Saturday, February 26, 2011

February 25, 2011

These past two weeks......

....Quinn read Blackthorn Winter and started  Ranger's Apprentice book 1




....Evelyn read Young George Washington and Rachel Yoder book 8

....Leah enjoyed listening to The Very Hungry Caterpillar over and over again.. She also liked Mouse Paint and Mouse Count

....Together they made valentines for the kids in their CBS classes.





Evelyn made this valentine for her brother.

...Together we made painted paper for some upcoming art projects









...Quinn finished Singapore 5b. The last few lessons were on volume and then there was a review. There were definitely some topics in the review that he could use a little more practice with. Next week I plan to do a bit more review before starting 6a.

...Together we had fun doing some projects from these two new books that I recently ordered. We made a 3d map of Jamestown and of Columbus' voyage. These are history topics that we covered much earlier in the year but wanted to do them anyways.


Together we went to see Derek Small from Wildlife Encounters put on another animal show at the library. I am amazed at how Derek's business has taken off. I remember when we were members of the New Hampshire Herpatological Society together ten years ago. I also used to babysit his two girls. Now he has a very successful business educating people about exotic animals. He has even been on many tv shows.


... Evelyn and I had a wonderful opportunity to go see the New York Theatre Ballet with friends one night. They performed The Alice in Winderland Follies. It was incredible!


 ....Together they skied


Sunday, February 13, 2011

My How the Time Flies! 2/13/2011

Well, it has been a month since my last post. I'm not sure what the problem has been other than standard homeschool craziness! I am sooo looking forward to spring at this point. I am not sure how I ended up with winter loving children. (Particularly my son.) I'm good for about a month of winter and then I'm all set. Luckily it has been snowy however. There is nothing worse than a boring cold winter with no exciting weather.

Here are some of our exciting accomplishments this past month!

Reading
  • We had two read alouds this month: Toliver's Secret and now Carry On Mr. Bowditch. The latter I am enjoying immensely. I don't think i have ever read it.

  • Evelyn has read: The last four books in the Rachel Yoder series, Young George Washington, Bears on Hemlock Mountain, and of course anything else she can get her hands on.
  • Quinn: I have been having Quinn read through some of the books on this year's book list that are way below his reading level just so that he will have read them. Many are classics and I want him to have read them. He reads them in a matter of minutes and doesn't seem to mind that they are so easy. Some of them are: Bears on Hemlock Mountain, Skippack School, The matchlock Gun and Phoebe the Spy. He is also trudging along in Treasure Island.
  • Leah's current favorites that she always wants Evelyn to read to her are I Miss You Father Bear and My Mother is Mine.
  • I am currently reading One Thousand Gifts and Same Kind of Different as Me :)
Math
  • Quinn is at the very end of 5b. He's working on geometry. These past few weeks he has had a lot of new math terms and geometry rules to learn. I had him make a poster of some quadrilaterals the other day and will probably have him make one for the different types of triangles. I also added most of the definitions and rules to Quinn's Anki deck.
  • Evelyn is moving much faster through 2a now that she has moved on the basic multiplication. I am glad we stopped and I had her learn her times tables via Times Tales last summer. She is whizzing through now.
  • I had told Quinn he needed to do some extra math to make up for some missed work one week. I forgot to assign it however and at the last moment my husband offered to make up a word problem for him. The word problem was quite lengthy and included many steps and many answers. Quinn was very reluctant to do it until his dad offered him five dollars to finish it... Hmmm...I never thought to pay my children to do their schoolwork before..Anyways, Quinn did it and got all but one of the answers right so his dad cut him a check for four bucks.





History
  • We recently changed our history up a bit. We stopped reading Landmark history of the American People and now we are reading Story of the World Volume 3 and Hakim's History of US Volume 3. Things are moving much more smoothly now. The kids each made a map of the thirteen colonies and labeled them. Some of the things we read about this past month were King Charles I and the Duke of York. There were some nice narrations and interesting drawings to go with them.

evelyn


evelyn


Quinn

evelyn
Leah
Leah has been working on writing her name, learning the sounds for various letters, writing letters in her rice tray and on paper and making her letter book. She also loves listening to stories the kids or I read to her and she loves listening to audio books with the older kids. As a result of having Leah around Quinn and Evelyn have resurrected some of the audio books that they haven't enjoyed in a long time such as several of the classical kids stories and some of the younger Story Nory stories. She loves art and music and has been enjoying skiing (for the most part!).






Other
We went to see Seussical The musical at The Capitol Center for the Arts! There was some fun music and many familiar characters. even Quinn enjoyed it!




Baggins loves to hang out with us during school. As far as distractions go, he's one of the best!


Cooking
  • The kids haven't done nearly as much baking as they have in past months. Mostly because...well...baking leads to eating and I am trying to avoid that! Today however, Evelyn made cupcakes while her brother was out with friends. So much for a low sugar day for me!!


they were yummy!