Weekly Wrap-up: break from texts, but not from learning

We are taking a break from our regular schedule and books for the whole month of December, but that does not mean that we are taking a break from learning.

Bible

During the month of December Anna and I are attempting to memorize the part of the Christmas story that can be found in the Bible in the book of Luke, chapter 2 verses 1-14. We were a little late starting but we're doing okay. This week we managed to memorize verses 1-3. We are using Scripture Typer to help us. We started with verse one on its own. When we had that one memorized we started on verse two. When we had verse two memorized we put verse one and two together and deleted them as individual verses. Then we started working on verse three while still reviewing verses 1-2. We will continue this process throughout the month and hopefully memorize the whole passage by the end of the month, if not before.

Art

Lots of different art activities happened this week. Here's a sampling of some of it:

Completed following the steps on the How to Draw Baby Jesus page at Art for Kids.

This one was done using the Doodle app on her IPad and following the Step by Step Drawing Lessons to draw a drum

Paper lanterns made using the How to Make a Paper Lantern Wiki and the How to Make Paper Lantern With 2 Copy Papers YouTube video

Language Arts

We've had fun completing Christmas themed worksheets of all kinds from education.com. We did a reading comprehension exercise, a choose the correct spelling activity, an alphabetizing exercise, a word search, and an unscramble the words activity. Anna was getting a little frustrated with unscrambling the words so I suggested we use scrabble tiles to help and she really enjoyed that.

We are doing the Adventures in Odessey Advent activities, which include listening to, and discussing, an audio program most days. Along with that we have been watching and discussing, a different Christmas/winter themed movie most days. So far we've watched Frozen, Golden Winter, Elf, Christmas Comes to Canaan, Home Alone 1, The Town Christmas Forgot, Wind at My Back Christmas, and An Avonlea Christmas.

Math

Christmas themed work sheets from education.com were also used for Math. Anna struggled a bit with a word problem sheet but it made me realize that I should be doing more of these with her. Once she recovered from the frustration of not immediately understanding what she should do she did good with it. She had no problem with the Sudoku game sheet. Anna got some practice with money values through counting her money and going to the store and buying something herself. She was pretty proud of that. :-) we also covered some fractions as we did some baking and discussed 1/4, 1/3, and 1/2 cups and teaspoons.

Music

We have been working through a 5 Days of Christmas Carols Unit Study and really enjoying it. We're sad that is finished. I'm thinking we're going to continue on with doing a Christmas song a day ourselves for the rest of the month. The unit study covered Carol of the Bells, Away in a Manger, The Little Drummer Boy, Angels We Have Heard on High, and Come oh Come Emmanual. We learned about one song each day and listened to a number of different versions of the songs, printed out the lyrics, and tried singing them ourselves. It was great fun!

Social Studies

Using a couple of different resources - The Christmas Around the World Unit Study and the Online Interactive World Advent Calendar 2013 - we are learning about how Christmas is celebrated around the world. Anna loves finding each place on our wall map and finding the flag for each country on the border around our wall map before we add a flag ornament to a house plant that we are decorating as we do this study. We have also been making ornaments, crafts, and baking suggested by information about the different countries. So far we've covered Malta, New Zealand, China, Wales, Japan, Russia, and Great Britian.

 

And that is the learning that has taken place during our break this week. :-)

 

Weekly Wrap-up Posts inspired by Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers Weekly Wrap-up Meme. Check out her wrap-up for this week and scroll down to see the links to check out weekly wrap-ups from others.

 

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Weekly Wrap-up: Power Outages result in plan changes

It has been another crazy week weather-wise. We've gone from snow covered grounds to flooding and back to snow covered grounds; from wearing winter coats and boots to spring coats and boots and back to winter coats and boots. Crazy times! One day this week we were without power for most of the day, with the power flicking on for a bit but quickly disappearing again. That particular day we chose to stay cuddles under the blankets in bed to stay warm, and we brought our school work in bed with us. It ended up being a pretty fun day.
Bible
Anna continued to use the Bible.Is app most of the week and read/listened to chapters 5-8 of Matthew with it. Then she discovered the newly released YouVersion Bible App for Kids and devoured it. She worked her way through all the stories presently available on the app and hen proceeded to go through them all again. She loves it. I have informed her, however, that while she is welcome to play with the app as much as she wants in her free time it does not count as Bible reading and she must continue to do additional Bibke reading. She seemed to understand.
Once again she seems to have come to a stand still in learning scriptures and hasn't added any new verses. I have a plan to help with that next month.
Art
Anna made a beautiful art project in her art class at the recreation Center this week. She decided to give it to her sister and she loves it. Anna suggested she could use the box to hold her CDs.

Anna also did a couple of art projects on her own at home. She made a doghouse for her new stuffed dog and also made her a food and water bowl and a bone. :-)

I absolutely love this picture that she did all on her own. She was inspired one day by the view out our back patio door.

Language Arts (Reading, Writing, Spelling, Grammar)
We learned about adverbs and reviewed adjectives while completing lessons 45-49 in First Language Lessons. We also did a picture narration and learned how to address a post card.
We made our way through review test 3 of level A of Spelling Power. Anna struggled with a lot of the words in the last few groups of words and I expected her to struggle more with the review test but it seems she may finally have mastered many of these words.
We layed aside our formal writing program this week and writing was done through our other subjects.
We have been listening to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and we're almost finished it. We are enjoying this recording.
Math
Math continues to be a favourite time for Anna as we continue to play games to help her learn the facts. Anna came up with another new game this week. Its a card game to practice doubles. You have to try to get pairs and you must tell what the pairs add up to when you lay them down. She also decided to add a bit of French to her math lessons. She insists that we say the numbers in French. She uses a French app to help her with the numbers. Somehow or another multiplication came up this week and we spent a bit of time playing around with that concept with the cusinaire rods. I've been encouraging her to do more of the writing for math and most days we end up with a sheet like this one from one day this week. On this sheet she recorded the answer to a How Much Money game, five addition puzzles, and practiced writing some numbers as I called them out. I wrote the multiplication and addition sentences at the bottom as we discussed them.

Music
The only structured music this week has been her piano practice, which she continues to do great with. Other than that Anna has been almost constantly in song, singing her own made up tunes.
Science
We are really enjoying our Exploring Creation With Zoology 1. We are learning about the five different kinds of feathers and the importance of each kind. It has been very interesting.
Social Studies
We finished Chapter 11 and 12 in Story of the World Volume 2: The Middle Ages. Anna did great on the tests for both chapters. We learned about the early history of France and Spain.
And that's it for this week. We are taking a cue from the power outrageous and we are changing things up a bit next month. Stay tuned to see how it turns out.
Weekly Wrap-up Posts inspired by Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers Weekly Wrap-up Meme.

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Weekly wrap-up: sloppy inside and out

The weather is starting to get sloppy here. It fluctuates between sunshine, rain, and snow. It kind our mirrors our homeschool this week. There have been great moments, okay moments, and extremely frustrating moments. I'm choosing to try to learn from the frustrating moment and then trying to forget them, concentrating more on the great moments. :-)

No weekly wrap-up last week; we took the week off because my sister was visiting.

 

Bible

Anna completed the Courageous Kid's Bible reading plan in YouVersion and, as she couldn't find any other reading plans that included videos, decided to take a break using YouVersion. Instead she decided to do her daily Bible reading using the Bible.Is app. She is using the NIV dramatized version and she listens to the audio while following along with the text on the iPad. She listened to chapter 1-4 of Matthew this week.

She's been kind of slack with her Scritpure memory. She has only been reviewing a verse or two and not adding any new ones. I need to encourage her more with that.

Art

Anna did a neat picture at her art class at the community center this week.

At home our art time has been taken up with fingering knitting. Anna loves it! We started with one finger knitting and have moved on to four finger knitting.

Here are some projects she made with one finger knitting - the two top pictures show a bracelet she made. The bottom. Left picture is a small wash cloth she made for one of her miniature figurines. I showed her how to sew the string into a circle. The bottom left picture is a collar she made, using a thicker wool, for her stuffed dog.

Here's her first attempt at four finger knitting. We made it into a headband.

 

Language Arts (Reading, Writing, Spelling, Grammar)

We completed lesson 41- 45 in First Language Lessons. We learned about indirect quotations and review the four kinds of sentences, parts of speech, direct quotations and titles of respect.

We made it through group 17 words in Spelling Power. She flicked through most of them but there are a few that she struggled with so that it took most of the week to actually be done with whole list.

The copy work, narration, and dictation exercises in Writing With Ease this week were based on passages from 101 Dalmations. Anna has seen the movie a couple of times and she also has a couple of different picture books based on the story so the story is very familiar to her. I'm not sure if we'll take the time to read the original book or not.

We finished reading Pippi Longstocking together this week and I found a Pippi Longstocking movie available on YouTube. Anna enjoyed watching that and comparing the scenes to the chapters in the book. The movie was quite different from the book.

Math

We are continuing to play games to review facts and money values. This week I decided to start each math session with a couple of quick review activities. The first activity reviews counting money. I simply place a handful of coins on the table and Anna has to figure out how much money it is. I write down the amount after she's figured it out to get her used to reading the amount. The other activity is for reviewing facts. I take a handful of cusinaire rods from the bag and arrange them into addition problems. Anna has to figure out the answers. The first part of the week I wrote out the equations as she figured the out but the last part of the week I had her write out the equations herself. She continues to enjoy playing Go to the Dump, Math War, and Capture the Looney.

Music

We didn't pick a song to learn this week. Instead Anna's been working in learning how to play some Christmas song on piano. This is in addition to her piano lessons. She's doing great.

Science

We finished chapter 2 and have started chapter 3 in Exploring Creation With Zoology 1. Anna enjoyed doing the bird map in her note booking journal.

We were supposed to make bird feeders but we've decided to out that off until the spring. In Chapter 3 we are learning about birds feathers. We are both enjoying all that we are learning.

Social Studies

We finished chapter 10 and have started chapter 11 of Story of the World Volume 2: The Middle Ages. We had a great time learning about the early history of Japan, Korea, Australia, and New Zealand. Anna loves doing the chapter tests and does great on them. Today we started learning about the early history of Gaul. Anna loves to find on our big wall map all the places mentioned in our lessons.

 

So, inspite of the sloppiness, we did manage to accomplish a fair amount of work this week. That's one of the great things about doing these weekly wrap-ups, it helps you realize learning does take place, even in the craziest of weeks.

Weekly Wrap-up Posts inspired by Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers Weekly Wrap-up Meme. Check out her wrap-up for this week and scroll down to see the links to check out weekly wrap-ups from others.

 

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Weekly wrap-up: picking up the slack

Part of the reason why last week was such a struggle for me was because I was starting to get slack. I didn't pay as close attention to things as I could and should have. This week I changed that and it was a much better week.

Bible

Anna finished the Book of Daniel with Kids reading plan and is still working on the Courageous Kids reading plan in YouVersion

She added another verse to the mastered list in ScriptureTyper, bringing her total to 15.

Art

I recently came across the 17 Playful Doodles that Incorporate Everyday Objects blog post and bookmarked it, thinking it would inspire Anna to do some artwork, and it did.

Anna has started going to some after school programs at our community recreation center and has been doing some art projects there so I've cut back some on our art projects. This is one of the projects she did at the Center this week.

Language Arts (Reading, Writing, Spelling, Grammar)

Lessons 37-40 of First Language Lessons had us addressing an envelope and posting a letter, discussing direct quotations and quotation marks, doing a story narration of The Little Red Hen, and working on memorizing a new poem.

Anna got through the group 16 words of Spelling Power without too much trouble and rather than go right into the next group in the book I decided to spend a couple of days working on words she had been constantly misspelling in her journaling. She was quite happy to do that and proud that she could now spell them.

The copy work, dictation, and narration passages in Writing With Ease this week were from Nurse Matilda by Christianna Brand. Anna continues to do great with the required work.

We finally finished listening to The Jungle Book and we were both quite happy to be done with it. We really didn't enjoy the last few chapters. I found Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren at a local library and I've started reading it aloud to Anna. We're both enjoying it.

Math

We learned two new card games this week, Go to the Dump and Math War. These games provided Anna with more review of the facts. She's still struggling with Math concepts. They do not come easy to her and having her encounter the facts in all this different ways should help her to grasp them eventually. One day this week we reviewed odd and even numbers and made a doubles tree to give some practice with doubles.

We also had some fun playing a game we call How Much Money? We take turns dumping a handful of coins on the table and figuring out how much money it is.

Music

The Sound of Music is one of our favourite movies and this week Anna decided to work on learning Do, Re, Mi. She actually did the taping herself today and I think she did a pretty good job.

She continues to do great with her piano lessons, too.

Phys. Ed.

We went swimming twice this week. We both find it refreshing and reviving.

Science

We are still working our way through chapter two of Exploring Creation With Zoology 1, learning more about field marks, habitats, and songs and calls of birds. We share the reading of the text by taking turns reading paragraphs. After each section we talk about what we learned and I write some notes. One day this week Anna decided she wanted to write the notes herself for one section and she did a great job.

 

Social Studies

We learned about the early dynasties of China and Japan this week as we worked our way through chapters 8 and 9 of Story of the World Volume 2: The Middle Ages. Anna did great on the test for chapter 8. We just finished chapter 9 today and will do the test next week. She loves doing the tests.

 

And that was our week. It went a little better this week than last week, thank goodness. How was your week?

Weekly Wrap-up Posts inspired by Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers Weekly Wrap-up Meme. Check out her wrap-up for this week and scroll down to see the links to check out weekly wrap-ups from others.

 

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Weekly wrap-up - I'm starting to Lag

This week was a struggle for me. I struggled to stay motivated and positive. Anna was so good, but I was miserable. I pushed to do what had to be done and didn't take time to do things thoroughly or with a good attitude. I took the fun out of learning most of the week. There were some bright moment and thanks to Anna's great attitude we had a a good week in spite of my miserableness. I took myself in hand today and tried to make up for it.

Bible

Anna is still working her way through The Book of Daniel With Kids and the Courageous Kids Bible reading plans at YouVersion and she's still working on her verses in ScriptureTyper. She didn't add any new verses this week.

Art

For art this week I bought Anna a face painting kit and she's been having fun with it all week.

She also did a couple of spontaneous sketch on the white board one day

and set up another art lesson with the pastel chaulks for both of us another day. I got such a kick out of her giving me step by step instructions. Her picture is the top one and mine is the bottom. I love the bold, brightness of her picture.

 

Language Arts (Reading, Writing, Spelling, Grammar)

Lessons 32-36 of First Language Lessons introduced us to interjections, conjunctions, and letter writing, while at the same time reviewing nouns, pronouns, verbs, and adjectives.

 

We were stuck on the group 14 word list in Spelling Power all week. Anna was tired of using the sugar box for writing the words in as one of the steps in studying her words and started using Doodle Buddy on the IPad and then gravitated to using the white board. She was struggling to keep a good attitude as she was stuck on the same words so long but she finally made her way through the list today.

 

The narrations, dictations and copywork in Writing With Ease were based on passages from Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren and, needless to say, Pippi Longstocking has been added to our want to read list.

We finished listening to the Mowgli part of the Jungle Book this week and we're working our way through the rest of the book. I didn't realize that there was more to it then the Mowgli story. As a reward for finishing the Mowgli section I downloaded the 1942 Jungle Book movie and the 1998 Mowgli's Story and we discussed the similarities and differences between the movies and the book.

Math

Inspired by the Jelly Beans Game Math Video at Education Unboxed we practiced our facts with our own version of the game which we called Lazy Daisy. We took turns rolling two dice and deciding if we were going to use the addition or subtraction equation that could be made using the two numbers to cover one of the numbers on our board. The first person to cover all the numbers on their side of the board was the winner. There were a few times when we decided to call it a truce because it was taking for ever to get a couple of numbers, but Anna loves the game and it got her thinking how the same two numbers could be used for either a subtraction or addition equation.

One day Anna asked if we could play Race to the Looney again so we did and then she came up with the idea for another game which she decided to call How Much Money do I Have. She took a handful of change and we had to figure out how much money was in the handful. We took turns picking handfuls for each other to figure out. She used the cuisenaire rods to help her. She loved this game too and got practice with the values of the coins along with addition practice.

 

Music

Talk to the Animals was one of the songs in the Dr. Dolittle movie we watched a while back. That's the song Anna decided to work on this week. We found a YouTube video of a version of Talk to the Animals that we liked best and Anna listened to it and sang along with it all week. It is a really fast song with a lot of unfamiliar words in it so it was a bit of a challenge. There were also a couple of words in it that I didn't want her using so we had to adjust the lyrics a little. She stumbled a little in the taping today but I think she did a great job.

 

Science

We started chapter two of Exploring Creation With Zoology 1. We learned that feathers are what makes a bird a bird, that birds belong to the phylum Chordata because they have a backbone, that they belong to the class Aves, and that they are warm-blooded. We learned that scientists that study birds are called ornithologists and that the study of birds is called ornithology. People who enjoy bird watching are called birders. We also learned that birds are beneficial because they help keep the insect population under control. We discussed how to use field guides and field marks to help identify birds.

Social Studies

We completed chapter 7 in the Story of the World Volume 2: The Middle Ages and learned about the spread of Islam after Muhammad's death. Anna was excited to do the end of chapter test today and she did great on it.

 

And that was our week. How was your week?

Weekly Wrap-up Posts inspired by Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers Weekly Wrap-up Meme. Check out her wrap-up for this week and scroll down to see the links to check out weekly wrap-ups from others.

 

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Dear Friend Who Celebrates Halloween

Dear Friend Who Celebrates Halloween,

You might be a relative, a friend from Church, a childhood friend, or a new friend. Either way, it's an honor to call you my friend.

Each of us has had to make decisions about Halloween. Will we decorate? Will we go trick or treating? Will we dress up? Will we give out treats? Will we acknowledge Halloween at all?

We have made different choices. You've chosen to celebrate Halloween your way, I've chosen to handle it my way. Different factors have prompted us in our decisions, but one thing guides us both: we want to do what's best for us.

You don't have to explain your reasons to me and I don't have to explain my reasons to you, but if you want to talk about it, I'm open to do that. I don't judge you for your decision. That's not my call. I ask that you offer me the same courtesy.

I just want you to know if you overhear me talking about Halloween, see me share links on Facebook about Halloween, or writing on my blog about Halloween, it's not directed at you or about you.

When I say we don't go big into halloween because that's what we believe God is calling our family to do, I'm not suggesting that people that celebrate halloween are living in sin or that we're more spiritual than others.

Celebrating halloween is the normal thing to do. Not celebrating halloween is not the normal thing to do. Things that aren't normal make people uncomfortable. No one likes to be uncomfortable. But sometimes you have to do what you think is right, even if it does make you or others feel uncomfortable.

I've read lots of different arguments for, and lots of different arguments against, Halloween, and I'm sure you have to. I agree, and disagree, with lots of different arguments on both sides. I've come to my decision and you've come to yours.

I'm thankful that we both have the freedom to do what we believe is right. My favourite article about the whole issue this year is this one - http://www.educatinglaytons.com/2013/10/halloween-love-one-another . That's the key, and the challenge, - Love and respect one another, even if we've chosen differently.

Love,

Jacqueline

And for the record, though we did not decorate and will not be going trick or treating ourselves, this beautiful ballerina will be giving out treats at our door tonight.

Inspired by this great post - http://www.growinghomeblog.com/2013/10/an-open-letter-to-my-non-homeschooling.html

Copyright Jacqueline's Jabberings 2006-2013

Copyright Jacqueline's Jabberings 2006-2013

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Weekly wrap-up - cuddles are the highlight

One of the great things about homeschooling is being able to get cuddles whenever you need them. The weather is getting colder and we like to cuddle as much as we can. We spend a good portion of the day sitting on the couch cuddling while we read through whatever material we have to cover for the day. If Anna gets frustrated or upset trying to do some of her work, she will often request that we cuddle for a bit when she's done, before she goes on to the next thing. We really enjoyed the privilege of cuddling during school this week.

Bible

Anna decided to start the Courageous Kids Bible reading plan from YouVersion as her morning reading this week. She's still working on the Book of Daniel with Kids reading plan as her night time reading.

There are now 14 verses in Anna's mastered list on ScriptureTyper. In reality, I wouldn't say she has these verses mastered, but according to the app she has. She still needs prompting to do each verse but she's doing good.

Art

To be perfectly truthful, I was feeling so swamped trying to get everything else done that I let art go by the wayside in my planning. This did not go over well with Anna and she came up with her own plans for two days this week. One day she insisted that we both get a piece of paper and simply fill it with colour by doing broad strokes with pencil leads all over the paper, first with one colour and then with another, and another, until the paper was filled with colour. She did all her strokes in the one direction, while I did my strokes in a different direction each time. Here's the end result -

Another day she set up the table with a plastic bag to protect it and laid out the paper and chalk pastels and insisted we both just do something with them. I decided to do a quick sketch of a fallen log in our back yard while Anna just filled the page with colour. I was so busy working on my piece that I didn't see hers til we were both done and I was pretty impressed.

The one day I did plan something for art we went to visit Lorne Bishop's exhibition Ephemeral Femininity at the J.L. Gallery. We were quite taken with the paintings and discussed how he managed to make the eyes, nose, and hair so lifelike. Inspired by the portraits, on the way home Anna attempted to draw a portrait.

 

Language Arts (Reading, Writing, Spelling, Grammar)

We did lessons 27-31 in First Language Lessons this week. This had us finding contractions in a fable, finding verbs in a poem, and using nouns and adjectives to write sentences. Anna finished making a booklet for an adaption by Sarah Buffington of a poem called The Year, written by Sarah Coleridge. We will be working on memorizing that poem over the next little while.

 

We finally got through group 12 words in Spelling Power, and also managed to get through group 13 words and started group 14 words. The words are getting trickier but Anna is managing to keep a pretty good attitude.

The narration exercises, copy work and dictation in Writing With Ease this week were based on passages from Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book. Anna did great with them.

We have been working our way through parts of the Young Writers Program Workbook. We have discussed and made notes about the main character and supporting character and have started working on the villian. Anna seems to be getting excited with the idea of writing a story in November.

We also managed to write another couple of poems this week, inspired by poems we have been reading.

Inspired by the passages in Writing With Ease, we decided to listen to/read The Jungle Book from BooksShouldBeFree.com. We downloaded the ebook into IBooks and we follow along with the audio files. We're almost half way through the book already. We love to cuddle together on the couch with the iPad set up on the table in front of us to follow along with the reading.

A friend recently introduced me to Donna Young's cursive animations and this week I introduced them to Anna. We book marked it on her IPad so that she could refer to it whenever she wants to. She incorporated some writing into her journaling this week.

 

Math

We started the week doing the number walls and facts for the numbers 1-7. Because the walls got smaller, and the number of facts less with each number, we did all those in just two days, and then we made a huge number wall that showed all the number bonds. Anna thought that was pretty cool.

 

The rest of the week we had fun with a new game, the puzzle game, and reviewing subtraction facts in the process. I learned about the puzzle game from Education Unboxed, and of course we added our own touch to the game. I started by laying out 9 puzzles for Anna. While she was watching I recorded the corresponding equations when she was done. She then lay out 9 puzzles for me and I recorded the equations, minus the answers, while she was laying them out. I told her I could write the answers without using the blocks and suggested I do that and she correct my work while I used the rods to solve the puzzles. She thought that was pretty cool. Next I laid out six puzzles for her and wrote out the corresponding equations, minus the answers. I suggested she see if she could answer them without the rods and then use the rods to see if she was right. She thought that was a great idea and wrote her answers on the page before using the rods to check her answers. She only had one wrong and she quickly fixed it. And that's how we played the game from then on. She loves it, and it's helping review the subtraction facts. She's getting better and better at them.

 

Today Anna wanting to do something with food for math because she was hungry, so I told her to get a Joe Louis from the cupboard and we proceeded to discuss fractions while we cut it up into halves, quarters, and eighths before dividing it between us for a snack. :-)

 

Music

I wanted Anna to learn a traditional Newfoundland song this week so I put a call out on Facebook for suggestions of what she should learn. I found YouTube videos of all the suggestions and let Anna listen to them all and choose which which one she wanted to learn. She loved them all but decided to concentrate on The Galway Shawl this week. I don't remember ever hearing the song before. I wouldn't necessarily think of it as a Newfoundland song as it is set in Ireland but Newfoundland does have a rich Irish heritage. We have been having great fun learning the song all week.

Anna is loving her piano lessons and is doing great with them.

 

Phys Ed

We went swimming three times this week. Anna has been working on her diving. She is doing great!

Science

Finished chapter one in Exploring Creation With Zoology 1. We read and discussed extinction and extinction errors. Anna enjoyed doing the copywork, crossword puzzle, and classification booklet in her workbook.

Social Studies

We completed chapter six in Story of the World Volume 2: The Middle Ages and learned about the Arabian peninsula, Muhammad, and the pillars of Islam. Anna was excited to do the chapter test today and did a great job with it.

 

And that was our week. Anna commented today at supper that it was a great week, and it really was.

Weekly Wrap-up Posts inspired by Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers Weekly Wrap-up Meme. Check out her wrap-up for this week and scroll down to see the links to check out weekly wrap-ups from others.

 

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Weekly Wrap-up: Traveling makes week short

We were short two work days this week. Monday and Thursday we were traveling a good portion of the day.

I thought about doing some school work while we were traveling but changed my mind. We've been doing good so I figured we both deserved the break. We still managed to cover plenty in the three days we did work.

Bible

Anna finished the Ten Commandments reading plan and the Heroes of the Old Testament reading plan from YouVersion and started the Book of Daniel with Kids reading plan.

Another verse has been added to Anna's mastered list in ScriptureTyper. She has been having fun this week playing with the recording feature in Scripture Typer. She can tape herself reading a verse and play it at different speeds to review the verse. She really likes doing this.

Art

Inspired by a boat in Dr. Dolittle, Anna titled the sketch she did of her cousin's boat "Saucy Sally".

 

The YouTube Video How to Draw With Coloured Pencils - Cherries Experts by Virtual Instructor provided Anna with the inspiration for this sketch:

Language Arts (Reading, Writing, Spelling, Grammar)

Lessons 24-26 of First Language Lessons had us doing more work with adjectives and more review of nouns, pronouns, and action and helping verbs.

Introduced the different spellings for the /ur/ sound and started word list 12 in Spelling Power. Didn't get far in the list this week. Anna is struggling with many of the words in the list, but she's still keeping a pretty good attitude about it.

Week 7 lessons in Writing With Ease introduced us to passages from Ginger Pye by Eleanor Estes. Anna did great with the narration and dictations exercises.

We finished listening to Dr. Dolittle this week and I downloaded the 1967 Dr. Dolittle movie for us to watch during our travels. The movie was very different from the book we read but there were parts of it that were similar.

Math

We continued using rods to build number walls and review number bonds and facts. We concentrated on facts to 8, 9, and 10, a different one each day. This week I got her to write out the facts for the number walls rather than me writing them.

She grumbled a bit at first but then actually seemed to enjoy writing them out and I think it really helped her commit the facts to memory. This was evident as we played Race to Ten and Guess the Addends.

Music

Inspired by the fact that her Bible Reading plan was about the Twn Commandments, Anna decided to learn the Ten Commandment Boogie song by Go Fish.

 

Science

Our lessons in Exploring Creation With Zoology 1 involved doing an experiment, with gliders we made from straws and cardboard to observe the effect of drag, and learning about habitats and instinct.

Social Studies

We completed chapter 5 of Story of the World Volume 2: The Middle Ages and learned about the Gupta dynasty in India and the Ajunta Caves. We watched a couple of YouTube videos about the Ajunta Caves

 

And that was our week. How was yours?

 

Weekly Wrap-up Posts inspired by Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers Weekly Wrap-up Meme. Check out her wrap-up for this week and scroll down to see the links to check out weekly wrap-ups from others.

 

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Weekly Wrap-up - Fall is Getting Crazy

So far so good, but it is starting to get a little crazier. I feel like I'm constantly going with no time to stop. I'm falling behind on household duties, but homeschooling is going great! :-)

Here's what we've been up to this week -

Bible

Anna is continuing with the reading plans from YouVersion. She finished the Holy Week reading plan and started The Ten Commandments reading plan.

She added another two verses to her mastered list in ScriptureTyper this week so now has 12 verses mastered.

Art

Anna has been having fun with a site a found this week, my-how-to-draw.com . On the site they give you step by step instructions on how to draw all kinds of things. She followed the How to draw a Puppy, How to draw a Boxer, and How to draw kittens instructions to do the following sketches:

She started colouring that last one before I got a good picture of it.

We had a couple of people ask how to make the card Anna made last week so this week we decided to do an instructional video for it.

 

Language Arts (Grammar, Reading, Spelling, Writing)

Doing lessons 19-23 in First Language Lessons had us discussing contractions most of the week, with an introduction to adjectives at the end of the week.

We continued listening to Dr. Dolittle from BooksShouldBeFree.com and made it as far as chapter 16. However, we are both a little frustrated with the fact that there are different readers for the chapters and some of the readers are hard to understand and listen too. We are still narrating each chapter as we go along. Anna has started a new library book, Dog Magic by Holly Webb, and is working her way through that during silent reading time. I decided to test Anna's familiarity and recognition of the dolch words so I printed off the alphabetical list of the 220 dolch words and gave them to Anna to read. She did excellent. She skipped through the words quickly and only misread four of them. When I pointed those four out to her to look closer at she read them correctly without any help at all.

We finally got through word list 10 in Spelling Power and moved on to review test 2, but there were a couple of words that Anna really struggled with so we were stuck on that most of the week until she finally mastered them. Today we did the first delayed recall test and I wondered how she'd make out, but she got 100%!

The narration and dictation exercises this week in Writing With Ease were taken from two poems, Robert Lewis Stevenson's My Shadow and Edward Lear's The Owl And the Pussy Cat. The timing for the poem's was perfect because late last week a friend had made me aware of the Young Writers Poetry Contest and I decided to discuss it with Anna and do a little poetry study with her. We talked about different kinds of poems and had some fun reading different kinds of poems. She tried her hand at a free verse poem one day and another day we worked together on some poems inspired by Giggle Poetry's How to Write a "Mary Had a Little Something" poem page. We also started some prep work for NaNoWriMo. I printed off some pages from the NaNoWriMo workbook for us to work through and discuss. We discussed what a novel is and did some work on developing a possible main character for a story. Anna also continued work on her cursive writing completing the Kidzone cursive writing worksheets for h, k, b, and f, but she was a little frustrated with the f and decided she wants to take a break for a while from cursive so I'm going to allow that.

Math

Inspired by the Number Bonds Buildings and Walls Math Video from Education Unboxed, we had some fun reviewing addition facts by building number walls with cusinaire rods. The first day I asked Anna to build a number wall for each number but she found that a little frustrating and overwhelming. The next day I suggested she build walls for numbers 1-5 while I built walls for numbers 6-10. Both days I got her to dictate the equations in each wall while I wrote them out.

The next day I got her to do number walls for the odd numbers while I made number walls for the even numbers, and we switched it up the next day with her doing the even numbers and me doing the odd numbers. We also did the dictation of the equations both days.

Besides doing the number walls we also played other games each day - Guess the addends, Race to Ten, and I love to do addition. One day we did some free play with the rods after our lessons and games.

Anna liked the view from the other side of my creation and insisted she had to take a picture of it. I didn't realize how cool it looked from that side.

Music

Anna decided she wanted to learn In Christ Alone this week. Everyday she listened to this YouTube version of the song and today I taped her singing it while she listened to it in her earphones, because she didn't feel confident enough in the tune to sing it without listening to it. All week she pretend to play along with it on an invisible piano as she sang. I was surprised she didn't do more of that today. She struggled a little with it because it was a hard key for her to sing but she refused to try any other one.

Thursday Anna had her first ever piano lesson, and we finally got our piano tuned (after probably 30 years) so this will be an added dimension to her music program.

Phys. Ed.

We went swimming three times this week. We've worked out a routine where we do a couple of laps across the pool and a lap up and down the pool and then Anna can have some free play time before we repeat the routine. We manage to get about three routines in each session. We are both really enjoying it and she is getting much more comfortable and confident in the water. It's hard to believe that less than a year ago she wouldn't even put her face in the water.

Science

In our lessons in Exploring Creation With Zoology 1 we discussed lift and drag, air pressure, air foil and aerodynamic shapes. We had great fun doing an experiment that demonstrated the affects of air pressure.

 

Social Studies

I had completely forgotten about the test book that I had for the Story of the World Volume 2: The Middle Ages so we hadn't done any of the end of chapter tests so far. We finished chapter four Monday so I decided to take the rest of the week do the chapter tests. Each day we reviewed a different chapter and did the test together. I decided to do the tests together rather than have her do them on her own as a way of easing her into test taking skills. She ended up doing most of the work with little help from me and we had a great time doing the tests and reviewing the material.

 

And that's our weekly wrap-up. How was your week?

Weekly Wrap-up Posts inspired by Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers Weekly Wrap-up Meme. Check out her wrap-up for this week and scroll down to see the links to check out weekly wrap-ups from others.

 

Posted with Blogsy