Weekly Report: 7/25/11-7/29/11

We accomplished a good amount this week.  Our “day off” for the summer is Tuesday instead of Thursday, which means Mondays are that much harder.  We did some reading and library and M-girl and I read some of The Music of the Hemispheres, but that was it for Monday.  We’re trying to incorporate chores into our morning and working on our schedule in a greater way, which is cutting a little into Circle Time, but will only get better …  Right?

Phonics:

N-boy: is working through -r controlled vowels.  He’s doing such a good job with these.  I’m chomping at the bit to get to multi-syllabic words for him, though, as that’s where he’s having trouble. 

R-girl: is doing so well! She’s working on consonant blends with short vowel words and gets better at reading every day! Yay!  I expect she will be our “youngest” reader … because she has had the most consistent instruction and has the greatest desire.

Math:

M-girl: did two math lessons this week.  She’s working adding up to and above 11.

N-boy: is working on making 10s.  He did 3 lessons this week.

R-girl:  is learning about combinations for 7.  MEP Year 1 is going to be a breeze following MEP Reception.  She did 2 lessons this week.

Logic:

N-boy: is working on the ordering section of Mindbenders.  We do these completely orally and work through the listening and thinking skills together.  He’s starting to ask for these first.  That’s my boy 🙂

Grammar:

M-girl: in the past two weeks learned about Interjections! and conjunctions (had to break out the School House Rock [big grin]).  She also learned about writing thank-you notes (friendly letter) and addressing the envelope (mailed it today!)   Is it bad that I start singing every time I hear “Interjections!” or “Conjunction Junction what’s your function …?”

N-boy: The seemingly unending noun section is done! Today, we moved on to pronouns.  Hooray!

Writing:

M-girl: Her penmanship and writing has improved so much with Writing With Ease.  She’s working on capitalizing those proper nouns like the names of the days of the week.  She loves the narration days …. I like the narration & copywork days 🙂

Spelling:

M-girl: She is doing a great job with spelling.  Just as her mother, she is having problems with that infernal word, “friend.”

Latin:

M-girl: She started learning about conjugating verbs.

Penmanship:

M-girl: she is starting to practice the shapes for n and m.  This curriculum has you practice the bump before pushing them together.

N-boy: we didn’t work on this. 

R-girl: we didn’t work on this.

History:  We read about Ancient Saharan Africa and read some Anansi stories … those in Story of the World and some others from the library. 

Science:  we planted our herb garden! While we were doing that we talked about roots and seed germination and photosynthesis and all the things needed for growing (nutrients and water!)  Hopefully, they’ll survive well and we’ll enjoy eating them besides!

(oops … forgot the pictures!)

Art:  the children colored a lot this week, but we didn’t do any formal art.

Read Alouds:  At breakfast, we finished Mary Pope Osborne’s Tales from the Odyssey.  I think we’re going to start The Bronze Bow, but haven’t gotten very far in our reading.  We’re reading Trumpet of the Swan during lunch.  I hadn’t realized it was so strange, but it is, and we’re enjoying it.  At dinner, we’re getting close to the end of The Phantom Tollbooth.  It is really good! I love how it talks about knowledge and the seven Liberal Arts (in Dictionopolis and Digitopolis).  The children enjoy the story, Jason and I love the word play and the concepts.  Another one I wish we had, perhaps, read later. 

Bible:  We are back to Covenantal Catechism and talked about Moses this week.  I love that it used a Psalm that touched the high points of Israel’s experience and didn’t get bogged down in Egypt for several weeks.  It got the high points for this survey and will, I imagine, go into further detail in later years.