Weekly Review - Week 20

Going to change it up a bit for my Weekly Review, give you a better, and hopefully more lively, sense of our week and our lessons. This is quite long, so bear with me. I don't know if I can manage this every week!

BIBLE ideally starts our day. We begin with our songs which this month are Change My Heart Oh God and A New Name in Glory. Emily likes to find it in the hymnbook and the rest like to try to sing along without their songsheets at this point in the month. Each child takes a turn choosing a song we've previously learned also.

We are reading about Elisha in 2 Kings now and this week we covered chapters 5-10 as well as the book of Obadiah (1 chapter long). This is a rather gory section of Biblical history.

We also pray together most mornings. (I'd like to say EVERY morning, but truthfully? It doesn't happen every day.) By the way, Suzy took the picture of our Bible shelf. We read from the NIV version of the Bible, mainly because I have enough of those for everyone to have one.

DAVID doesn't like to have his picture taken, so this is all you'll see of him for today. He is fixing our NEW pencil sharpener that some unnamed person jammed a pencil into the WRONG way. coughjamescough David opened 'er up, cleaned 'er out, and got 'er humming smoothly again. I am so blessed to have his skills in my home!

David is fighting bronchitis, so he had Monday off from lessons. He also stayed home from co-op Friday and thus he worked on his lessons three days this week. Because he hasn't been feeling well, he had the freedom to make his workload a little lighter because he has his month's worth of assignments all in front of him.

He finished up his book on Benedict Arnold (Traitor by Jean Fritz) and although he didn't find it very compelling, I think he learned quite a bit about Arnold and his role in American history. I personally think Fritz's books are an EXCELLENT way to add some zip to your American history curriculum.

David just did one Honors lesson in Algebra this week, because I was still waiting for his test booklet. I have it now and he will catch up on Tests 1-4 next week, so he can move on.

A study guide for Module 5 in Science, several Spelling lessons, a couple Easy Grammar pages on past participles, an IEW assigment, and a couple chapters from his history book rounded out his week. He also wrote to me in his Communication Journal.

EMILY is continuing to practice the multi-digit multiplication that is so difficult for her to master. However, we've moved her on to more topics rather than holding her back until she masters that skill. So, she has been working on place value to the millions and 16 oz = 1 lb. She also has been playing Timez Attack, a free program to drill multiplication facts.

Number the Stars is the book she has been reading the past few weeks and she finished it this week. She also did all of the online quizzes I had assigned. She came to me several times during the week to tell me things that happened in the book.

Emily, like David, completed several Spelling lessons, a couple Easy Grammar pages on past participles and an IEW assigment this week. Spelling the word 'rhythm' really gave her fits! lol She also wrote a letter to a penpal and wrote to me in her Communication Journal.

I am behind in my lessons for History and Science, but this week we (Emily, James, and Suzy) did read about birds' muscles and bones and how those are perfectly designed for flight. Going to have to double up in both subjects to catch up next week.

JAMES has been working on skip counting by 4's as well as 4 quarts = 1 gallon. He completed lesson 15 and took the test. He also worked on Timez Attack. I recommend this program as a fun one that your kids will beg to play. They will WANT to get faster at the math facts to be able to win the game. Be forewarned, though. It isn't a straight drill game.

James completed his book Animals Do The Strangest Things by Leonora Hornblow and moved on to Birds Do The Strangest Things. He loves animals and finding out strange things they do is right up his alley. Every day he chose one or more facts he didn't know to write in his literature journal.

He is doing very well in Spelling and I think he might have been more challenged if I started him in Level C. However, he is moving along nicely and I am happy with his progress. He also did some work in Explode the Code, did a couple cursive pages, wrote a letter to his cousin, and wrote in his Communication journal.



SUZY finds most of her lessons to be quite easy and her biggest struggle is with her ATTITUDE.

This week she worked on Making 9's in Math-U-See Alpha and took the test for Lesson 16.

She read several books I printed off from starfall.com reviewing her short vowels. After reading, she writes a sentence in her literature journal. She also worked in Explode the Code and Alphabet Island, although off the top of my head I cannot recall exactly what the focus of the work was. Sorry! lol

However, I do remember spending a lot of time with her working on sight words. We play a flashcard game and she also has several charts that she is memorizing. She gets candy rewards for this, which makes it the thing she most wants to do, of course!

She also did a couple handwriting pages, wrote a letter, and wrote in her Communication journal.

Everyone did typing and I think they all did computer art. They've all finished the Creativity Express art program I bought and are working in the free art part of the program called ArtRage.

Man, I hate working with pictures in blogger. Anyone have tips for that? I don't think they all ended up where I wanted them, but you'll just have to take it as it is!

I'm sure there's more I wanted to say here, but I've spent too long already, so this will have to do!