Week Ten Wrap-Up

Bible: Ephesians with my dh.

Stories of Faith: We took a little break from The Adventures of Missionary Heroism this week and next so we can read The Stories of the Pilgrims by Margaret B. Pumphrey in celebration of Thanksgiving next Thursday.

Mathematics: We completed our times table lessons according the CM prescribed method found in Mathematics the Instrument of Living Teaching. The method has worked well for each of the boys. prior to the lessons when they recited story problems they were still figuring it out. Now, they spout off the answer as if it were the easiest thing in the world. Next week we will move along to something else that will further this acquisition of knowledge and sink init still deeper.

We read about Mary Fairfax Somerville from Mathematicians are People Too Vol. 2 on project day.

History of Ancient Greece: We read about Solon, Aristides, Themistocles, Cimon and Pericles from the Children's Plutarch by FJ Gould. Max was particularly impressed with Cimon for he was so generous to the poor.

Aesop's Copy work:

History Project: We are beginning what will soon be a rather long project of making paper mache' weapons and armor. We began this week by first choosing whether we were going to make roman or greek armor and weapons. Then we built the cardboard armatures for each of the pieces. Next week we will begin to applying paper mache'

Our rough materials

Their inspiration

Science Birds: We completed our reading of The Tale of Bobby Bobolink by Arthur Scott Bailey and began to read The Tale of Jolly Robin by the same author.

Nature Journals: My dh has purchased ten chicks to raise into laying hens. Now they are our subjects for nature study.

Pocket Full of Pinecones: We read six chapters this week as they are somewhat short and the boys are loving the story. We do not narrate this book we just listen and enjoy it.

Language Arts: We spent four of the five days this week on dictation from Primary Language Lessons by Emma Serl. I am not yet happy with our current approach to it for there is al lot of anxiety on the part f the boys. So I am re thinking how we go about this lesson and hope to try something different next time this comes around.

Currently I have them copy the sentence we are about to dictate three times. Then they look at the sentence and visualize the harder words. This usually takes about 5-10 minutes if they all get to work right away. Then I dictate the sentence one word at a time. I read the whole sentence back to them and they check their work. Then with pens down they self check their sentence to see if it is correct. If there are mistakes more than one or two I have them rewrite the whole sentence, visualize the words and we do the dictation again. If it is one word or two they copy just that word a few times and visualize it before we go on.

The difficulty seems to be that they do not yet know how to teach themselves the sentence. Inevitably they think they know it until the dictation and then there are often tears. Earlier on when the sentences were easier they loved this exercise. Now I will need to do something so they begin to teach themselves the new words successfully.

We also did an observation/composition exercise on trees. This they found enjoyable. They still marvel that answering questions in a full sentence can add up to a short composition. I love it!

Evening reading: We are half way through Sea Star by Marguerite Henry. Our evening readings are not narrated and simply for enjoyment.

Latin: First day of this week I had the boys highlight all the verbs in the dialogue from our Minimus Latin Book. Then I reintroduced the -o ending and the -t ending. Then I introduced the -nt ending used for "they". They found it fun to discover that they had not noticed the -t and -nt difference. They were delighted to have it pointed out. I used inductive questions to led them to the discovery and it is working very well. :)

The rest of the week was spent learning a new dialogue.

Art: We began our drawing lesson with a practice drawing sheet from Art Projects from Kids. The boys had not done a drawing lesson since last year and thus did not know that they could do better this year. They were so encouraged with the results of the drawing sheets for they could clearly see how much easier they found it this time as opposed to last time. We practiced drawing laces on shoes and Wally the worm and his family.

Max's drawing of my hiker.

Music: We are wrapping up Tchaikovsky this week. To complete our study of this fascinating composer we listened to Symphony No. 1 in G minor and drew what we imagined onto a music appreciation notebook page as we listened.

We filled in the composer info in our composer lap book.

We Placed Tchaikovsky onto our timeline.

Have a great week end!