Week Nineteen Wrap-Up

Bible: We have begun reading from 1 Peter with our breakfast.

Stories of Faith: Polycarp: The Crown of Fire by William Chad Newson. If you haven't noticed we are slowly transitioning into our study of Rome, and stories of faith abound during this historical period so we will be using many Rome based books the rest of this year.

Mathematics: Everyday Number Stories can be a little deceptive when you first begin it. It starts out very simple and gets challenging quickly asking the students learn and then use the information presented in each lesson. TJ and Zak came to this frustrating point last week. They have had lessons before this week explaining about the concept of 2 pints making 1 quart and 4 pecks making a bushel and 3 feet equally 1 yard. They have had lessons working out problems asking them to figure how many feet are in 5 yards and what is 1/4 of a bushel etc. but they have failed to really learn these well for when the problems became more complicated 5 qt. - 3 pints =         they were lost. They had been focusing on getting the problems done, but not on understanding what it was all meaning. SO we have slowed down, worked on problems slowly step by step, often visually and with manipulative until I could see the light bulb in their little minds turn on.

We continue with our reading about Albert Einstein from Kathleen Krull's lovely book.

Aesop's Copy work:

Ancient Greek History: D'aulier's book of Greek Myths and greek myth pockets by Evan Moor.

Science, The Study of Insects: We have moved on to reading about insects this week leaving the reading about birds behind, but not the learning, for the boys are now more aware of birds, their habits and their features and they have an affinity for them. Their investigation of birds and the self education of them will continue for as long as they are living. The book we began with our look into insects is by Arthur Scott Bailey entitled The Tale of Kiddie Katydid. After reading a few chapters we got curious as to what a katydid looks like so we looked it up in our field guide.

Last summer we read Children of the Summer and Fabre's Insects, also great living books on this subject.

Nature Notebook: We missed doing this this week. :( I was not feeling well, so we ended up having to postpone until next week.

Geography: Our Little Roman Cousin of Long Ago by Julia Darrow Cowles

Language Arts: The boys have completed the small unit study we did with the poems in On the Wing by Douglas Florian. This week we wrote a poem beginning with an emotion, then using the information we know about birds to describe it. Then the boys painted a picture to go along with the poem.

Hungry, 

is like a hawk who has a wife and children to think about. 

He catches a mouse because he has a wife. 

But now they all have a mouse to eat.

Zak

Patient, 

is like a humming bird that hovers and waits for the nectar to come out. 

He takes out the nectar because it's dinner. 

But now he feeds his babies.

TJ

Impatient,

 is like a roadrunner who is waiting for a dinner.

He catches a snake because his children are hungry.

But now his babies eat.

Max

Then we began a dictation for the short story The Dog In the Manger by Aesop found in PLL . This is the method for doing dictation that we used, and here Sonya from Simply Charlotte Mason explains dictation via youtube.

Bed time read aloud: The Eagle of the Ninth by Rosemary Sutcliff.

Reading Practice: I am so pleased with the boys this week as they have done such a wonderful job reading aloud to me from the Elson Reader. We have been reading out of book three and are very close to finishing it. They have made great progress this year. Looking back I would say that reading aloud was their least mastered subject, but this year they are reading with better strategies for unknown words, reading with more fluency, and reading more as to these two factors are becoming easier for them. TJ especially who struggled so much at the beginning of this year is reading well, and reading a lot. He is soaring past his brothers. Yesterday he read for me 6 pages of his own initiative. (I assign 2 pages) Zak has taken to reading from his Bible before bed time and when he has free time. Often he comes to me and reads me a chapter from Genesis. He is so proud! It is great to see them succeeding!

Latin: We are now in Chapter 7 of Minimus and I decided to order Secondus for us next year before we begin the Visual Latin course with Duane. They have done so well with this course and the twins will only be eight years old next year so I think we will have better success if we do not rush on until the boys are ready for the level of detail Latin demands.

We have been practicing to read the new dialogue and understand the command form of latin words. They also used little sticky labels to label their armor and weapons they made last week with the latin words for each.

Art: Still working on our 24 page mural the bummer....our pens are drying up. :( this is what we have accomplished thus far...

Music: This week we began looking at Robert Schumann by starting to read Robert Schumann and Mascot Ziff by Opal Wheeler.

Hope you week was a good one!