Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday

Weekly Report

The week got off to a great start. Monday was a nearly perfect day. It didn't stick. Eleanor had a rough week. Not a bad week but she had no focus. We took Wednesday off because we had so many other things going and worked Friday instead.

Monday:

• Eleanor read about Ashurbanipal of Assyria and how he created the first library in Nineveh. Her reading was the Jonah and whale story and "You Wouldn't Want to Be an Assyrian Soldier". This was the only day we got around to French. Henry read about ancient Africa in the Sahara and read "Anansi the Spider". We actually had nowhere we had to be this day.
  

Tuesday:

• Eleanor learned about things you find in the ocean. Henry learned about leopards. They both watched videos on Discovery Streaming. Eleanor read, "Forty Fortunes" and "The Legend of the Persian Carpet". Henry read an African folktale from, "Starry Tales". We went to a homeschool group park day, Eleanor had basketball practice and I my UCSC class.
  

Wednesday:

• We took today off and I intended to really get a lot done in the morning but then a friend stopped by with treats and another friend called and the morning was gone but well spent. Then off to the Brownie's Christmas party and piano and I had book club.
  

Thursday:

• Eleanor read about the Babylonians defeating the Assyrians and about the building of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar. She read relevant portions of "Seven Wonders of the Ancient World" and all of "The Persian Cinderella". Henry continued the chapter on ancient Africa which was two more Anansi stories. He also read another African folktale. We went out to lunch and did some errands halfway through the day and made it back just in time for Eleanor's ballet class so we were finishing up lessons at 6:30
  

Friday:

• Eleanor learned about coral reefs. Henry learned about tigers. Both watch videos. They listened to me read the first 2 chapters of "1001 Arabian Nights". Eleanor loved it and Henry, not so much. The girls went to a birthday party and Henry went to OT and then Henry and Eleanor and I met friends at a ceramics studio and didn't get home until after 9:00 which is way past our curfew.
  

Saturday:

• Today Rick and I are taking Eleanor to an art history lecture on art of the Nativity. Its being given by the same professor that teaches the classes we're taking and he invited us to bring her. We're really looking forward to it.
  

Smooth sailing in our core subjects (except for attention issues). Eleanor and I continue to read and enjoy, "Little Women". I think we're on chapter 17. Her writing project for the week was a re-telling of, "The Top and the Ball" by Hans Christian Andersen.

At the end of our lessons on Friday I announced to them for the first time that they were officially on Christmas Break and would be for the next two weeks. Eleanor's face fell which was not the reaction I was expecting and she said, "I'm going to miss school!" I assured her that we would still do our reading and that there would be lots of projects and reminded her that Grandpa would be here on Monday and she seemed to recover quickly. I have to admit that I felt good that she was sad to miss our lessons. Henry, of course, barely reacted. I probably should have waited until "Charlie and Lola" was over to tell him.

Wordless Wednesday

Weekly Report

In spite of a topsy-turvy week in which I was extremely pre-occupied with non-schooling related things we managed to learn a lot and even have some fun. We usually school Monday through Thursday but as I was not available on Tuesday we took that day off and schooled on Friday, even though I ended up not being available in the morning. The substitute teacher, Rick, did a fine job.

Eleanor:

We are now doing dictation 2x/week and copywork 2x/week instead of trying to do both 4x. Much better and really, I don't think we're missing out on anything. In history she learned about Moses and the Israelites. We even watched "Prince of Egypt" which is a fantastic movie. She was very taken with the story of the exodus and I've ordered "The Ten Commandments" (Charlton Heston version) because I think she's ready for it and she wanted to see a "live action" version once she knew there was one. She also learned about the Phoenicians and Dido of Carthage. We worked on the timeline which is something that we're really enjoying. In science she learned about mountains and seashores. In language arts she learned about sentence types and diagramming one word command sentences. She wrote a re-telling of "The Princess and the Pea":

Once there was a prince who wanted to marry a real princess but could not find one. The night he got home from looking for a princess a storm began. Then a knocking was heard at the city gates. The king answered the gates and the the lady outside said she was a real princess. The queen decided to have a test to see if the lady was a real princess. So she put a pea under twenty matresses and twenty eider down beds. That would be the princess' bed. If she felt the pea she was a real princess. In the morning the lady was asked how she had slept and she said something hard in the bed kept her awake. She had felt the pea! She and the prince married and the pea was put in the museum.

Hoping to make today our third day of French. Wish us luck.


Henry:

Had a good week. He learned about ancient China: silkworms, pictograms and farming.

One day an empress, Lei Zu, was sitting under a mulberry tree. Then she called to her maid for lunch and said she wanted to eat in the garden. The maid brought the empress' favorite food. A silkworm cocoon dropped from the tree into Lei Zu's tea. It unraveled into a long thread of silk.

We used the "Story of the World" cd for the first time this week which the kids liked a lot.

In science he learned about polar and panda bears, and gorillas and orangutans. He continues to do well in math and pretty much everything except sitting still.

Susannah:

This. Child. I don't like to label children but if I did, I'd rubber stamp this one as "STUBBORN" and move on. I'd leave well enough alone but she INSISTS on doing school...her way.

One change that I've made recently that has really helped is to put together a "teacher's folder". I have all the different worksheets and copybook pages and notebook pages torn out and 3-hole punched and divided by day and ready to go at the start of the week. I read about it at the WTM message boards and what a great idea. I thought I was organized before but this has cut down on reaching for books and tearing out pages while the kids sit and wait. And as a waiting child is like a ticking time bomb anything done to minimize the amount of waiting is only going to make the day easier.

Wordless Wednesday

Weekly Report

Despite a number of interruptions we had a successful and fun week!

Eleanor:

I think we are on our way to trimming the fat in her days and thus reducing the amount of time we spend on lessons. In language arts we continued to work on memorizing her poem and learned about the predicate nominative and the predicate adjective and how to diagram them. In history she learned about the Middle and New Kingdoms of ancient Egypt. She read biographies of Hatshepsut and Tut along with other books and watched some "film strips" (remember those?) Math was much smoother this week and keeping my cool really helped. In science she learned about rivers and floods. She got to watch a "Magic Schoolbus" show and we watched most of the fresh water portion of "Planet Earth". She spent a LOT of time on her illustration for this but she liked it so the time was not an issue. In writing she retold the story of the Town Mouse and the Country Mouse to good effect.

New things we implemented this week: History Scribe notebooking pages and their Time Line. Both were big hits. I even printed out blank notebook pages to use for our science pages. Perfect.

French - let's not talk about it.

Henry:

Still chugging along in FLL...glad to be done with nouns. He is still enjoying Explode the Code although he's not *as* anxious to do 5-7 pages in one sitting. I'm fine with about 3 so it's all good. He hated simple cutting SO much that I, being the warm and tender mother that I am, added in simple folding! Wheeee! Truth be told, he has warmed up to both activities so there goes my fun. Math goes smoothly as usual. In history we covered the Indus Valley. He did not love it but he was sporting about it. In science he learned about dolphins & killer whales, rabbits & bats. He also got to watch a "Magic Schoolbus" episode pertaining to bats so all was well.

Susannah:

This 2-year old girl was so excited to start school this week. We just did pages from various Kumon workbooks. Tracing, coloring, stickers...she loved it. We also worked on letters and numbers. She's really got most of the letters and their sounds nailed which I'm hoping means that the process of teaching her to read won't be too terribly difficult. I've yet to teach a child to read so I'm nervous about that. When I tried with Eleanor it was an abysmal failure and I just let her learn it on the streets. Since then I've been gun shy about the process. Oh, Susannah also insisted on doing her "poems" which means she stands up and recites. She can recite "Work", "How Doth the Little Crocodile" and she considers "A noun is the name of a person, place, thing or idea" a poem so she says that too.

On Friday I really wanted to do a craft but we had to do errands. We did discuss another painting, "The Oddie Children" by Sir William Beechey:



So ends another week. Next week sees a number of unpleasant interruptions as well and I'm really hoping that that will be the end of that.