Weekly Report January 27-31, 2014

Well, we accomplished school work this week, but I still feel dissatisfied by the manner in which we completed the work. It was incredibly cold here at the beginning of the week so there was no outdoor play and no basketball practice because the schools were closed. We did regular school on Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, but only Circle Time on Tuesday … we met our friends to play at a local kids gym for two hours of open gym.  That was a blast.


We did Circle Time four days, taking Thursday off.  This I’m happy about, and it is going much better than ever.  This is not to say it is going at my personal preference of engagement, but it’s better.  We finished reading the chapter on Augustine’s conversion in Peril and Peace, we all enjoyed that.  We finished reviewing ‘Love Divine, All Loves Excelling’ for our hymn.  I need to choose our next hymn.  Usually I have a list, and in February choose a Lenten hymn, but haven’t made plans for that for 2014. 




We did some geography blobbing, penmanship, and Calculadder drills.  M-girl finished Level 7, N-boy Level 9, and R-girl is still on Level 3.  The older two are loving their C.S.Lewis quotes.  R-girl finished learning Cursive First!  She still needs the chart and some help, but is doing very well.
 
Literature continued reading Asgard Tales this week; the children have really enjoyed the Norse mythology. On Friday, I read aloud The Aunt and Amabel by E. Nesbit.  A fantastic story with a magical wardrobe.  The kids wrote narrations.  It was good.

Asgard and Mystery of the Periodic Table are both on Kindles

For their science reading, they read two chapters of Mystery of the Periodic Table.  From their explanations to Daddy at dinner, I think this is going to be an inspired choice.  R-girl is having a harder time with it than the others, but that is to be expected.  Maybe we can work on reading it together.


We read about Protestant Rebellions in chapter 2 of Story of the World III for history.  The children already knew some about Mary, Queen of Scots, but not about Phillip II and William the Silent.  M-girl and I talked – a little bit – contrasting the rebellions.  


We didn’t do math Tuesday or Wednesday.  M-girl worked more on geometric solids and plane objects.  She also began working on fractions.  N-boy is still reviewing Year 2 work.  These beginning lessons of Year 3 are long.  R-girl is in the lessons transitioning to adding between 10s in Year 2.  M-girl and N-boy both solved the ‘Santa’s Gift List’ case in logic.

 








I typed and helped R-girl with hers.  M-girl and N-boy practiced their typing on NitroType this week.  R-girl continued to work on her spelling with Explode the Code.


Grammar was a bit hit or miss. R-girl started learning about prepositions and will start memorizing the list next week.  N-boy is working on using prepositions – and not diagramming them!  M-girl is working on linking verbs and predicate nominatives.


Latin was very hit or miss.  M-girl and N-boy didn’t work on much this week, but they did play Memory with with Song School Latin cards. 

They liked that a lot.  R-girl, though, finished Prima Latina! Yay!  Next week we start over with Latin For Children A.  All of us together.  


The children practiced the piano and had a lesson this week.  Their teacher sent me a list of books for repertoire pieces, so I’ll be ordering those.  For gym, we had that trip to open gym and had three basketball practices last night with two games Saturday.


We met with our Art with Friends group on Thursday.  We learned more about how Parmagianino used light, and made watercolor projects blocking out a candle with masking tape.  They turned out really well!