Week 30

G-Grade 7 aka The Prophet

This week in math I did lesson 22.

In hand writing I did 2 pages.
I read a retelling of oliver twist by eyewitness in reading.

In writing I got a new writing book called jump in writing and I did most of the intro part.

In grammar I memorized prepositions.

E-Grade 1 aka The Warrior

(Swimming Lessons) There's a girl in my class called Tabitha.  She mostly goes first.  My teacher put us down in deep water.  We climbed on the side of the wall to the deep water.  She put a pole in water.  Then I grabbed it and climbed all the way down and sit on bottom.  

(Science) First I got a box.  Then I got two rubber band.  Put it on box.  Take pencil and stick it under the rubber bands.  I make low pitch and high pitch.

(Math) I counted to 100 with Mom.  Mom count with Me.  

P-Grade 4 aka The Peacemaker

In PE class we played flag football.  

Our butterflies hatched out of their cocoons.  They are drinking sugar water and eating oranges.  

My math is getting hard.  

I'm reading James and the Giant Peach.  I like it.  

In Science, we made rubber band banjos.  We studied pitch.  We put rubber bands around a box.  We stuck a pencil underneath the rubber bands. 

I did First Language Lessons.  I'm studying prepositions and prepositional phrases.  I circled prepositions in sentences.  

Winter Books

Tracks in the Snow by Wong Herbert Yee

We love this book!  It's small and perfect for little people.  The illustrations are beautiful and really pull you into the story.

Peacemaker Book Making

Peacemaker loves to make books. Here is his latest. (Sorry if pics are blurry, he took them. I had to show him how to hold the button down halfway to focus the shot. Honestly it took me a week before my husband had to show me to do the same thing.)


The book title is Attack of the Cat. It's a common theme around here as we happen to have a cat who is tiny, swift, brave, and sneaky.













August stalking something outside.

Just about the last week of October...

Middle Ages

Everyone is listening in on King Arthur now. I always forget the title. It's really good and they love it!

That sometimes useful television

Warrior watched Between the Lions. We haven't watched that since the big boys were much younger. He really gets cranky about the time it comes on and I think it might be a good thing to let him do a few days a week as a "nap" and it can be some extra phonics and reading instruction for him.

Ambleside History & Literature

AO readings are all doing well. I've been filling out their Book of Centuries for them and I think this week they can start doing it themselves. It's not fancy (just construction paper that we will staple together later), but it's getting the job done. It's a record without all the detail-ya know.

Schedules & Character

We started a new schedule for the boys. They seem to be adjusting well to it. They each have an hourly schedule and are expected to get up and do what they helped plan. We have been discussing Obedience and Joyfulness a lot this week. Nothing was planned but it seems like those things really came to a head this week. The boys thought Obedience is behaving well enough to get to play video games. I kid you not. You would think they played all day long. We dealt with that and they now understand what Obedience is and why we are Obedient. I'm thinking this is something that has to be gone over a few times through the years.

Math

Prophet is still in MUS Gamma. He just finishing up Lesson 26. He will probably be done in the beginning of November. I'm not sure if I can work Delta into our budget right now. So, I'm thinking I might just pick up a smallish workbook at the bookstore for him. It might be nice to have a change of pace at this point.

Peacemaker is about finished with MUS Alpha and we have plenty of Beta worksheets left for him to work through that book. Hopefully he will be caught up to grade level by next year.

Black Ships Before Troy

Last night we were set to watch a movie. But, since we didn't get through dinner and cleanup and teeth brushing till near 10pm it just didn't happen. My dh grabbed this book from the library shelf. Not to read, but to fold paper airplanes on. I've been trying to fit these in as read alouds since we are studying Greece. The prophet (now in Year 6) removed the book from such drudgery and started to read it in the sparsely lit living room. I offered to read it aloud, but he grumbled something at me and disappeared to his room. Where he read till midnight and came to get me, so that I could tuck him into bed.

The Flops and Flutters and Plans Oh my...

The Flops

Well we did a lot less reading this year.

Story of the World and it's appendages probably works well for children who like to do everything in a neat row. Or children who like coloring pages. My children do not. We spent all year trudging through SOTW and it's activity guide and really missing out on the reading we love. We do have outside classes and I did take a full-quarter this winter. But, there just wasn't enough to keep us afloat. It's not like we enjoyed it either. I said TRUDGING.

The Flutters

I want to finish up Volume 1 by the end of the summer. We have the Volume one audio and we have been listening to that during the week in very small bites. I figured I could get the boys through it faster and at least cover the information. SUPRISE, SUPRISE, SUPRISE!!! The boys enjoy it a lot more and are retaining an amazing amount of information. Jim Weiss is a gem of a speaker. Now we have free time to read other books and fill out History Scribe pages. My boys seem to prefer these since they take some imagination and I had just enough paypal to buy a set. I love that the set includes a Native American set. I wanted to start doing some American History but really had no idea what to do for Native Americans. The sets include Maps so we can fill those out when we see locations in our readings. They filled out at least 20 maps this year and each has a river or maybe an arrow. I want to be able to glance at the very least 2 or 3 maps and see what they learned that year.

The Little Plans

I'm going back to letting the children listen and read and follow tangents. It just works better that way. I do plan on using an Ambleside inspired outline for our year. We will see how that works. I have a very small budget this year so I'll be using the library and online sources. I might purchase a level or two of Math U See for my oldest as it seems to be all he is willing to use.

Reading

Books I've decided to use will be made into reading list on good reads and kept track of in my sidelines. Hopefully I can convince the boys to write reviews of books they read.