Weekly report, week 6

In which I realize that this blog has few entries as on late save these weekly reports. I need to post more- there's lots I'm thinking of and that I want to say- I just need the time to say it!

We had a lot of interruptions and chaos this week. We will be wrapping things up this weekend. Fortunately, the interruptions were of the fun and social variety, so it was time well spent.

Language Arts
Sweet Pea

Sweet Pea and I are spending some time reviewing how to make uppercase letters. We're also making great progress through Rod and Staff English. We do one lesson a day, so we work through 5 lessons in a week and it takes about 5 weeks to do each unit. We are over 1/2 way through Unit 2 and there are only 6 units, so we are doing great! I have Writing Strands level 2 that we will be starting soon and at that point we may switch to doing Rod and Staff orally for the grammar instead of using it for grammar and writing. We'll see!

Spelling is currently going well. Sweet Pea floored me this week by telling me that she LIKES spelling because it helps her write her stories. I'm glad she sees a good reason for it!

Little Bird

Little Bird is still working on her ABCs. It's something that she does with both mommy and now daddy- it's something fun and special that they can do together without any prep work. She also continues to hone her fine motor skills with copious amounts of coloring, cutting, pasting, and playing with play-doh. This week I let her spend a lot of time cutting paper into tiny pieces, gluing them back together, then coloring the mess. She can now recognize all the uppercase letters and most of the lower- go Little Bird!

Math
Sweet Pea

We had a small math breakthrough this week! Always exciting. Sweet Pea can now easily add a single digit number to a double digit number. Next we will work on adding two double digit numbers. I especially like the focus on mental math and regrouping numbers to a base 10 unit (12+5=10+2+5=17).


We also spent some quality time with flashcards to review math facts for sums 0-20. Other fun activities included spending time skip counting by 2s and 3s.

History

Sweet Pea and Little Bird

This week we finished ancient China. We had fun reading about silkworms and how farmers in China could grow rice while the farmers in Mesopotamia could not. Sweet Pea remembered the Nile delta and it's floods when we were talking about the Yellow River and it's flood patterns. It was also fun to introduce the idea of a dynasty and familial rule lasting for that long.

Science

This week we talked about mammals who live in the water. We talked about generalities, then looked up some specific species. We looked up the baleen whale- and Sweet Pea exclaimed, "That's like the whale on Nemo!" Good to see that there are real world applications for science. ;)

We times ourselves holding our breath and we were worse at it then any of the ocean dwelling mammals. Good thing we don't need to rely on holding our breath for survival!

French

Sweet Pea and Little Bird

This week was a heavy vocabulary and usage review week. We went over all previously introduced terms and practiced integrating them throughout the day. We did lessons 1-5 again and next week we will move on to lesson 6.

Bible

Sweet Pea and Little Bird

This week was the Flood. I think it's one of the best known and most artistically done Bible stories., but in reality it's a really dark story. Think about it- everyone save 8 people and the animals on board the ark lost to water? Kind of strange that images of the cute, fluffy ark are so commonly found on nursery items and children's toys. The lesson went well, though, and we're moving on.

Catechism
Sweet Pea

I was all set to move on to the next section of the Catechism this week. I was! I had all my sheets together and everything! Then I decided to stop and review here, too. See a theme? Sweet Pea knows all 10 Commandments, but is still cementing their order. Once that's firm we will move on.

Family Fun

This week we saw quite a few friends. We also spent family time playing board games and the girls had some quality time together with stickers. They made this masterpiece together.



Just for fun I'm including my lesson plan form for the past 6 weeks. I am changing how I do it next quarter because this looks really cramped.


I hope everyone else had a great week- I know we did!