Week Fifteen Wrap-Up

We would be half way done with this year but we plan to school the whole year round with a month of in May and part of June. So our halfway point is really in Feb-March. At that point we switch to Ancient Roman history and the study of Insects. I can't wait! But for now we took another day off to celebrate Max's 9th birthday!

Happy Birthday Max!

Bible: We are finishing up Genesis this week and moving on the the last book of the Bible, Revelation.

Stories of Faith: We finished This Way to Christmas as well this week and Have begun to read The Christmas Porringer.

Math: We have completed the Usborne math skills Multiplying and Dividing Puzzles and will begin to work through Everyday Number Stories in rotation with The Multiplication Matrix. We did work through Everyday number stories last summer but I know that this year now that we have had some good work on multiplication tables and division that the book will be much more beneficial. 

We are continuing to read about Albert Einstein from Kathleen Krull's book entitled Albert Einstein (Giants of Science series)

Aesop Copywork:

Ancient Greek History: We are reading Alexander the Great by John Hunter.

Geography: Our Little Spartan Cousin of long ago by Julia Darrow Cowles.

Science the Study of Birds: We are reading Reddy the Woodpecker by Arthur Scott Bailey this week. I am thrilled. The living books we have been reading about birds is igniting an interest and the boys are doing a lot of looking up birds on their own. Yesterday was a typical day in this area as Max had out the large volume of Birds the definitive guide by DK and finding birds he knew. Birds from Winged Migration a movie we watched umpteen times when he was only three-six years old or so, Birds from our readings, Birds form our yard and neighborhood. As he poured over the pages looking at flight migration paths and where each bird can be found he felt as if he was looking at old friends. At the same moment the twins were playing the birds of America concentration game I picked up at Good Will this summer and naming all the birds they "knew". Earlier this week I found them all three out in our yard with their binoculars searching the skies for birds and looking  up in the trees for nests. TJ finds the littlest birds nests often after they have fallen out f the tree where they were perched. We think it is the warbler who is making them.

And look what we found 'stealing' grain from the chicken pen.

I also found a handy link to many living nature books by Thornton Burgess and Arthur Scott Bailey over at Manybooks.com.

Nature notebooks: This week we learned to draw an owl.

Langaue Arts: We completed lessons #35-38 in Primary Language Lessons which includes work on has and have, a little dictation, an oral lesson about cows and milk where I focus on having the boys answer the questions in complete sentences. The lesson was about milk so we made homemade marshmallows and hot chocolate for a lunch time snack!

Bed time story: Little Town on the Prairie.

Afternoon Audio book: Narnia, The lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, The horse and His Boy, Prince Caspian several times over.

Reading aloud: Elson Reader Book Three, still working on two pages a day for each boy. They are getting much more fluent and it is more and more of a pleasure to hear then read.

Latin: This week we learned a new dialogue using adverbs and verbs. We have spent the week learning the new verbs and adverbs as vocabulary and as parts of speech and how they are used in Latin and in English. How to identify them and how to use them ourselves.

Art/Music: Drawing lesson #15 evolved into a multimedia painting. The lesson was about drawing ellipses which create a bowl with fruit in it. So their were examples in our drawing book of different fruits and how to draw a bowl. The boys practiced drawing a bowl and then I showed them this picture that I found on pinterest:

The foundation of all painting is drawing so it seemed an easy step to take our bowl drawing and make a painting out of it. Our source picture was created by Mrs. Anderson for her art class but there were no instructions on the website were it was pinned from on how to do it so we just winged it and had some fun. 

We began by mixing acrylic paint to get the color Mrs. Anderson had in her background. Then the boys painted that color onto a canvas panels. These are wonderful, They are much less expensive than a real canvas but it gives the feel and look of a canvas when painted. I love them. While the paint was still wet, with the back of our brush we drew swirls and designs into it. Then we set it aside to dry.

While the background was drying I printed off some paper with words on it. Any print will do. Then the boys drew fruit with pencils using the ideas from the drawing book to guide them. It was hard to think to draw the fruit big enough to make a presence on the painting but they got it in the end. Once the fruits were drawn they got out their gauche paints (opaque water colors) and painted them. Then those were set those aside to dry while the table top was draw and painted as well on printed paper.

Once all the printed fruits and table tops were dry the boys "glued" them onto their now dry backgrounds. done for the day.

The next day as we listened to Chopin the boys painted on the black outline of the table, the fruit stems and leaves, the q-tipped white dots (you can use the back of your brush too) and signed their names.

Merry Christmas!