Weekly Report: 6/27/11-7/1/11

We had a great week this week.  Changing our schedule and adding a walk or some sort of exercise first thing in the morning has helped a lot.  Even though we had plans Tuesday and Thursday, we accomplished 3 days of school-work.  I’m thrilled!

Memory Work:

Bible: reviewed Psalm 130. Ready to recite for Daddy.

Catechism/Creed: reviewed work, we’ll recite this weekend and hope to move on next week.

Hymn: worked some more on O For a Thousand Tongues to Sing.

Poetry: M-girl and N-boy are working on “The Eagle” and R-girl is about done with “My Shadow.”

Counting: skip counting 4s is fun!

Other Memory Work: this was a good review week to get back up to speed.

Phonics:

N-boy: N-boy is about to move into multi-syllable words.  Hooray!

R-girl: R-girl is done with the CVC section and about to start words with double consonants.  She is doing a great job and working hard.

Assigned Reading:

M-girl: none this week.

N-boy: none this week.

Math:

M-girl: is working on adding in the teens.

N-boy: started on adding up to 9.

R-girl: Working on understanding 6.  I’m loving the fact that she’s getting math facts and the concepts of adding without having to write.  She’s going to be able to fly through MEP 1.

Logic:

M-girl: we’ve really got to get back to her doing independent work.  Next week.

N-boy: we did a couple more Mindbenders this week.

Grammar:

M-girl:  She’s learning “The Months” by Sara Coleridge.

N-boy:  He’s working on proper and common nouns.  We addressed an envelope this week and talked about names and places as proper nouns.

Writing:

M-girl: finished reading about Sacajawea and started the next week’s copywork.

Spelling:

M-girl:  She’s doing review lessons in section B.

Latin:

M-girl: She watched Lesson 11 …. but didn’t do the workbook pages ([hmmm]) We also worked on flash cards for her words.

Penmanship:

M-girl: She’s working some on “hump” letters … n and m.

N-boy:  He’s started working on a.  But not very happily.

R-girl:  We didn’t pick this up today.

History:

We studied about the Indus Valley civilizations this week.  We read from Story of the World, did the pictures and map work, and looked at pictures from this amazing website.

Science:  This has been a very science oriented week! The children enjoyed a day at COSI with my parents on Tuesday.

We studied about plant stems this week, particularly talking about trees and the different rings in the trunk.  The children drew (or were supposed to draw) tree rings this morning:

We’ve also been enjoying the Summer Letterboxing program through our local parks (and more geocaching).  We found two boxes last weekend, had a great walk through the woods with butterflies and wild flowers galore.  Hope to get another one or two this weekend.

Finally, we began our seed germination experiment this morning.  We have 5 jars with seeds and different growing conditions to watch.

Art:  We talked about artists using photographs for detailed observation and inspiration, then found photos in magazines and drew them with watercolor crayons:

N-boy drew a dog.  He did *not* like the way it looked after trying the water brush.

M-girl went very abstract with hers, trying out the qualities of the crayons.

R-girl had a blast with this project! (I love the bath-tub feet)

It was too hard to copy *all* the roses, so I did wall-paper instead.

Read Alouds:  We finished Part One of Mary Pope Osborne’s Tales from the Odyssey.  We read a chapter or so from The Phantom Tollbooth, but tball games are putting a cramp in our reading habits.  We need a new lunchtime read aloud.

Bible:  We started working through Doorposts’ Brother Offended checklist.  It has helped already, maybe mostly me as we work through the steps together.