Last Weekly Report for a While

School is dwindling down at our house. Sky's last day was Friday. Film Buff has to continue with math with Dad, and I'm going thru 50 Great Short Stories with him for the rest of the summer (except the 4 weeks we will be off on vacation). Nature Girl has been fooling around with Saxon 5/4--a dear friend who is moving to Okinawa gave it to us, and I casually showed it to her. After 3 weeks with no math, she was intrigued, and we've done the first 4 lessons this week, mostly orally. But we are not going to do much more--it will start to get too hard.

We are continuing with Apologia's Zoology 3. I don't like the heavy-handed Creationist perspective, but I can overlook most of it. Not that I don't think Creationism isn't valid--far from it--but I'm not sure I agree 100% with the way it is presented in this book. It is, however, full of interesting facts, engaging in tone, and beautifully illustrated--it "feels nice" to read. Did you know rabbits have their sweat glands in their lips?

Gotta go--several meetings and appointments this week. We need to figure out what to do with Sky. We need to get Film Buff's registration process completed for Community College, and we need to prepare for our parish retreat. Lots to do!

Almost Done With School! June 2-June6

Just a quick update on school work-
Nature Girl is nearly done, so this week was very light. I gave her some phonics and math pages almost every day. I wish I had kept up with Adventures in Phonics C--there's such good info in that little workbook! I did think it important for us to go over the rules of dividing syllables (and I learned a lot in the process), so I assigned a few pages for independent work. We were off to the dentist on Tues with Film Buff, and yesterday I was here:
so I gave NG small packets to work on in my absence. I must say, she a "git 'er done" kinda gal!

We did the chapters on Queen Elizabeth I and Shakespeare, in SOTW. The Royal Tudors--what a fun bunch! Nature Girl thinks the name is funny...a little base humor. We followed some of the recommendations for extra literature and non-fiction from the Activity Guide. Talk about a valuable resource--truly, a top find for the year. NG did lots of map work, these narration/copywork pages, and we did this extra reading. Love Love Love the Bruce Colville Shakespeare adaptations! Illustrations (particularly in Midsummer...) are outstanding, and he weaves the original language into the retold stories effectively. In fact, Film Buff will be studying Hamlet and Midsummer next fall, so I picked up our Barron's plays to prepare, and was pleasantly surprised that quite a few of the original phrases showed up in the picture books. Now I know the plots, too--which was my goal for Nature Girl, so that Shakespeare won't be so intimidating when she gets to the real stuff. I asked her what she thought of his stories, right after we had finished Hamlet--she was quite impressed, and thought he was a great storyteller!
We are on our last timeline page. We just need to cover Sir Walter Raleigh and the Lost Colony, and the defeat of the Spanish Armada. Nature Girl is reading Elizabeth I from the Royal Diaries series--much better than the one I bought on Eleanor of Aquitaine (never did get to it). We are going to continue history until we finish, even if it's into July.
Apologia's Land Animals of the Sixth Day arrived in the mail this week, and Nature Girl couldn't wait to start. I know, it's weird to start a new science program when school is almost out, but we did such a little science this year, and this looked so good when I was surfing the web--she said she'd really like to do it, so what the heck. It will give us something to do on those long summer days (of which there will be too few, of course). The first experiment involved creating a "habitat for M&M's" out of 3 colors of contruction paper, torn into pieces and crumpled up. She had one minute (changed from the 2 minutes in the experiment as written) to hunt for as many as she could find. We should have used the smaller candies, or Skittles--the Peanut M&M's we used were quite easy to find. Anyway, she learned a little and we had a good time. The idea was that the candies of the same color as the paper would be harder to find--like well-camouflaged prey.
She made a chart, and filled in her first "lab report." She also made me take a picture of her eating an M&M and called it "M&M's in their natural habitat," which I thought was pretty clever! I don't post pics of her face, so that's just for her notebook!
The text comes from a 6 Day Creation viewpoint--I'm not there, but I want to give her several perspectives. It was like a mini-Bible study, too--and we both really enjoyed that aspect.
Sky took this picture of a lovely rainbow created by the sprinklers in the backyard. We has so much rain right after this--huge, tornado-filled thunderstorms that knocked out the power for a few minutes, brought down several trees and many branches, but did no other real damage.

Couple of happies--Film Buff got his driver's license!! Yea!! I know he's proud. Ibaked him a cake and Nature Girl and I decorated it with little cars from the dollar store. We will be traveling to see my sil and nieces in OH this weekend, but he will not be driving there! Not yet. J is graduating from HS--we are so proud of her. I'll get to see my parents, too.

Keep us all in your prayers, esp. Sky.

Hopefully, I'll be able to post more regularly in the future.

Weekly Report 5/19-5/23

We had a light week, mostly doing testing (ITBS) and history. We finished the sections on Martin Luther and the Reformation, on Gutenberg and Henry the VIII, and the first section on the Counter-Reformation. We have not done any supplemental readings this week, focusing on our read aloud, Anne of Green Gables. We'll probably do some potato printing this week for fun, and there are a few activities in the AG I want to cover. I think we will extend our history into June, just because there are so many fun thngs to do with this time period. I want to get into Shakespeare, also--we'll read Lamb's Tales From Shakespeare next week.

Nature Girl finished her Saxon 3 math two weeks ago, so I gave her last week off from math, and this week, we didn't do much either. I want to find something easy to give her to do over the summer, just to keep her facts fresh. I know I can just copy some worksheets, but I may look for something more interesting.
Nature Girl likes the Draw Write Now series of books, and worked on a couple of pictures independently. We had lovely visitors from Sweden last weekend and she wanted to give each of them a picture. Here's her starfish picture--she wasn't satisfied with it, so she didn't give it to them.We have a "Seasons" door by the school room--she decided to make a forsythia picture out of tissue and pastel. No help, just her creating.

I'm considering starting a Tea Time once a week. I've collected various tea cups over the years, mostly from yard sales. The idea is to use the time to read a couple of poems and/or a story with a moral, like from The Book of Virtues. Nature Girl will be thrilled to help make a goodie or two--she loves to bake. The boys may not participate, but I'm sure they will stop by for a snack if one's available!
Nature Girl has been doing her Nature Notebook on her own for the last few weeks. Here's a pic she took of some berries in the woods. We haven't identified them yet. She's been pressing lots of flowers, too, and making pages with where she found the items. We have so much around--there are lady slippers in the woods by the driveway, the locusts are blooming, and the honeysuckle looks like it's ready to pop this week (yum!)
We have some bat boxes up in the other house--Nature Girl took the camera when she went down with her dad last Monday. I like to just give her the camera and let her click away.
We are getting so many birds and critters today! Just while I've been posting this, we've had cardinals, a nuthatch, a titmouse, a sparrow, and a very cute chipmunk all eating the seeds Nature Girl scattered on the back porch. The dog has been very interested, too! It's definitely getting closer to summer here.
Hope your week was great!

Weekly Report, sort of!

Wanna see what we've been doing in history today?

This week's lesson

But Nature Girl likes this one better (same song, second verse!)

Lot's of rockin' fun at our house...

Where Have You Been?

Tee Hee--
I've been so busy, both physically and emotionally, that I've neglected this poor blog. I can just imagine it asking me Where have you been?

Well, I'm just here for a minute. Nature Girl has finished Saxon 3 math, and that makes me feel like we are almost done for the year. We've learned about 3 great American civilizations (Maya, Aztec, Inca) and learned about Columbus, Magellan, and Cortes (with Vasco De Gama thrown in there, too). Nature Girl had a terrific idea to sail some paper boats down our swollen creek--yes, it was 40 degrees outside and raining, but by Gum, we did it! My shoes are still wet.


Film Buff took a practice SAT math test--oh boy, we have some work to do. But we'll get there. He is signed up for the June test, and we need to get cracking on cracking the thing. He's also almost done with his Behind the Wheel class--still working on turns. Last lesson is Sunday--here's hoping.

We've determined what he should take next year, and I've been working on a lit list--I'll post our plans soon. I'm so glad for the WTM boards--so much good advice there.

Gotta go! Pictures of our work will be up soon.

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!