Weekly Report 4/21-4/25

Nature Girl finished a variety of history projects this week, including a pop-up card of the Tower of London, where the little princes were kept by Richard.


We went on to the rest of the African kingdoms chapter of SOTW, and then to the chapter on India. She thought Akbar and Babur were pretty interesting leaders! We'll make Indian food this week as one of our activities. Unfortunately, our salt blocks from Mali did not turn out, but we will still play the trading game, as described in the Activity Guide for SOTW.

Nature Girl always does such neat and pretty map work. Here's a map from the AG about India.


We read about Prince Henry the Navigator the week before, and are now approaching the Explorers chapters in SOTW. Columbus is first up--We are going to read a bit from Marshall's
The Light and the Glory. It feels strange to have come so far in history and finally be talking about the New World (although we learned about Vikings already, so it's not the first introduction).

I would put up pics of NG's nature notebook entries this year, but they keep coming out flipped! I've learned Adobe PhotoAlbum on my own, and I don't know how to correct them, so you'll just have to read text. She pressed wisteria, cherry blossoms (from our trip to Washington), and pine needles, then mounted them and wrote a bit about where she found them. All of it was done independently. There's so much blooming around us! All the leaves are out on the trees, too, which means the shade is back--but we lost some trees last year, so it's not as gloomy as usual.

We have also been speeding thru grammar with Rod and Staff. We've done at least 25 pages the past two weeks. We'll be finished with Unit 3 this week. She can now pick out the noun in a sentence, tell if it's common or proper, find the verb, find the pronoun and find the adjective (if any). She knows a sentence starts with a capital letter, and ends with a mark of punctuation. (I love how Rod and Staff teaches her word order when there are two people in a sentence--they teach the children to put their name last, because Jesus said to let others go before you--I thought that was a great reason!) Spelling Workout has reinforced these, especially with the proofreading paragraph that comes at the end of every lesson. Nature Girl did struggle with spelling "gh" and other digraph words this week, but we can slow down and redo the lesson without a problem.

She's almost done with Saxon 3. This week, we worked on more division, working with a remainder and with quotients greater than 10. I know she'll be ahead next year, and I do plan on reviewing her math facts with her nearly every day during the summer.

That's about it for this week.

Notebooking Pages

I've added a notebooking widget--scroll down to see some great, free notebooking resources. We printed out the bird mini-books for NG's Nature Notebook. I love the clear illustrations, colorful and accurate. I often visit this site for ideas--Enjoy!

Weekly Report 4/14 to 4/18

Here's a summary of what Nature Girl has been doing this week.
History: Story of the World continues to intrigue and inspire. This week, we learned about the Wars of the Roses, and some of the Medieval African Kingdoms. These are examples of what Mary copied from the white board--and I can see a couple of my own spelling errors! Oops, we'll have to correct those. Have to say her handwriting is back on track--nice and neat. We haven't done any projects for a while, so I'm looking ahead to see what we can swing next week.
Bible: NG did a few lessons independently in Studying God's Word A this week. She wanted to get back to making her lapbook, largely because I told her she could have her very own Bible when she finishes it (the "give it to her at Easter" didn't happen). She made a mini book about Leviticus--hopefully, my summation on the inside is sufficient.

We are finishing up Saxon 3. The end of the year always brings more advanced concepts that don't show up again until about Lesson 40 of the next year (so far, that is!). This week, we learned about obtuse, right and acute angles--easy to remember for Nature Girl; she said "Oh, A Cute angle! It's little and cute!" Good enough for me. She also learned about division with remainders. That was hard, but she got it.

We picked up Farmer Boy again, and will finish it next week. It's so good, I don't mind reading it for the 5th time (out loud--she's read it herself 4 times now). Dh finished Prince Caspian with her, just in time for the movie. And Sky is reading her Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (second time thru for that one). On her own, she's continuing her Nancy Drew spurt, and read The Secret Garden this week, too. She loves to read, that's for sure. We didn't do any outside history reading this week, but next week, I'm going to go to the library and pick up a few more books.
The camilia's are out, as are plenty of violets, wisteria, and azaleas. She pressed some wisteria for her nature notebook, and, while in the phone book (our "press!") discovered pine and violets that she had pressed previously. Nature Girl really loves flowers--she'll add a few descriptive words to her pages this week.
Speaking of descriptive words, we are on Adjectives in Rod and Staff Grammar. I thought it would be fun to make a word wall--so we started writing out all the adjectives we could think of, and here's what we came up with (in the half hour we had for grammar!):
She liked it so much, we added more words today. The wall is about 12 feet long, so we have plenty of room to add other parts of speech. We do grammar mostly orally, so we can usually get 3 or 4 lessons done at a time--that won't continue, but at least we are on Unit 3. We blew it off for several months, and I did want to cover all the parts of speech before she goes to 3rd grade.
That's it for last week! Here's the back of our house, from the hammock where she spent a good half hour snuggled next to Sky while he read to her:
It's soaking wet around here, and plans are in the works for an Ark...Hope it's a good Spring where you are!

A Gift For You

Scroll all the way down and share my video. This is my Jesus. He can be yours, too.

Weekly Report 4-4

Not much to report this week. As I wrote, we went to the Cherry Blossoms on Monday. We did get school done, but it was a very quick morning! I am so sick of the freezing weather and dreary grey skies. We walked in drizzle in DC; we park at Gravelly Point and walk over the bridge to the Jefferson Memorial, where the blossoms are--got pretty damp, but not soaked.

As for academics--Nature Girl started timed division tests, and upped her score by about a dozen points by the end of the week. We also started functions in Saxon 3. Since we were behind in Rod and Staff Grammar, we whizzed thru numerous lessons, and I feel we are doing all right now--still learning the parts of speech, and are on pronouns now.

Spelling went well, and NG has been doing her Bible lessons on her own. I expect she'll finish her Bible book by the end of May, and I'll probably get her started on Christian Liberty's Book C. It's funny to me that so much of what she is learning is new--I thought our Sunday School covered a lot of the stories, but really, they leave so much out. It's such a complex Book, I shouldn't expect the church to do as much as I can at home. Still, I'd love it if they could add in a little more, especially for the older kids.

In history this week we learned about the Black Plague, Henry V and Charles VI at Agincourt, and read about Joan of Arc. We used a beautiful picture book about JoA. I didn't realize it was quite so detailed, so it went a little slowly, but got the points across. We will make our mini-cannon from back in the Rus chapter, this week.

We also have almost finished our read-aloud, Chancy and the Grand Rascal. This would make an excellent resource to add to a US Geography course--or at least it would've been fun to map the trail they took to find Chancy's sisters and brother. Such a funny story--but now I have to find another book to read! Any suggestions?

Sky continues to do well. He needs some reminders about chores and homework--hopefully we can work that out. Film Buff is getting ready for driving school, which starts tomorrow! Everyone clear the roads! lol Not really. He's so motivated, I think he'll do fine. He got to see Leatherheads on Friday--love George Clooney.

That's our quick update for now.

Cherry Blossom Time!

Dh always has Monday off, so the week of his birthday, we usually go to see the Cherry Blossoms downtown. Here are some pics! Aren't they lovely? I wanted to post some of Nature Girl, but I'll have to send them to individuals, since we try not to show the faces of our family. She looked so sweet, all in pink and flowered pants--We have to walk across one of the biggest bridges to get there, and she was old enough now to make it all the way without a lift from Daddy.
Although it rained, we had a fun time.

Weekly Report 3-28-08

We had some Nature time this week at our local park. The bay isn't the cleanest around, and we have to be careful to wash our hands after, but Nature Girl just loved stomping around in her orange flowered boots, picking up large snail shells and listening to the water on the shore. We saw many hawks, and maybe even an eagle or two (there are quite a few further down the peninsula).

We had so much fun that we invited some friends to join us. The park has a great new playground, too--

Nature Girl's birthday is coming up, so we are going to rent an itty, bitty cabin on the grounds of this park, and spend the night star gazing and playing with fire. (Shhh, she doesn't know she's getting a telescope for her present from us!)

We finished the SOTW chapter on the Rus on Friday. We read some wonderful Russian folktales, and started Chancy and the Grand Rascal, which is written by the same guy who did By the Great Horn Spoon, which we previously enjoyed. Chancy tells the story of a young boy's search for his siblings, who were fostered out during the last part of the 1800's. It's a great way to learn about life along the Ohio River. Funny, too! I have fond memories of my brother reading this in the car on a trip to see faraway family, and laughing his head off.

Here's a picture of Vladimir the Great Nature Girl colored for history. I love how she used several colors to make his skin. Following are also some history notebook pages for the week. I let her copy from the white board instead of taking narrations.

This week, it's on to Suleiman, then the Plague. Can't wait.

Film Buff starts driving class this week. Everyone stay off the roads in NoVA! LOL He has a retreat this weekend; Sky may go, too. FB has also started Write@Home's Essay 1 class, and is doing very well. I hope it gives him enough instruction to be able to start writing more essay answers to test questions, and to give him confidence and ability in the SAT's. We are reading Cry, the Beloved Country this week, and he's up to 1970 in History. We have several wonderful movies coming to supplement his history--as I've said, it's my desire to acquaint him with at least some of the "Canon of American Film." He's looking now at VCU for film school, but we will see.