Weekly Report: 8/30/10-9/3/10

We did just lessons on Monday (late night Sunday as we had a going away celebration for one of the church families), just Circle Time on Tuesday (the Bunk Bed was coming! and we needed to get the girls’ room ready; cleaned N-boy’s while we were at it), and a whole day on Wednesday.

Memory Work:

Bible: Started the first verse of Day 5.

Catechism/Creed:We’ve been saying the Apostle’s Creed pretty regularly.  The children were beginning to confuse it with the Nicene, so we’ll finish the year with the Apostle’s and move on to the Nicene in our new year.  N-boy and R-girl started on new sets of catechism questions which they both knew pretty well already from hearing older sibling(s) answer them over and over. 

Hymn:We finished Be Thou My Vision, hooray!  I just looked up our hymn for September, one of my favorites: Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing.

Poetry:R-girl is better with After the Party but still needs prompting at each stanza.  N-boy moved on to Whole Duty of Children and knows it already.  M-girl is working on Godfrey Gordon Gustavus Gore which she thinks is very silly.

Counting:We’re still working on counting by 3s.  I think we may do that in September, too.

Other Memory Work: They’ve got Buckeye Battle Cry down.

Phonics:

M-girl: She’s going gung-ho on finishing those phonics lessons since she gets to put a sticker.  I also added some assigned reading for her.  She started with Little House in the Big Woods.  She’s to read a chapter, write a sentence about what she liked, and draw a picture:

“I like the bucher part.”

“I like the game called mad dog.”

Yes, “Pa” and the uncle are in the house for butchering, but otherwise, I think she paid great attention to the things in the house! (Do you like their butcher knives?) 

N-boy: is moving forward.  I appreciate how he knows how much he can handle.  Even with the “carrot” of a sticker, if he can do half a lesson, that’s what he can do.  He learned how to read words ending in “-tch” this week.

R-girl: she did a few more pages of her ETC-A.

Math:

M-girl: I think we did 2 math lessons this week: a review lesson with neat logic problems and introduced unit blocks.  She’s almost done with the second set of problems in Practice Book A.

N-boy: He’s also doing very well with MEP.  We introduced the concept of zero this week.

R-girl: We did puzzles, she’s amazing at the Mighty Minds puzzles, and a number matching game.

Grammar:

M-girl:  We started to think about putting her grammar lessons together with the Three Little Kittens and identifying nouns and verbs.  She said “fear” was a noun, I think it was a DO, but I was pleased that she recognized it as a noun. (She did say it was a “thing” while I thought it was an “idea”, but really, woo-hoo!)

Penmanship: M-girl is working on connecting cursive “a”.  N-boy is working on his numbers.  R-girl wrote “Tricia” this week and the i, c, and i were legible (she started with the dot on her “i”s, cracked me up).  Fun stuff.

Geography:We read some about the United Kingdom, colored a map and flag, and tomorrow are going to try English food: “Toad in a Hole,” scones, and cucumber sandwiches.  We also found the UK on the globe and in the Atlases.

Spanish: We reviewed through Lesson 4.

Art: Aunt J got the children the black scratch paper with colors behind, so we did scratch art this week:

Bible:  We read more of the Vos Children’s Bible, through Joseph’s death.  Next up: Moses!  We’ve almost finished The Children’s Storybook Bible (with Jason in the evenings) as well.

Read Alouds:  We finished The Borrowers and had a wonderful discussion about selfishness, sin, worldview, and perceptions … on the level of a 5, 4, and 3 year old LOL.  We started The Jungle Book (those are long chapters!)  and should finish the first chapter tonight (after 3 nights of reading!) I really like this series of unabridged classics from Barnes & Noble; they’re easy to read from!  We made our way through a couple more chapters of The Burgess Bird book, too.