Mid-Week Round Up

Today is our "off" day for this week. Being Veteran's Day the school kids our off, and since I'm attempting to recover from my masochism tendencies, I decided my children would also have the day off. Since we have a 4-day week, it works out fine. The only thing that would make it better would be if it wasn't pouring down rain and 50 degrees. I know my house will be trashed before the day is over, but I will also enjoy watching the games the children invent to keep them busy.

The first two days off our new "stepped up" schedule has gone well. Mary and Katie first put up a fuss about the new lines on their To Do Lists, but once we got into it they realized it wasn't that much more difficult...and kind of fun. I'm thrilled with what we have done these two days...maybe mostly because I've actually been able to balance the children so much better than before.

Mary

~ Completed Chapter 2 in Math Mammoth. Her review sheet was completed at 98% accuracy, so we skipped the test. Thursday we will begin Chapter 3.
~ Continuing to read a chapter per day in the Ben Franklin biography.
~ Completed the Review of Chapter 2 (Landforms) in her Science Book. For her "test" she choose one land form and drew a picture of it, along with a paragraph or two about the land form. Mary chose a volcano.
~ Completed Chapter 10 (Pilgrims) in "The Story of the USA" workbook.
~ Read the first chapter in George Washington's World
~ Made a model of a traditional colonial cabin from construction paper (Activity from History Pockets)
~ Reviewed all Latin vocabulary in lessons 1-4, began working on Lesson 5
~ Began working on the poem "November" by Alice Cary, underlined the adjectives
~ Began Lesson 7 in Simply Grammar (Adjectives)
~ Lesson 1 in Intermediate Language Lessons (Narration of the Story of Moses)
~ Continued phonics review of "th" sounds
~ daily cursive copywork
~ listened to reading on Tree Squirrels in Burgess' Animal Book. With Katie, looked up different types of squirrels in our Mammal Identification book.

Katie
~ Continued work on subtraction.
~ Began reading and studying "The Three Little Pigs" for Literature Pockets. She has read aloud two versions of the story and made the pocket to hold the other activities.
~ Read & narrated Chapter 1-2 in "Paddle-To-The Sea"
~ Completed Food Web worksheet, read pages 12-13 in "One Small Square:Woods", read about Tree Squirrels in Burgess' Animal Book, colored squirrel worksheets, and looked up different types of squirrels in Mammal Identification book.
~ Drew a picture of a volcano and identified the different features of a volcano
~ Orally reviewed Latin vocabulary words for Lessons 1-4, introduced Lesson 5 vocabulary
~ Daily handwriting practice
~ Introduced the poem "Whisky, Frisky" and talked about descriptive words
~ Listened to reading of George Washington's World (Chapter 1) and made a model of a colonial cabin with Mary.
~ Daily phonics review - short vowel words

Emily
~ began working through RightStart Math - counting objects to 6
~ The Letter F; she has matched beginning sounds and made a fish using a ovals & triangles
~ Reading short 'i' words in HOP
~ Enjoying reading through the Bob Books I got at the Library
~ Playing "Memory" and Pictionary Jr.

Robbie
~ reading a lot of board books
~ flipping through Alphabet books and talking about what we see
~ Playing Memory
~ building train tracks
~ coloring

We have also read through Chapter Six in "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" as the family read-aloud in the evening. I found a copy with Michael Hague's illustrations and we are enjoying this book, especially once we got past the third chapter.

Last night Mary, Katie and myself also attended a flag event for Girl Scouts, where we watched a presentation on the history of the US flag. Very, very interesting for Mary (my flag lover). She was probably the one of the only ones in the room who knew that the British Union Jack came from the flags of England (St. George), Scotland (St. Andrew) and Ireland (St. Patrick). Except for having to drive a car full of girls across town in heavy rain during rush hour, the evening was a success!

A busy couple of days so far this week. Today I will just be around to keep a lid on the creativity so it doesn't totally explode all over my house, and hopefully complete Katie's scarf I am knitting.

Peace,

Amy