Weekly Report: March 3-7, 2014
It feels like I just did this. Oh, I did! Sadly, this week was not as good as last week. It was still pretty good, though, in the grand scheme of things. The issue was more the way things done rather than getting them done … because they were generally accomplished. This was one of our “B” weeks, so we had four days of school with Thursday mostly off. We had a great trip to the library that day, though.
We did Circle Time three days this week. We are learning ‘O Worship the King’ and worked on the first three verses this week. We just about have Colossians 3:12-17 memorized. R-girl is starting the Catechism questions on prayer … and everyone else is reviewing. We are almost done with Covenantal Catechism Book 2. I do love this curriculum. I don’t think we’ve gotten as far in our poetry memory as I generally prefer; we’re working on “The Captain’s Daughter.” We’ve been enjoying Mathematicians are People Too.
We finished The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe this week! All three children enjoyed reading this so much. I’m thrilled the children are enjoying this as literature. For writing we did copywork, narrations, and dictations from the chapters. They want to make a presentation for our church’s Homeschool Showcase about the Narnia book(s) we’ll have read by then. We also finished Lesson 2 of Writing and Rhetoric. I like the way it teaches summary and amplification, but I’m certain not all of my children did. We will need to work on these ideas, and typing will become more and more important. Their writing stamina is not increasing as much as I’d like – I thought the copywork exercises would help, but it doesn’t seem to be as much.
We enjoyed poetry today. R-girl continued learning about how different letter sounds and personification can affect a poem. N-boy continued working on poetic feet and began learning about stanzas and poetic forms like Sonnets and Ballads. M-girl studied a poem about Christopher Columbus from the MP Poetry program. I was surprised she skipped over “The Lady of Shallot”, thinking it was too long. For grammar, we continued with prepositions for R-girl. N-boy completed the Dictionary Skills lessons. M-girl is working on verbs, objects, sentences and how to diagram all of them.
We finished Chapter 3 in Latin today with a quiz. The children all did well on the quiz, although R-girl needed some help thinking through the whole thing.
In Science, we’ve been studying the periodic table. The kids were intrigued by the story of Mendeleyev and how he organized the periodic table. I’m liking this curriculum so far.
Our History this week was a little less organized than I’d like; M-girl and R-girl both were reading about the Spanish settlement into South America – which we studied several chapters ago and N-boy read about Athanasius, which was from the last book! Our library, though, is sadly less filled with books related to this era. N-boy and M-girl are almost done with their States and Capitals books in Geography. They should finish them next week. I did purchase the mp3 download of the States and Capitals songs because I don’t think they learned as much from the MP book as I had hoped. R-girl is working on an earlier part of the book. All three children worked on blobbing, too. N-boy has said he’d like to learn about China and M-girl would like to learn about India for geography when they finish States and Capitals.
Math went well this week. We did three days of MEP and one of Primary Challenge Math.
In PCM today, N-boy and R-girl both worked on making change. M-girl worked on multiplication beyond what she’s learned in MEP. I like seeing that challenge for her. N-boy and M-girl finished the second Detectives Club book, so they won’t have more logic for a while. They really like logic – and R-girl has been asking for some – so I should find them something, but I’d rather re-vamp our writing.
 |
| Primary Challenge Math … multiplication! |
Their piano lessons went very well this week. They’re beginning to prepare pieces for a possible recital and our church’s Homeschool Showcase.
We enjoyed being home most days this week with nothing on the schedule Monday through Wednesday. The children enjoyed playing more in the afternoons. We should have one more relatively quiet week, maybe hear about soccer teams next week. Hope it doesn’t snow when practices start …
They need to teach me about South America. I know very little, since Joel learned a lot from the Colombians before I understood enough of the Spanish language.
Well, it may be a while. We aren't looking at this period too closely. She's reading a Newberry winner: Secret of the Andes. R-girl read a step-into-reading book called "Terror on the Amazon" which was pretty light-weight 🙂
Loreena McKennitt set "The Lady of Shalott" to music about 20 years ago. I used her setting when I memorized part of the poem in 8th grade for my English class.
Here's a YouTube video with the music: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttv0ljOiPSs
Thanks, Jen! I don't know if this poem is one we'll memorize down the road, but I'll use this song to supplement when we do the analysis in our MP Poetry book 🙂
Your church has a homeschool showcase? Neat! We're one of only two homeschool families that I'm aware of in our medium-sized (200 ish) church.
I cannot think of The Lady of Shalott without thinking of Anne with an E. 🙂
Sounds like a good week!
Every spring a number of the homeschool families get together for the showcase on a Saturday evening. We have dinner together and the children recite, play, and display work from the year. It's fun! Our kids usually recite a poem and play a piano piece. This year they want to make something for Narnia. They came up with this idea all on their own. I'm looking forward to seeing what they do!
Oh, yeah, we also go to a church with around 200 Sunday a.m. attendance. We have children in all kinds of schooling situations, but there is a large contingent of homeschoolers. This is a great encouragement to me!
I forgot that The Lady of Shalott is from AGG! I bet M-girl did too …
You church has a homeschool showcase? Neat! We're one of only two homeschooling families in our church, which isn't tiny.
I cannot think of The Lady of Shalott without thinking of Anne with an E. 🙂
Love Narnia! We've been studying the books this year as well. I have a copy of Writing & Rhetoric on my shelf – I think we're going to use it at a slightly accelerated pace to finish out the year starting next term.
I know! I think you doing it encouraged me to try. So far it's going well. This coming week we're going to try to do some examination of the first book with Teaching the Classics and Lost Tools. Should be interesting 🙂 I think you'll like W&R! It's fun 🙂