dividing by multiples of these numbers by breaking the problem into steps. Overall her math lessons have gone fairly quickly this week. We even squeezed in an extra lesson.

Violet has been working mostly on review this week. She completed the last unit on money in her IP book. Friday, she finished the last page in her 3A textbook. She has a few more review pages in the 3A workbook and IP before she'll be ready to move on to the 3B books the following week.

Benny continued to work with addition and subtraction by number lines in his Miquon Orange book. In Singapore we finished everything in the IP unit on subtraction within 10 except for the work problems, which we'll do on Monday. He's figured out how to consistently add and subtract by 0, 1, or 2 in his head. 3 is still a little iffy, and anything above that requires either the rods or a number line. Overall, I'm pleased with the progress he's making and the slow increase in his confidence.


LANGUAGE ARTS

Jessie finished her 3rd lesson in SWO H. In grammar, we continued working with adjectives discussing adjectives in the appositive position. We learned some more terminology: positive adjective, comparative adjective, and superlative adjective. I'm not sure I consider the terminology essential since she can already use the adjectives correctly in sentences. In CW, this was our first week of completing both the analysis and writing sections in one week. I learned the wisdom of splitting the work over two separate time periods and have revised the schedule for next week. In literature, she began reading The Hobbit by Tolkein and is nearing the end of Age of the Fable.

Violet continues to do well on her spelling tests. In grammar, we finally finished the unit on pronouns! YEAH!! Part of the week was spent discussing paragraphs, topic sentences, and arranging the sentences in a paragraph in order. The remainder was spent reviewing. I think next week we start on adjectives. In handwriting, she's copying from The Secret Garden. We're currently working on the scene where Mary first discovers the garden with some help from the robin. In CW Aesop, we analyzed the fable "Mercury and the Woodman". In literature, we're waiting for a copy of The Children's Homer to be returned to the library, so she read additional chapters of The Red Fairy Book and The Complete Peterkin Papers in the meantime.

Benny finished up the pages with the long a sound and began working on the long i sound. In our read alouds we read another Pooh story, "The Story of Pigling Bland", more Aesop's fables, and a few more chapters of Surprise Island. For handwriting this week, he copied some lines from "Mary Had a Little Lamb".

HISTORY / ART

Our focus for Old Testament history this week for all three kids was King Solomon. Jessie did have 2 final chapters relating to King David to read on Monday before she finished her summary of him. Both girls completed written narrations of King Solomon, drew maps showing Solomon's kingdom and area of influence, and added David and Solomon to their timelines.

In Greece, we covered the war between the Greeks and the Persians. Jessie read several chapters in The Story of the Greeks and wrote 3 separate summaries this week. The first covered the battle of Marathon and the events leading up to it. The second covered the two Spartan youths who offered their lives to Xerxes in exchange for the lives of the Persian messengers who had been killed. The last covered the remaining events including the battle at Thermopylae, the burning of Athens, and the Greek victories at sea against the Persian fleet. Violet wrote summaries of Miltiades (the general at Marathon), Leonidas (the general at Thermopylae), Themistocles, and Aristides. Both completed maps showing the locations of the various battles with Jessie map showing the routes of the Persian army as well. They also both read about Greek soldiers ad drew a soldier using the Draw and Write Through History book. I actually just realized, we forgot to put those on the notebooking pages, so I don't have a picture of them. Timeline figures included Xerxes, Miltiades, Leonidas, the Battle of Marathon, and the Battle at the Bay of Salamis.

GEOGRAPHY

Not this week. Hopefully next.

SCIENCE

We completed our egg experiment by soaking washing off the toothpaste and soaking the egg in vinegar for about 8 hours. Both ends of the egg were soft enough to push in, but the no toothpaste end was definitely softer. We completed lessons 9 and 10 and the unit 2 quiz.

LATIN / LOGIC

Jessie finished lesson 18 in LfC B, while Violet completed lesson 2 in LfC A. For Violet, I want to start reviewing her vocab as part of our memory work time either using the vocab cards or the chant CD. Both completed their critical thinking materials for the week.

OTHER

Henry continues to entertain all of us. A couple of times this week, he decided he was hungry, raided the pantry, pulled out a bag of Cheerios, and sat down to help himself to a snack. He's also become very good at asking for help whether it's from me or one of the girls. Basically, he taps us on the leg until he has our attention, gets us to follow him to what he wants, points at it, and waits for us to fix the problem for him whether it be a closed door, a toy that is out of reach, and another sibling who needs to be told to share.

Logic Stage History: A Follow Up - part 1

I blogged back in September concerning some of the changes I wanted to make regarding Jessie's history related writing. Basically my goal was to try to start moving beyond the confines of basic narration (at least as I see them) by slowly introducing more of a research driven writing format. After a full semester of using Jessie as my writing guinea pig, I'm pleased to see a lot of progress in both her confidence and her writing ability. I have also gotten several comments and some questions regarding exactly what we are doing for history writing this year, so I though I would revisit the topic and lay out some more specific examples, if for no other reason than so I don't have to reinvent the wheel in two years when Violet reaches this stage.

This week, I'll answer the question of where do I come up with my ideas. I'd love to have a magic resource or curriculum to plug in here and tell you it only takes me five minutes to glance through a list of suggestions and pick one, but sadly I know of no such resource (although I'm considering creating one). Instead, every weekend I gather together all of the resources I'm planning to have Jessie read for the week and try to find a quiet corner in my house to think. Some of the material, I've read before so I can just skim back through the pages to refresh my memory. The rest I read through and jot down some notes regarding the content.

Once the reading is finished, I ask myself a two questions. 1. What do I want her to learn from the material? I consider what topics are presented, how much information is available on each topic, whether to combine topics of keep them separate, etc. I also try to consider the amount of time we have each week. While I'd like her to write about everything, I sometimes choose to focus the writing assignments on only a portion of the reading and leave the remainder for discussion or just exposure. 2. What's the best way to write up the information? Basically I play student. If I was presented with this material and assigned to write a paragraph, essay, etc. what would I write about and what steps would be required. Then I consider the best way to break it down for Jessie and write up her daily reading and assignments. Sometimes I can just tell her to take notes and write a paragraph. Other times I provide her questions to help focus her attention on a certain area. Overall, it generally requires an hour or an hour and a half, but I consider it time well spent since she can then work fairly independently during the school week.

WW: Just Like Dad

Sink Reflections - 52 in 52 Week 2

Sink Reflections by Marla Cilley - The FlyLady

Every January I always get the urge to buckle down and get something accomplished that I've been putting off for a while. This month, I decided I really needed to revise my housecleaning / chore system to reflect the changing needs of my house. I also needed some inspiration to do some decluttering. I had visited the FlyLady website several years back and thought a quick read through of her book might give me some inspiration and some new ideas to incorporate for myself.

PROS

I love the FlyLady for several reasons. She is an excellent cheerleader. When looking at a kitchen that looks like it's been hit by a hurricane, her simple basic encouraging words often come to mind. "Your home did not get dirty in a day and it is not going to get clean overnight." When I ask one of the girls to do something, and they only do it what I would consider halfway, I remember "housework done incorrectly still blesses your family." When I'm facing a project that I don't think I have time to complete, I remember how 15 minutes a day can make a big difference. She's an excellent source of inspiration and a great motivator to get you started one step at a time. The basic set up of her system will work for anyone. Daily chores are accomplished by establishing routines in the morning and evening. Creating a weekly plan to manage the basic cleaning needs of the house and establishing zones to focus on deeper cleaning on a monthly basis(once you've finished decluttering) help eliminate the frustration of doing little bits here and there without being able to see improvements. Beyond basic housecleaning, there are chapters for paper clutter, laundry, menu planning, vacation planning, and moving. She also has a wonderful sense of humor (decluttering while singing "Please Release Me, Let Me Go) and a no nonsense attitude (no whining or excuses allowed).

CONS

I personally am not a true FlyBaby although I did try her website at one time (the emails drove me bonkers.) It simply didn't work for me. I personally find her basic weekly plan insufficient for my household. She only vacuums and mops once a week. (Don't ask me how she finishes each task in 10 minutes.) That set up might work if my house was empty most of the day, but with 4 kids home all day and a shedding Golden Retriever my floors alone would be a disaster after a couple of days (and no, I don't expect my floors to be perfectly clean all the time.) While I agree that making cleaning fun is a great way to get the kids involved, I don't think there needs to be a reward every time they help. When I tried her zone system for monthly chores, I found the distribution of work very uneven. Week 3 includes the main bathroom, kid's bathroom, children's rooms, office, and laundry area. She solves this problem by focusing on different rooms each month, but it just doesn't work for me. If I were going to change one aspect of the book, I would love to see more of an emphasis on personalizing the system with more examples of how different moms set up their routines and cleaning schedules.

FINAL THOUGHTS

For inspiration, motivation, and ideas to get you started, the FlyLady's book and website are excellent. The principles of the system do work. My caution for anyone reading is to remember that your household is unique. Following the FlyLady's or anyone else's house cleaning schedule, most likely will not work. Take the principles learned and figure out what works for your family. Make your own routines and weekly plans, and set up reasonable zones for your house. Apply what works and change or ignore what doesn't. Then you're end result will truly be one that works for you.

Week 20: Adjusting to Changes

It's been a crazy week. We finally got a new computer on Sunday. I spent three mornings trying to download the virus software update (68MB on dialup is no fun), but I finally succeeded on Wednesday and did a little happy dance around the room. Jessie and I have been working on how to get around on the new desktop and find things in the new Word program. She's not as ingrained with the old software as I am, so she's catching on much faster. Now I just have to get the typing program set back up for her, and hopefully get the old files off the hard drive of the old computer. (Thankfully almost all of my homeschooling files are on a flash drive.) Here's our week.

MATH

Jessie finished up the last review exercise in her 5A workbook as well as the end of semester review in her 5A IP book. She's excited to be halfway through her math program for the year and ready to start the 5B books next week. Overall she did very well on the review. There were a few careless mistakes here and and there and the usual couple of problems that require a second look from Mom to figure out. ( At least they're not too hard once my brain wakes up for the morning.)

Violet has been working steadily through the money unit at the end of the 3A textbook and workbook. Most days she actually went ahead and started the workbook pages on her own without a lesson from Mom. ("It's just adding/subtracting", she tells me. "I don't need any help.") There were a few borrowing mistakes which prompted a quick review, but otherwise she has done an excellent job without me teaching any of the concepts from the textbook, generally finished well ahead of schedule for the morning.

Benny has continued working on the adding and subtracting section of Miquon Orange without any help from me this week. In Singapore 1A, he began the unit on subtraction within 10 in the IP. Basically, I read the directions for him and helped him stay on task. (The IP assignments tend to be a little longer than the regular workbook ones.) He's also been having DH write out a series of numbers for him to practice copying. I'm not sure what gave him the idea, but he's worked very hard on it.



LANGUAGE ARTS

In spelling, Jessie successfully completed her second lesson in SWO H. Monday, she took the unit test on pronouns for grammar. The rest of the week was spent in the new unit on adjectives. I understand why they gave her the four question (which, whose, how many, and what kind of) to help her find adjectives. I'm not sure what the purpose of classifying adjectives as either descriptive or limiting is when they're diagrammed the same way. In CW, she completed her rough draft of "The Tale of Peter Rabbit", edited it, and finalized her story. Hopefully, next week we can get on track to both analyze and write the story in a week. In literature, she's still not thrilled with The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, but she finished it on Friday. In Age of the Fable, she finished reading about Aeneas and read a chapter which discussed the Egyptian gods and goddesses.

Violet's spelling continues to go well. She completed another 1 1/2 lessons this week. In grammar, we worked a little more with direct objects before switching topics to discuss paragraphs. Two days were spent rearranging sentences within a paragraph into the correct order. The third day, we discussed what a topic sentence was and how the other sentences relate to it, and then she applied the knowledge by finding the topic sentence in a paragraph and crossing out sentences that didn't belong. In CW, she completed her rewrite of "The Hare and the Tortoise". She also completed reading The Golden Fleece and the Heroes Before Achilles for literature.

Benny and I continued to work on the long a sound. He still automatically uses the short sound, and I have to tell him to use the long sound. I think there is at least one page in the Pyramids book that we can read next week. We may need to do some practice with the letter magnets as well. His copywork for this week was "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star".

HISTORY / ART

In Old Testament history this week, we continued with the story of King David. The girls each completed a map showing the kingdom of Israel under Saul and the land added under David. Violet finished her readings on David and added to her notebook. Jessie has a day or two of reading next week in order to finish up her David summary.

In ancient Greece, this week we visited Athens. The girls completed summaries of Draco, Solon, and Pisistratus. They also read about the lives of women and children in ancient Greece. Jessie wrote a couple of paragraphs, while I had Violet just list 5 things she found interesting. For maps, they both marked Athens, and Jessie also colored in Attica. There were lots of timeline figures for this week and last. The girls added Lycurgus, the rise of Sparta, the Olympics, Draco, Solon, Pisistratus, and democracy in Athens. Benny and I looked at a few pages in his coloring book on life in ancient Greece covering the gymnasiums and the Olympics. The other book I had scheduled wasn't available, and I missed doing the Athens pages Wednesday since I was concentrating on keeping the computer online and downloading.

No art this week.

GEOGRAPHY

We started our study of Africa this week by having each of the girls build our Middle East & Africa puzzle. Now I really need to get cracking on those notebooking pages. DH also ironed out my markable map for me, and we put it back up on the wall. Each of the girls on their own went through and named as many of the countries as they could.

SCIENCE

This week we learned about the periodic table, metals, non-metals, and hydrogen. DH did the metals lab with the kids since wiring a flashlight bulb to a battery is more up his alley than mine. We were a bit hard-pressed to come up with items listing partially hydrogenated oils on their labels in our cabinet. Luckily DH insists on Ritz crackers and Peter Pan peanut butter. We waited to start the lab for non-metals on Friday since the egg was supposed to sit in fluoride toothpaste for three days. I'll tell you more about it next week.

LATIN / LOGIC

Jessie completed her normal logic work, as well as lesson 17 in LfC B. Violet tested for lesson 1 of LfC A on Tuesday and then started lesson 2. She's doing very well, but she needs to watch her spelling. She kept changing the stem of amo to amo instead of ama.

OTHER

Henry has donned DH's orange stocking cap every morning this week right after breakfast before heading off on an adventure. Most of the adventures simply involved playing with siblings or trying to sneak into Benny's room to play with the train track. Friday, he decided to test his climbing skills by climbing the piano down in the basement while his sister was in the bathroom. Needless to say DH and I weren't two thrilled with that expedition.

WW: Big Boy in Brother's Shirt

Love and Respect - 52 in 52 Week 1

Love & Respect: The Love She Most Desires, The Respect He Desperately Needs by Eggerichs

Summary:

Miscommunication is easily the most common cause of conflict within a marriage. Eggerich focuses on the difference between what a man or a woman need and how that influences their their perception of the words and actions around them. A man's greatest need is for respect. He knows his wife loves him, but he may not think she likes (respects) him. A woman's greatest need is for love. She knows she loves her husband but wonders if he loves her as much. Conflict arises when a husband comes across as unloving, prompting a disrespectful response from his wife, which in turn results in more unloving reactions, and so on. Similarly when a wife comes across as disrepectful, the husband reacts unlovingly, and the two negative behaviors feed on each other. The result is called the Crazy Cycle.

In contrast, when the cycle is reversed, a wife gives her husband respect (or he shows her love), then a good-willed spouse will respond in a positive fashion creating a positive feedback loop called the Energizing Cycle. He explains how a husband can love his wife using the acronym COUPLE (closeness, openness, understanding, peacemaking, loyalty, and esteem. He also explains how a wife can respect her husband using the acronym CHAIRS (conquest, hierarchy, authority, insight, relationship, and sexuality). While the hope of receiving positive feedback from one's spouse is a good motivator to change one's behavior, Eggerichs closes by suggesting that a better reason is to act simply out of faith. A Christian husband should be loving towards his wife simply because Christ calls him to do so. A Christian wife should be respectful of her husband simply because Christ calls her to do so.

RESPONSE

I confess that I understood the wife's side of the argument 100% of the time the first time through. I didn't always agree with the stereotype, but I could understand the point he was trying to make. Understanding the husband's point of view in fairness is going to take a second or third reading and some more time to process and consider the information. Despite my complete lack of understanding, I decided to pick a couple of the suggestions from the CHAIRS section to work on during the course of the week. I won't go into details, but the results have been very positive. I would definitely recommend it for any married Christian, even those with a "good" marriage.

Week 19: Trying to Restart

It has been a long week. On the school front, the new schedule is working well. I just need to tweak a couple of places. Both girls have been completing their schoolwork early by getting started on their own before 8:00. On the home front, my computer crashed Thursday afternoon. Today I'm using my MIL's computer to do this report and prep next week's lessons. I need to also do some research to replace our broken pc because I'm not buying a new motherboard for a 9 year old pc.

MATH

Jessie spent the first half of the week completing the section on angles in her IP book. A few of the problems were challenging enough that we worked on them together. Thursday and Friday , she completed the last review exercise in her 5A textbook. She should finish both the workbook and IP next week, and then it's on to the 5B set.

Violet completed the IP section on multiplication with 6, 7, 8, and 9. Wednesday she began the final unit on money in the 3A textbook and workbook. We also realized that she has gotten ahead in her CWP book. Since she just completed the CWP money section, she'll get a couple of week off. Her Miquon just started multiplication of large numbers, so it will provide some good review.

Benny is still adding and subtracting in both Singapore 1A and Miquon Orange. Some days he needs the blocks, and other days he doesn't. Some we work through the page together, and others he asks me to let him do it alone.

LANGUAGE ARTS

Jessie started SWO H this week and scored a 95 on her first test. In grammar she finished up the textbook pages on pronouns and is ready to test on Monday. We did have to review the definitions of demonstrative pronouns, indefinite pronouns, and interrogative pronouns when they had her using all three at once. We only completed half of her CW work before the computer crashed, so we'll try again next week. She's started the Legend of Sleepy Hollow for literature, which she tells me is even more boring than Rumpelstiltzkin in the beginning. In Age of the Fable, she has been reading about Aeneas.

Violet completed another spelling lesson successfully. In grammar, she learned to diagram direct objects. Then she had sentences with and without direct objects to find the direct objects and diagram. In literature, she has picked back up with her previous selection and requested that she read The Children's Homer for her next book. In CW, we completed the analysis work for "The Hare and the Tortoise".

Benny has started on long vowel words this week. So far we're just working with the long a. He's starting to catch on as we slowly go through the first page a second time. For copywork, he's been writing the lyrics to "Jesus Loves the Little Children". In literature, we picked back up with the previous books.

HISTORY / ART

In Old Testament history, we've all been reading about the reign of King David. The girls completed maps showing Ish-bosheth's kingdom and David's kingdom. The notebooking pages will be put together next week once we finish David.

In ancient Greece, this week's focus was the Spartans. Jessie read about Lycurgus, Spartan life, the Messenian War, and the Olympics. She completed a map of Sparta and Messenia and wrote paragraphs covering everything but the Olympics. Violet read about Lycurgus and Spartan life and marked Sparta on a map. No drawings this week. No timeline figures either because of the computer crashing before I printed them.

GEOGRAPHY

Not completed.

SCIENCE

We started God Design Properties of Atoms and Molecules this week. We covered matter, chemistry, atoms and their parts, and different ways atoms combine. The girls have enjoyed the hands-on aspect. I've been pleased with how the worksheets they've completed have helped apply what they learned in the reading. I'll post a more detailed review in a few weeks.

LATIN / LOGIC

Jessie completed another lesson in LfC B. The week emphasized conjugating duo and Roman numerals. Violet started LfC A and has enjoyed it so far. Logic was completed as usual with Jessie starting Think-a-Grams A2 and Min Benders B3.

OTHER

Henry has been all over the place this week. He's spent a lot of time with DH. He also discovered that he can reach the dog treats and loves to have the dog follow him all around the house before giving him the treat.