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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