Christmas Memories

My bookworm was thrilled with her Percy Jackson set

and thought the scarf craft looked interesting.

Violet has been pestering me for her own Kindle,

but she may have been more excited at receiving the Kane Chronicles series.

My Harry Potter fan was happy with his new puzzle,

and excited to receive another puzzle ball (which he solved rapidly claiming title to the only person to complete all the levels on all three puzzle balls.)

My budding fisherman was thrilled at his new truck and bass boat

as well as the Lego set from his favorite movie.

Creative Corner: Towels & Teapots; a Fish, a Cat, and a Pharoah

Both of Violet's completed art projects from the last three weeks come from Lifelike Drawing by Hammond.  This is a hanging towel and

a pewter teapot.

Benny completed this cartoon fish with Sharpie and crayon,

a Halloween cat in a pumpkin with Sharpie and watercolor,

and a pharaoh with Sharpie and chalk pastels.

WW: Halloween Fun

We purchased pumpkins this year, and DH helped Violet and the boys carve jack-o'-lanterns.

The cats all found them fascinating while they were inside,

while the kids were more excited about seeing them lit up outside.

We didn't do any actual trick or treating, but that didn't stop Henry from running around all morning in his bunny costume with socks on his hands and feet.

WW: Beach

We enjoyed a beautiful and relaxing week at the Outer Banks last month.

Benny pulled in this sixteen inch flounder,

and Henry caught some small spot.

Weeks 8 & 9 Upper:

GEOMETRY: Jessie has spent the past two weeks of geometry working with triangles covering types of triangles, proving triangles to be congruent, and drawing angles and triangles with a straight edge and compass. She also finished the review work for the chapter and will take the chapter test on Monday.

ENGLISH: She completed and test for chapter 3 of R&S and completed three lessons in outlining as well as another editing sheet in chapter 4. In CW Herodotus, she finished chapter 2 on judicial rhetoric and began chapter 3 on the canon of invention. She also filled out the plot section of a TTC story chart on Doyle's Lost World for literature and completed two more weeks of vocabulary.

GREAT BOOKS: She completed The Iliad as well as the remaining Vandiver lectures and had a week off from her great books course.

SPANISH: Chapters 6 and 7 of BJU Spanish covered uses of ser and estar, personal pronouns, the plural forms of estar, adjectives, and vocabulary relating to clothing accessories, materials, and places around town.

LATIN: She completed chapter 22, took quizzes on demonstrative and personal pronouns, and reviewed relative and interrogative pronouns.

HISTORY: She listened and took notes on her 4th "Foundations of Western Civilization" lecture, read about the Hebrews and Phoenicians in Spielvogel, and covered the Bharata War, the Davidic kingdom, and the Assyrian empires in Bauer's History of the Ancient World.

SCIENCE: We are making slow progress. She completed chapter 4 on additional cellular processes and the accompanying test. We're going to do a lump lab day at the end of the month to catch that portion up as well.

MUSIC APPRECIATION: We found 3 Palestrina CDs to round out her study of the music of the Middle Ages, and she covered the first two lectures relating to the Baroque period.

Violet's 7th Grade

MATH: Violet completed the third chapter of Lial's covering fractions and began the 4th chapter containing more word problems.

LOGIC: She's made steady progress in her Building Thinking Skills, but we need to do some catch up in her Art of Argument lessons.

LANGUAGE ARTS: She completed through the 11th chapter of Caesar's English 1 and had a couple of weeks off from literature. Her grammar has been mostly focused on substantives and noun clauses, and in CW she completed her second section and moved onto the third.

LANGUAGES: Chapter 9 and unit 2 reading and test were completed in Latin, and chapters 8 and 9 were completed in Greek.

HISTORY: She's been steadily working her way through Ancient Egypt using The Pharaoh's of Ancient Egypt by Payne and Usborne's Encyclopedia of the Ancient World to cover the span of time from Hatshepsup to King Tut. The only additional book over these two weeks was In Search of Tutankhamun by Caselli. For written work she outlined 4 pages of the encyclopedia, wrote paragraph summaries of the pharaohs, and filled in a chart of everyday life.

SCIENCE: She finished chapter 7 and began chapter 8.

FINE ARTS: Her last two art projects are in the Thursday post, and she continues to work through her instrument book at her own pace.

Weeks 8 & 9 LG: India, China, and Marsupials

MATH: Benny is still working steadily through the section on fractions covering more mixed numbers, improper fractions, and word problems over the past two weeks. He finished the final review problems in CWP 3 and began the first section of CWP as well.

LOGIC: His Building Thinking Skills 2 lessons have focused on symmetry, and he has completed two more word problems.

LANGUAGE ARTS: He finished reading Lad: a Dog by Terhume and began The Twenty-one Balloons by DuBois for literature. We've continued reading The Golden Goblet for our read-aloud. He rewrote the fable "The Wind and the Sun" and analyzed "The Boy Bathing" in CW, completed more copywork and dictation, and continued to progress through SWO E.  His grammar continues to cover nouns with a bit of poetry thrown in for a couple of lessons as well.

ART & MUSIC: Art is in the previous post. We did some catchup for music covering the double bassoon, the harp, an overview of the woodwind section, and the flute in Story of the Orchestra.

LATIN: Benny's Latin focus for the past two weeks has been neuter nouns in the second declension. We've added some extra drill time for vocabulary and chants, which seems to be helping with the lessons.

HISTORY: Benny covered chapters 9 and 10 of SOTW 1 over the past two weeks about the Indus Valley settlements and ancient China. We completed the corresponding mapwork, but he hasn't had any interest in projects so we skipped them.

SCIENCE: In Zoology 3 we covered the aardwolf, mongoose, and meerkat before moving on to a new chapter about marsupials. In that chapter we've read about kangaroos, wallabies, koalas, wombats, possums, moles, Tasmanian devils, and opossums.

HENRY'S K

Henry has been working on 3 letter words in Phonics Pathways. It's been taking several days to complete each page due to the number of words per page and his attention span, but we're making slow progress. Our new chapter book is The Boxcar Children. We've done some more skip counting, number matching, and number writing for math. In BTS Primary, he's been using various blocks to make larger figures, and he continues to zip through the VPSB 1 book.

The picture above is one of his many drawings from the past two weeks. He's also finished his Kumon maze book and completed some more folding pages.

Creative Corner: Ink bottles, Seascapes, Barns, and Apples

Violet completed this pencil drawing of an ink bottle using Lifelike Drawing by Hammond

as well as this monochrome acrylic seascape using Acrylic Painting by Hammond over the past two weeks.

Benny drew a country barn using Sharpie and crayons and

this basket of apples with Sharpie and watercolor.

Weeks 6 & 7 Upper:

Over the past two weeks, Jessie has completed the geometry chapter on angles, it's associated review and test, and began chapter 4 on triangles.

In English, she completed a review week in vocabulary and the first chapter of the second unit. She also completed her second unit of grammar and began working with various types of phrases and clauses in unit 3. Her CW work all dealt with stasis theory where she had to determine if an act/crime had occurred, what type of crime it was, what degree of the crime was, and what procedure should be taken. She applied this to various literature selections including Cain and Abel, Agamemnon, and Eumenides. We need to pick back up with Lost World for discussion and writing this week.

In Great Books, she has completed listening through the 10th Teaching Company lecture and read through the 21st book of The Iliad.

In Spanish she spent a week covering the use of estar for location or condition with the associated vocabulary then a week of the use of ser for characteristics and identification. She also learned the position of adjectives and some basic adverbs.

In Latin Alive 2 she has now completed through chapter 22 and reviewed Latin numbers and demonstrative pronouns.

For Ancient History, she covered the remainder of the information on Egypt as well as a brief section on megalithic sites and the two associated focus questions. In History of the Ancient World she has taken notes on 6 more chapters. She also completed a map of the Hittite Empire.

She is currently 2 weeks behind in Biology after bogging down in both the organic chemistry chapter and the basic cell chapter. I'm considering making some changes but haven't settled on a solution at this point.

For her Music Appreciation credit, she wrote paragraphs on Renaissance music for church and secular events. I found several CDs at our local library, and so far she has listened to "Requiem" by Rutter and "Madrigals" by The King's Singers.

Violet has slowly worked her way through chapter 2 of Lials solving equations. Several of the sections I had her work the odds one day and the evens the next for additional practice. It wasn't that she didn't get the concepts, but the amount of careless errors was frustrating.

She continues working through BTS 3 Figural and we covered tu quoque and genetic fallacies in Art of Argument.

She also completed her second unit of CW and began working on the third. In Caesar's English, she completed through lesson 8 and working on 9. We're also working on how to study flash cards on independently. She's been reading Lost World by Doyle for literature and is working through the second analysis section of CW.

In Latin, she is almost finished with chapter 8. She completed the last lesson of review in EG 1 and learned about the use of the accusative case for direct objects in lesson 7.

Violet's history of the last two weeks has involved readings from both Payne's The Pharaohs of Ancient Egypt as well as The Usborne Encyclopedia of the Ancient World. She's has covered the Old Kingdom and the First Intermediate Period and has also written paragraphs on temples and pyramids.

She's up to chapter 7 of Life Science, but I think I need to set aside some time over the next two weeks to specifically work on how to take notes from a textbook.

Her music she has been doing independently at her own pace, and I honestly have no idea what she's covered the last two weeks.

Week 7 LG: Babylon, Assyria, and More Big Cats

Benny continued working with fractions this week in Singapore math focusing on mixed numbers and improper fractions. He finished the regular problems in the last review section of CWP 3 and has only the challenging ones left before moving on to the next book.

His BTS focused on congruent and non-congruent shapes made from dividing squares or rectangles. He completed another MindBenders puzzle as well.

He finished his second unit in R&S 4 as well as his second SWO E lesson. He began reading Lad: A Dog independently, and we continued The Golden Goblet as our read aloud selection. For CW, he analyzed the fable "The Wind and the Sun" and completed his regular copywork and dictation.

In Latin, he worked with 2nd declension masculine nouns and the present tense conjugation of sum, esse.

All of the history reading this week came from SOTW 1. We covered chapters 7 and 8 on Hammurabi and the Babylonians, Shamsi Adad and the Assyrians, and the "Epic of Gilgamesh". He completed narrations on all three topics as well as the mapwork for both chapters. DH was off on Wednesday, so he skipped the hands on activity to spend time with him.

His reading in Zoology 3 covered tigers, bobcats, cougars, lynx, and hyenas.

Henry continued working on sounding out 3 letters words in Phonics Pathways. We continued our Bible readings, but didn't start a new chapter book this week. I took a break from scheduled readings and let him pick whatever he wanted instead. He also completed some more work out of his Kumon books.