What we've been up to (school-wise)

It's been a month or so since I posted a school update, but we have been doing school!  We did take a week off (much needed!), but we've been trucking along pretty well otherwise.  Since there's too much to cover it all, I think I'm just going to post and explain the pics I have. 

History project--writing in Crisco to simulate how Greek student wrote on wax tablets

Examining a piece of celery to look for the tubes that transport water throughout the plant

Connor's notebook page showing how the tubes in the stem transport water, nutrients, and food throughout the plant

More celery examination

Pulling off celery for an experiment

Putting celery in colored water

Experiment in progress

Playing a RightStart addition game

10's and 1's project for math

Weaving project to go with history (ancient Greeks wove cloth; we also read the story of Arachne and Athena)

Brennan's weaving

Connor's completed project

Making a Greek gods and goddesses family tree--this was the first project that he did completely on his own.

It's kind of hard to see all the leaves, and we had to do a little tree surgery the other day.

Closeups of a few leaves--he wrote the name of the god or goddess, his/her dominion, and drew a picture

More science--studying stems by coloring carnations

Project underway!

 

After a week

First art lesson (about different kinds of lines) from How to Teach Art to Children

We read a book about Archimedes for history and he made several notebook pages

Brennan making a "magic e" wheel

Reading words without and then with the "magic e" with his wheel

Yet another experiment--removing chlorophyll from a leaf.  He's putting the leaf into a glass of rubbing alcohol.

The rubbing alcohol leached the chlorophyll, which turned the water green!

Making leaf rubbings

Setting out leaves to press and dry

We've done so much more, but things like grammar, reading, and spelling just don't usually lend themselves to pictures!  We've finished The Wanderings of Odysseus and just started on Aesop's Fables today.  Brennan has been improving by leaps and bounds in reading--he's reading a Magic Treehouse book out loud to me right now.  He still needs a little help, and he has a tendency to keep guessing at a word he doesn't know rather than stopping and sounding it out, which he is usually perfectly capable of doing (which drives me crazy!!).  But overall he's doing really well.

We've finished going through our story Bible, and I'm still not sure what I'm going to do next for Bible.  Connor started RS level C this week.  He's almost done with level 1 in First Language Lessons.  Brennan has been learning the phonograms for All About Spelling, and I'm planning to start that more formally soon.  He's about halfway through RS A for math.  We're still having fun learning about plants for science, and some parts of the garden are flourishing (and so are the weeds, which we need to address tomorrow!).  We've lost a few things to animals or insects, but Brennan's zinnias are still the star of the show!  I'm planning to do science and garden updates soon.  Hopefully!