Our Week in Review, 4/18 - 4/22

We've had a pretty good week--lots of fun, hands-on science, including a field trip to the botanic garden.


Connor


Math:  We're continuing to review, making sure he's comfortable with a few things (especially subtraction) while we relax a bit before starting RS level C.  We've been playing lots of the RS card games to work on facts memorization.  He's definitely got his addition facts down.  Subtraction isn't there yet, but it wasn't covered extensively in level B (RightStart's scope and sequence is different from most tradition math curricula--lots more subtraction coming in level C!), so he's doing fine.  I think he's realizing (thanks to the way RS teaches partitioning numbers) that if he knows an addition fact, he also knows related subtraction facts (i.e., if 8 + 2 = 10, then 10 - 2 = 8 and 10 - 8 = 2).


History: Taking a mini-break from Greeks to peek at what the Medes and Persians were up to during the same general time period (SOTW chapter 21).  We only got the first section done this week (reading and narration), so we'll finish it Monday and then head back to Greece for a few more chapters.


Reading (literature): Continuing with Black Ships before Troy.  Today he really enjoyed the story of how Odysseus sneaked into Troy to steal the "Luck of Troy" (a stone the Trojans believed was from Athena and would keep them from defeat as long as they possessed it).


Grammar:  He finished FLL lessons 84 and 85 this week, which included addressing an envelope (practicing abbreviations, capitalization, etc.).  I still need to get it in the mail to Nani and Papa!


Spelling:  He finished AAS Level 2, step 11 this week.  


Latin: Review games with the flashcards--we've played Go Fish, Memory, and Charades.

Brennan really wanted to play, even though he's not "officially" doing Latin.  He's going to know it all before he "officially" does Song School Latin!

Handwriting:  He did cursive X and Q this week.  He's been doing his copywork in print since the WWE lines are much bigger than what he's using for HWT, so I need to get him doing some copywork on the side in cursive.


Memory Work:  Memory work has mostly been a bust this week.  We've been pushing it to try to get the basics done, and I think we only got to memory work once (maybe twice).  We'll do better next week!  Here's what we're working on:
Ephesians 6:13-18, books of the New Testament, catechism question, "O Worship the King," "Mr. Nobody" (poem), pronoun list, definition of a verb, definition of a plant, Latin phrases, and history chant.


Brennan


Math: We've done better about getting math done this week!  He's been working on RS A lesson 36 (we broke it up into several days), working on writing equations with tally marks and then numbers.  We also played a smashing game of Go Fish today.  *grin*

Making an abacus bracelet

Phonics:  He's continuing to work on -vce words (magic "e").  


Handwriting: His copywork this week included a sentence about him and the parts of a plant.


Reading (literature): Continuing to read aloud The Adventures of Reddy Fox by Thornton Burgess.  I've also been reading him Uncover Nature (Hide-and-Seek Visual Adventures) by Olivia Brookes, which we've really enjoyed.

Together


Bible:  We've been focusing on Jesus' entry to Jerusalem, the Last Supper, and the crucifixion this week, mostly just reading and discussion.  We did do a fun activity to go with the triumphal entry (from Little Hearts for His Glory--Heart of Dakota's K/1st grade program).  We spread jackets on the floor to cover the "path" and then they pretended to be donkeys trotting, galloping, walking, etc. along the path according to the instructions I gave.

Science:  We're continuing our plant study, learning about the parts of a plant and focusing on roots (follow links for the details!).

We've got a busy weekend coming up (no soccer, though--thank goodness!), but hopefully we can head into next week ready to go!