Our Weekly Amble for February 13-17, 2017
This week we finished the first six weeks of Academic Year 2017!
It was a great six weeks. We managed to keep up with almost everything – except Kim.
M-girl is doing well with her added work, although she is struggling a little with time management of it. She’s always been a little less, um, urgent about accomplishing her work. That’s something we discussed in our Weekly Meetin.
N-boy is doing well with the level of requirement. He still struggles with wanting to do the minimum. The Geography Record assignment feels like “just extra work” to him. I very much want to encourage him to go above and beyond in the next term.
R-girl is doing a great job with the readings and the work expected of her. I know it is a little above her age-wise, but she is handling it like a champ. When she focuses, she can easily be the first one done (no piano or organ practices), the problem is focus and not getting caught up with her siblings or her own immediate wants.
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| Cliffhanger for our Whatchamacallit readaloud over break. Mwahahahaha |
This week we did Whatchamacallit four days (woo-hoo!). We’ve been working on memorizing Psalm 34, ‘Spirit of God, Descend Upon My Heart is our hymn, A Psalm of Life by Longfellow is our current poem, and the St Crispin’s Day speech from Henry V is our Shakespeare. They’re working steadily on all of these.
We had a grammar week that reviewed capitalization rules one day then moved to diagramming and MadLibs on Friday. We’ve continued to enjoy The Ology, Training Hearts Teaching Minds, and especially The Chestry Oak. We finished Whatchamacallit early every day this week. That’s weird. We observed our final Mary Cassatt painting (a little behind, yes), sang There’s a Hole in the Bottom of the Sea (it has caught their fancy, I’ve heard it a number of times since), listened to some Gregrian Chant, and worked on a drawing lesson.
In math, M-girl is still working on a section on negative numbers; N-boy is moving into perimeter, area, and volume; R-girl is working on multi-digit multiplication and division. In Latin, M-girl finished Unit 4 and R-girl and N-boy Unit 2 of Latin for Children Primer B. They did some geography.
We read about the Taj Mahal, Mt Everest, and George Washington Carver’s invitation to teach at the Tuskeegee Institute. We read how Europe divvied up Africa and the character of the Severn and Avon rivers. We learned about Teddy Roosevelt and how his character shaped his actions. There was a theme of mourning and dealing with death that was sprinkled throughout many of the readings this week.
On Friday, it was glorious here, so we were able to go on a nature walk with our friends. We went out again on Saturday with Jason.
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| We celebrated with Shamrock Shakes! |
On Saturday, Jason built me a whiteboard and installed it in the school room. I’m already loving it!