Week 11 - Short & Sweet

It was a short week but we crammed in some stuff!

This week Quinn:

**Did two lessons in his geography book.

**Completed lessons 11 & 12 in 4A.

**Wrote a five paragraph rough draft and half of a final draft paper on things he is thankful for using the IEW five paragraph model. He Chose his family, food, and his dog

**Practiced his Interpretive speech for The Fall Showcase.

**Did several devotionals with me from his devotional book.

This Week Evelyn:

**Completed lessons 39-42 in 1B. She finished basic division and is now doing basic fractions.

**Started the weekly lessons in A Reason for Handwriting.

**Wrote a rough draft and half of a final draft on Things she is thankful for. She chose Food, animals and art.


Together We:

**did 4 out of 5 days worth of dictation. This week's list introduced words that start with "wh" like who what when where why etc...

**Read the Bible.

**read more of Twenty One Balloons.

**Read about in Windows of the World.

**Read more of Castle Diary.

**Read more of Usborne Time Traveler: Knights.

**Completed practice lessons S-V in I Can Do All Things.

**Added the word 'smitten' to our vocabulary notebooks

**Watched Liberty's Kids

Wordless Wednesday 11-25-2009 Loaded Baked Potato Soup

Week 10

I finally felt better this week. I wish I could say that I had H1N1. It would be nice to check that off the list and be done with it. Unfortunately it was probably just another cold. However I am grateful for a good week. We took Tuesday completely off and went to Pizza Hut for lunch with our Book It tickets then we went to Coco Keys Waterpark with friends. It was great fun!

This week Quinn:

Worked on factors and multiples in math...
Learned about and worked with Topographic Maps in Geography....

Started reading From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler

Went to Community Bible Study and completed his study of Genesis 19...


Memorized 1 Timothy 4:12 and 1 Peter 3:15...

Practiced his interpretive speech for the coming presentation night.

Practiced drawing circles and ellipses in art

Finished his painting in Drawing class
Launched his rocket in Rocketry Class

Quinn's Rocket

Quinn's Rocketry Class

Completed List 22 dictation. Practiced contractions....

One day of dictation

This week Evelyn:

Completed several lessons in her math book...

Completed all all 20 sentences of dictation from list 22...


Worked on her cursive handwriting:


Completed her CBS homework:

Wrote, addressed and mailed a letter to a friend...

Practiced drawing ellipses and circles and then drew pictures using those shapes in art:
Learned about musical instruments in Orchestra Class...

Painted in art class....

Watched her brother's rocket class launch their rockets:
TOGETHER we:

Started reading The Twenty One Balloons...

Read the Bible...

Read Usborne's Time Traveller...

Drew some pictures from How Great Thou Art...

Added the Feudal System page to our history notebooks...

Went to see My Fair Lady at the Amato Center...

Went to Coco Keys Waterpark...

Went to Pizza Hut with our Book It tickets...

Listened to Skip Count Kids...

Frustrations, Difficulties, Confessions this week:

***Our spelling list this week introduced contractions. This was harder for Evelyn to grasp than I had anticipated. By the end of the week however she was understanding it much better.

*** Quinn announced to me that he no longer knows how to add multiple diggits. I know that he just gets used to doing whatever he has been working on (in this case multiplication and division) and then he needs a little help to switch gears. Still it was very annoying and I wasn't as patient as I could have been. I assigned him three addition problems to do and he had a bit of a fit so I gave him an entire sheet instead. Of course after one problem he had "remembered" how to add but he still had to complete a whole sheet in addition to his regular math work in hopes that he will not raise a fuss over three measly math problems again in the future.

***My printer is out of ink and I am also out of card stock. This is making it harder to do History and science as they both require copying and printing stuff. I hope to rectify the situation this weekend.

***I spilled hot cocoa on my keyboard and had to switch to the kids' keyboard which is this rubbery thing that is very hard to type on. Hence it is taking FOREVER to type this out...

***We skipped our Mariposa class this week for no good reason other than I just didn't feel like going. :(

Wordless Wednesday 11-18-2009

Week 9 - Sick Again!

I got hit with yet another cold this week. I don't feel like I ever really recovered from the last cold as I still have coughing spurts some nights and my temp seems to go up a bit when that happens. That has been happening for a month so I finally decided to go to the doctor. Of course she put me on an antibiotic. Did I really think she would have some other idea? I am happy that so far my children seem to be staying healthy.

We still got a surprising amount of school work done considering I was sick again. We stayed home from CBS. I had a friend bring the kids to co-op, another friend took charge of the kids at co-op and playgroup and my dear husband picked them up from playgroup so I could have some quiet time to rest.

Bible: We missed CBS but continued our Bible study to the next week's lesson. We watched Martin! God Loves You. I had planned to watch it for Reformation Day but never got to it. We resumed our reading of the Bible by starting Exodus. I read several chapters to make up for lost time. We are using Day By Day Kids Bible for this.

MATH: Quinn is working on rounding in 4A. He completed exercise 7. Evelyn completed review work and practiced on Rainbow Rock. Evelyn and I played with the base ten set.

Spelling/Dictation: List 21. The kids did all of their dictation this week.

Vocabulary: Both kids consider vocabulary to be a favorite subject nowadays. We managed to do two words this week. I was going to ax it altogether while I was sick just to keep things simple but that idea caused an uproar.

Science: We watched National Geographic: Inside the Living Body (during dinner!) hmmm...I had to pause it during the part on the digestive system while we finished our dinner. It was just too much for me. Then we finished it.

History: Read Usborne Time Traveler: Knights, Chapter 52 in CHOW , First few pages in Castle Diary. We also watched David Macaulay's Castle.

Reading: Evelyn finished Ramona and Her Mother. Quinn Finished Farmer Boy and Lama in the Family.

Read Aloud: We started Twenty One Balloons. Actually Daddy read the first three chapters to them since my voice was not up for it by the end of the evening. Now I need to catch up! It is supposed to be a good book!

Geography. Quinn LOVES his new geography book. He did several lessons this week that involved following a series of directions to make a map in a precise manner. He did very well.

Cursive: Evelyn was getting bored just practicing the letters so I let her skip ahead to some of the word and sentence pages. That made her happy.

Art: By golly we are going to do art today!

Co-op : The kids missed their morning classes as they had to hitch a ride from a friend of mine whose kids do not take morning classes. In drawing Quinn finished his painting. Evelyn painted a picture in her art class also. In rockets class Quinn made his own rocket to be launched next week!

The only field trip we did this week was a trip to the hospital for my doctor visit. While we sat in the waiting room the kids were wide eyed looking at all of the mask covered faces. Presumably H1N1 infected people. We had lunch in the cafeteria afterward which is always exciting! I was just happy to be getting out of the house. Despite what many non-homeschoolers think, we actually are not used to spending a lot of time at home.

week 8

It feels like it should be week nine! But alas it is only week eight. We took a field trip on Wednesday to Old Sturbridge Village for their fall Homeschool Day.

Bible:
The kids have been doing a good job of getting their CBS work done every week! We are still reading about Abraham. Quinn memorized some verses for his public speaking class. We watched disc 2 of ISRAEL: A Journey Through Time.










Math: Quinn started the first two lessons of Singapore 4A. Evelyn did lessons 34-36 and Review 2 in 1b. We listened to Skip Count Kid 3's and 4's. The songs are sticking which is helping her learn the multiplication problems. Soon I may start doing Times Tales with her.


Read Aloud: started Minstrel in the Tower. A tad fluffy for me. It reminded me of a Magic Treehouse book. Luckily it was short and we read it very quickly. we read about Afghanistan in Windows of the World. It was great because they got to see one of their vocab words, guerrillas, being used!

History: We read Chapter 50 in CHOW on Castles. Did a keyword outline from the chapter summary in the back of the IG.

Geography: I added in geography this week for Quinn. I ordered the book Discovering World Geography Grades 4-5. We received it Friday morning. He was very excited and completed the first 3 activities. looks like it will be a hit for him.

Dictation: list 20 had such words as among, front, second etc.. I was really worried that my non-speller boy would be constantly sticking the letter u in those words but he did quite well. However, I did lose my patience a few times as he continues to spell the word like that: t-h-e-t and get: g-i-t. I have to remind myself that he has made great improvements. Just the fact that he can write a whole page of dictation every day is amazing. And his spelling mistakes are minimal compared to last year. It is hard though as a natural speller, to not get completely frustrated with the same mistakes over and over.


Science: We are on bones again this week.I ordered The Body Book but unfortunately my printer ink dried up so we were unable to do the models this week. We did however do the standard chicken bone in vinegar experiment. The kids enjoyed grossing out their father with the bendy bone on Friday. I guess we will spend an extra week on bones so we can make the model.

Art: We worked on the practice lessons H-M which included adding "meat" to stick figures, train tracks, straight lines and circles etc...





Vocabulary: We only did one new word this week. But we also played a memory game where the kids had to match word to definition of all the words we have done so far. To make it more exciting I added Halloween candy under the cards which they could get if they made a match. I was very lucky that the kids pretty much evened out with their matches. it could have gotten ugly otherwise!

Reading: Quinn is reading Farmer Boy and Evelyn is still working on Ramona and Her Mother

Co-op: Nothing incredibly exciting to note this week... The kids enjoyed their classes as usual

Other: Quinn and his dad have been having a lot of fun on this website building widgets. The solved some puzzles together to earn extra pieces.

Old Sturbridge Village

Today we headed to Old Sturbridge Village Homeschool Day with friends. It was a ton of fun as usual. But this time my dear friend Winnie surprised me with a hand made prairie dress and bonnet for Evelyn. How blessed I am to have such a thoughtful loving friend! Evelyn is so excited she insisted on wearing it to co-op again today! Anyways, we visited all of our favorite spots in the village. We had great weather especially for November! Next time I will try to sign up for the studios before they are sold out.

Threshing wheat

Luke's awesome outfit

A couple of baby cows that were wandering around the village. The kids got to run through
the field with them..