Weekly Report for 4/23-4/27/2012

We had a really good week.  Last week we were off on break with Daddy.  We had fun doing geocaching and being together.  I had the opportunity to attend the Cincinnati Homeschool Convention to be taught and encouraged.  On Monday, we cleaned house, particularly the school room, as one of the major changes I decided upon was that we would clean up every day before school was done … and we did it!  On our way home Monday evening, N-boy said how excited he was to be back on our regular routine – music to my ears!  This was our week with Thursday off.  Soccer and Softball are going and we’ve been busy every night this week.  Piano continues to go very well.  It is a busy season!

Phonics:

R-girl: read 4 lessons in OPG.  She is deciding she’d like to do more than one lesson per day so she can go faster.  She’s also done two complete lessons of Explode the Code 1. 

Assigned Reading:

M-girl: read two chapters of Little House on the Prairie.  She’s enjoying it. 

N-boy: read three chapters of The Cricket in Times Square.  He really likes it a lot and is glad I made him read it 🙂

R-girl: finished Frog & Toad! She started Amelia Bedelia today. I forgot about the cursive, but N-boy helped her.  I need to think about what she’ll read next.  Probably The Lighthouse Family.

Math:

M-girl: completed several MEP lessons and one level of Primary Challenge Math Chapter 3 (about money).

N-boy: completed adding up to 19 in MEP. 

R-girl: continued working on adding up to 5.  She is doing really well with it.  She also did several pages of Math Mammoth 1.

Logic:

M-girl: didn’t work on this.  Tomorrow I need to consider what and how much I’m assigning.

N-boy: finished the packet from the week before last.

Grammar:

M-girl: worked on Verbs in Grammar-Land.  She read ahead a couple of chapters, she’s found it so charming.  I need to make certain she does the worksheets.  We also studied about metaphor and personification in Music of the Hemispheres.

N-boy: is working on action verbs and helping verbs.  He did his second dictation lesson beautifully.

R-girl: is working on nouns.  Today we talked about family name as proper noun.

Writing:

M-girl: did six lessons of WWE.  We’re close to finishing Level 1.  I’m excited about that.  She now wants to read Socks by Beverly Cleary.

N-boy: did three lessons.  We worked on the week for Trumpet of the Swan, which we read last year.  He liked thinking about that story again.

R-girl: did some copywork from The Lion and the Mouse in her Grammar Lesson.  She also illustrated the picture.

Spelling:

M-girl: completed one lesson and didn’t miss any words.

N-boy: completed one lesson and didn’t miss any words.

Latin:

M-girl: started Latin for Children A.  She enjoyed it and felt really comfortable using it.  I’m glad we waited until after our break to begin as it is more work than Prima was.  I do need to find out about making flash cards …

N-boy: finished lesson 6 (or 7?) which introduced nouns.  He was so proud of himself for finishing it on his own today. I was too.

Penmanship:

M-girl: continues to work on lower-case letter combinations.  I might jump her ahead to capitals as she knows the lower case very well.

N-boy: learned lower case m and v this week.

R-girl: worked on lower case g and o this week.

History: We returned to Rome and read about Julius Caesar this week. We completed the map work and will continue with him next week.

Science: We didn’t do much science this week.  I think we’re going to finish The Human Body next week and I’m going to re-vamp how we’re doing science.  I am going to use God’s Design for Science more like a spine for *me* and not necessarily use it with the children.  At least that’s my current plan.  I’m going to have to think and pray and consider how this can work better.  We’re going to do Astronomy next and N-boy is particularly excited about that.  I think I might be wishing I had bought Memoria Press’ astronomy, but we’ll figure it out (and I didn’t want to buy three copies!)

Geography: N-boy completed his geography pages this week.  I need to turn them into puzzles for him.  We didn’t read from A Child’s Geography today as I had intended.

Art: No art this week either.

Read Alouds: we read a chapter from Detectives in Togas and one from Understood Betsy.  We need to get back on the reading wagon.  We didn’t do any evening reading, but we haven’t eaten together once as a family this week (boo!)

Bible: The children have learned two verses of Like a River Glorious.  They’re close to having Matthew 5:1-12 memorized.  They all moved on to new catechism questions this week.  They’ve been reading the Bible to each other some in the car, which is great!