Friday, November 29, 2013

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.