Week 38: Almost wrapped up

It was a light week as we try to wrap up our remaining subjects for the year. Here's a recap.


MATH


Jessie spent three day this week doing the end of semester review in the IP book. She is now officially done with math for the year. YEAH!!


Violet completed the unit on angles in the textbook and workbook as well as the IP. On Friday, she started the final section in the textbook and workbook on area. I'd love for her to finish up next week. We'll have to see how it goes.


Benny got the week off from math. He's at a point in Singapore where is is struggling. We may try to do some more Miquon next week, but overall I feel really good about what he has accomplished this year getting as far into the books as he has.


LANGUAGE ARTS


The only work Jessie had this week was the last two weeks of CW Poetry for Beginners. We analyzed meter, discussed the terza rima tercet used by Dante, and wrote a couple of poems as well. Here's her two stanza poem using terza rima.


My little brother learns from watching me.
He tries to copy everything I say
With words like Dad, Mommy, day, shoes, and tree.


And when I've left my bunk during the day,
He climbs into my bed and calls for me,
So that I'll bring him down a different way.


Violet likewise finished up her last lesson in CW Aesop this week. She analyzed and rewrote Alexander and Bucephalus, but we didn't take time to do a final draft this time.


Benny spent a lot of time listening to books on tape this week. Since we're going to continue Phonics over the summer, I didn't figure it would hurt to have a week off.



HISTORY



History was our main focus this week. We did catch up with our notebooking finally. In Biblical history, we started the book of Acts. I let Jessie make a timeline for the first 8 chapters, while Violet continues to do summaries.

Jessie covered the beginning of the Roman empire with Augustus and Tiberius. She also began reading Trial and Triumph and made summaries of the first two chapters.Violet read about Augustus and Cleopatra. Both completed a map showing how the empire was divided between between Octavius and Antony for a while.

LATIN

Jessie finished up the last of the LfC B Activity book. So Latin is finished for the year as well. Hopefully, I can put together a light summer schedule over the weekend to help finish off the last of our subjects from this year (mainly history and science) with a bit of review (math facts, Latin chants and vocab., etc) and still have plenty of time to work on more practical skills like swimming and new chores.

WW: Time with Cousins

I'm a little behind in uploading pictures, but here are a few shots of the visit by my sister's family 2 weeks ago.

Weeks 36 & 37: Squeezing in what we could...

The last couple of weeks have positively flown by. We spent the first half of last week cleaning house and making sure that there wasn't anything left out for my 3yo niece and 18mo nephew to get into while they were here visiting. The second half of the week, my sister and her family were visiting. Then Henry had another cold at the beginning of this week, and I'm still trying to catch up on my lack of sleep. Needless to say what school was done was a bit scattered, and I didn't have a chance to get any pictures.

MATH

Jessie finished up the last section in the IP book last week and has spent this week working on reviews. She's completely finished with the textbook and workbook and has started the semester review in the IP book.

Violet finished up the unit on time in the textbook and workbook last week. This week I had her double up a few lessons so that she's finished the IP section on time and completed a couple of review exercises. I'd really like to finish math next week, but I'm sure two weeks would be more realistic.

LANGUAGE ARTS

Jessie and Violet both have one more week of CW left which we didn't get to the last two weeks. Jessie completed her spelling work for the year. I'm still having Violet do some handwriting.

Benny has had the last to weeks off completely, but we'll pick back up with his phonics next week and continue through the summer.

HISTORY

We didn't manage to get our notebooking or timelines done, but we did make a little progress over the past two weeks. In the OT, the girls have covered the last week of Jesus' life, his resurrection, ascension, and the start of the early church in Jerusalem. In ancient Rome, we covered the life of Julius Caesar last week. I know Violet did summaries of Pompey, Caesar, and Cicero. I think Jessie did a summary of Caesar and an outline. We also mapped out the early Roman empire with Jessie marking the locations of Caesar's various battles.

LATIN/LOGIC

Jessie's been working very hard on the last lesson in LfC B. The mega crossword in the end of the activity book is enormous. Rather than cut out the pages, Jessie is just writing the words on a dry erase board and working through 1 or 2 columns of clues each day. She should be finished next week.

OTHER

Henry had a blast playing with his cousin. They're not really at the age to play together, but they played side by side. When one would head off to a different room looking for something new, the other generally followed within a few minutes. Once he started feeling better this week, he's been getting into mischief for the sole purpose of getting the attention of one of his siblings to play with him.

Week 35: Still wrapping up

It's been a fairly quiet week around here. Benny and I have been waging war on the various bugs attacking our garden plants. It was amazingly easy to knock the potato beetles off the plants and drop them in a bucket of soapy water yesterday. Today the smaller bugs on the squash and zucchini plants were mating so they didn't fly away, and we gave a few dozen more a dunking. The girls have had a lighter school week with fewer subjects. Here's a recap.

MATH

Jessie finished up the IP section on four sided figures and did a few review lessons for most of the week. Friday, she started the first lesson in the last section of the 5B textbook on volume. The new twist for this year is to see that volume equals area times height. She didn't get it with the illustrations, so I wrote down the area formula, put the volume formula underneath, and circled the overlap. Once the light bulb went on, she made short work of the workbook exercise.

I tried to double up lessons for Violet at the beginning of the week since she started a new unit on time, which I thought would be easy. Big mistake. By Wednesday she was guessing the answers, so we backed up and restarted the section one lesson at a time spending more time on the textbook lessons with me explaining how I solved the problems. So far so good. I also decided to temporarily throw in the towel on the CWP book for a few weeks after she was having problems with a couple of word problems in one of the review exercises at the beginning of the week. We're going to spend the summer working through the entire CWP book to make sure that we firm up the foundation of her work problem solving skills before next fall.
Benny is still working through the same addition and subtraction within 20 section in the IP book. His Miquon Orange book has gone MIA temporarily, but I'm hoping to locate it this weekend and put it back together. (Last I saw it the cover was completely off and had broken in two pieces.)

LANGUAGE ARTS

Jessie finished up another spelling lesson leaving only one review lesson for next week to finish off for the year. In CW, we're still doubling up on poetry lessons. Honestly, there's really not a whole lot of new material here. I think the only new info she's learned so far are the terms iambic and trochaic and how to count the feet in a line. For imitation on day 4, she had to write a heroic couplet. I picked Robin Hood, and she came up with the following:

See, Robing Hood gave money to the poor,

And Little John helped him do even more.

In literature, she finished reading The Bronze Bow. We're going to try to do the analysis on Monday before starting one last book.

Violet has finished up her grammar for the year. YEAH!! I'm still having her do copywork, which is becoming remarkable neater since I began making her recopy it when it was sloppy. In literature, she's started reading Vinegar Boy. Jessie loves this book. Violet hasn't really gotten into it quite yet. For CW, we completed analysis and imitation of "The Princess and the Pea" although we skipped the final draft in favor of some time outside.

Benny has been working on adding -ing and -ed to the ends of words in Phonics Pathways. I've decided to drop the Bob books temporarily until we get a little farther along because the B series has a lot more words that he doesn't know how to sound out yet.

HISTORY

In the New Testament times, we covered another week in the ministry of Jesus. Violet still has a few summaries to write for me since she refused to do summaries for Jessie to type while I was working in the garden, so there were no notebooking pages for this portion of history. In ancient Rome, we covered the Gracchi, Marius and Sulla. Jessie also read about Pompey and Spartacus. Jessie completed three summaries. For the Gracchi, I asked her to explain the differences between the rich and the poor in Rome and tell how each brother tried to help the poor. For Marius and Sulla, she was supposed to do a comparison of the two men but ended up giving me a straight narration of the story which vanished from the pc somehow. (I'm guessing Henry closed the document before it was saved, and I was unable to recover it.) She did a summary of Spartacus and an outline of . Violet wrote summaries for the Gracchi, Marius, and Sulla. Both girls drew a gladiator and a lion using the Draw and Write Through History book, although I suspect traced would be more accurate that drew based on the final products.

LATIN / LOGIC

Jessie completed lesson 31 in LfC B and has finished the last of her logic assignments for the year. Violet also completed the last of her logic assignments.

OTHER

Henry has been very snugly this week when he wasn't chasing the mop around in circles. He found the dog napping on the kitchen floor one day and tried to wake him up by saying his name. Each time he didn't get a response, he'd move a little closer. In the end, he was laying on his belly on the floor with his face just inches from the dog's. The dog is very good at playing possum. He also thoroughly enjoyed my all chocolate birthday cake as you can see from the picture below.

WW: Round and round he goes

I was hoping to upload a video, but it keeps hanging up for some reason. Basically Henry laid the mop on the floor and bumped it with his foot. When he saw it started spinning in circles, he started chasing it around and around and kicking it with his foot to keep it going. It kept him entertained for 30 minutes this morning.