Friday, August 28, 2009

Week 2 in Review

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I thought about participating in the blog hop again this week, but the the topic is "A Day in the Life" and I'm still trying to figure out what that looks like for us! We continue to adjust to Anna's new away-school schedule, but each day is getting better and better. Hopefully in the next week or so we will settle into a nice routine.

Ryne: Last week I wrote about our struggle with a narration assessment to figure out where to start him in Writing With Ease. I got an email from Peace Hill Press, saying that Susan Wise Bauer agreed with my idea to split him into two different levels. So he will start with Level 1 for narration and Level 2 for copywork and dictation. This means that I will have to just use the manual as my guide and find my own literature selections, but I was leaning toward doing this anyway. It's more work on my part, but I've already been doing it in previous years for copywork -- plus I don't have to spend the extra money on workbooks.

All of Ryne's other individual subjects went well. He did miss one question on his math test (his first missed question on a test in six lessons of Gamma), but as soon as I pointed it out he caught the mistake. Oh, how I love that math is going so smoothly for him right now.

Grace: It was smooth sailing for Grace as well. We finished up our review of addition facts, so we'll start on subtraction next week. Since she did so well with Ryne's reading book last week, I've made it a joint reading time, letting her and Ryne take turns. Now I'm wondering what to do with all the 1st and 2nd grade reading books she was supposed to read. Maybe they will become night-time reading material.

Bible: We finished part 1 of Discovering Jesus in Exodus. The Scripture text was Ephesians 1:3-7. Both Ryne and Grace are able to answer these questions:

  • When did God choose us to belong to Him?
  • Why did God choose us to belong to Him?
  • What do we have through the blood of Jesus?
  • What does redeem mean?
Science: We read about clouds and made weather in a jar.

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waiting for precipitation

We also completed Outdoor Hour Challenge 2, and you can read about that in the previous post.

History: We read about Columbus and made simple models of the NiƱa, Pinta, and Santa Maria. Just like last week, this is review since we covered Columbus in SOTW 2 last year, and therefore didn't read as much this week as we could have. We did read a short chapter book, Pedro's Journal, but it was just okay. What we did enjoy, however, was American Pioneers and Patriots, which will be one of our spines as we go through Adventures in MFW.


The kids enjoyed making the ships and were able to tell me all about what happened to each ship, based on what we read this week.

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Fine Arts: I love that Adventures introduces the kids to many great patriotic hymns and songs. I had planned on doing that before we chose Adventures, but now it's already planned out for me! This week we started "God Bless America."

We also started our instrument-of-the-week studies, starting with the violin. We will be following the order in Story of the Orchestra. We also started our first of four composer studies, reading part of Joseph Haydn: The Merry Little Peasant. I'm kicking myself because somehow I didn't get the companion CD added to my Rainbow order. We also continued learning the hymn "Praise to the Lord, the Almighty."


We finished another Artistic Pursuits chapter, the theme being imagination. Our project didn't go quite as well as I hoped because I (the daughter of an art teacher) forgot that watercolor pencils are not the same as watercolor crayons. The kids were a little disappointed in the results, because the pencils did not blend very well.

Latin: Since I couldn't find our Song School Latin CD, we just reviewed the songs we learned last year, without music. Must find that CD...

Other: Last week I forgot to tell about our first Family Math activity. It was so much fun that we decided to do it again this week. The activity involved assigning each letter of the alphabet a dollar amount (a = $1, z = $26) and then determining whose name was worth the most money. This was the perfect activity for Ryne and Grace. While Grace has not learned column addition, she was still able to help out with the basic facts she knows. Last week I wrote the problems on the white board, and we all helped to add up the value of each name.

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This week they wrote the problems on the white board, which turned out to be a great lesson in place value for Grace. Instead of using our first names again, we chose five of the Dutch last names from our church directory (ours included) and calculated which last name was worth the most. Dutch names have a lot of v's, w's, and s's and other "valuable" consonants, so the kids just loved this variation.

So that's our week! We still need to add in spelling. I bought Level 1 of All About Spelling and I need to take some time this weekend to figure out how it works.

Happy Homeschooling!

4 comments:

  1. Sounds like a very productive week! My children also love using the whiteboard. ( especially my toddler!!)

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  2. Cute blog!!!! We're planning on doing the clouds in a jar in a few weeks! Love the ships, too! Thanks for sharing!

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  3. Looks great! I love the boat models- I could never show my bathtub! Yours is so white and clean! Ha- Thanks for posting, gave me some ideas about how to address some of our plans- Have a wonderful weekend-Laura

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  4. What a great week you had! I love the boats and the family math activity. Really neat!

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