Week in Review: March 18-22

Spring has bloomed which usually means bad allergies for me, but I have a new medication this season and so far I've had a good start! We've even had the windows open some which has't happened in a while. The girls have had fun playing outside. We are blessed to have neighbors on either side of us and across the street our kids' age. They also all go to different schools and with our homeschooling the kids love opportunities to get together. Since our yard is the center they seem to often congregate within our fence. I love this. I love seeing what sometimes feels like half the neighborhood hanging out in our backyard!

We had a great week and lots of things to look forward to! Tomorrow we are going to see my dad in a Civil War reenactment which coincides perfectly well with our history lessons next week on the Civil War! No, my dad isn't doing this just for our benefit and I didn't plan it that way, but it is a certainly a lovely addition to our lessons. There will also be a really exciting giveaway coming Monday, so don't forget to check back about that! Do you like this bird's eye view of our schoolroom?

Little Hands to Heaven: Unit 16

Grace learned about Elijah and Elisha this week with our Bible readings. She wasn't as excited about these stories and kept wanting to skip ahead to the New Testament! I understand how she feels sometimes, but I also know there is much to learn from the Old Testament. One of her activities was sorting out small pieces of food. She asked to eat the cheerios while she was sorting. This girl loves cheerios. 

Our letter of the week, M, received a lot of attention! I started letting her trace letters as part of her letter-of-the-week work. She has become quite proficient at letter writing for those she already knows. She does extremely well with tracing and enjoyed these pages. 

Something I've learned from having kids who are advanced in various abilities is that often their abilities will surpass their maturity. It means I have to have greater patience when she scribbles all over the M page rather than tracing nicely like she did the day before. Grace has amazing pencil control and dexterity for her age, but she still has to develop the maturity to exhibit it consistently. 

We also had a failed soap making activity to go along with our story about Naaman washing in the Jordan River for healing, so we did something a little different. To learn about our awesome replacement activity click on the picture! 

In her spare time, Grace has been  learning piano! We have been reviewing an excellent computer-based piano teaching program for the Review Crew. Click the picture to take a look. Even though she is only 3 1/2, Grace has been learning and is thrilled to be having piano lessons alongside her sisters!

Little Hearts for His Glory: Unit 23

Beth learned about the Pilgrims, their relationship with the Native Americans, and the religious persecution which pushed them here. She is really enjoying the readings from History Stories for Children. She did tell me that it was really sad that so many of the pilgrims died. We learned that there were only 4 women still alive for the first Thanksgiving feast! 

This week our word wall words started with N. My favorite word she chose was Neverland. I was surprised she thought of it! It was a little long for the space we had available, but she made it work. 

Here Beth is chatting with her Daddy on the phone while she works on her handwriting. The girls enjoy taking a break and and chatting with him when they have a chance. All of a sudden Beth's handwriting has gone from being random sizes to looking more uniform! She has always been one to want to do things her own way and it has taken some convincing that she should form her letters without smiley faces inside of them except on special occasions! 

This week also brought three-digit addition. She jumped right into working on this while I was cleaning up from breakfast without any how-to instruction needed! I wish I had her mind for math. She definitely takes after her daddy. On the sixth problem she looked up at me and said giggling, "Oh! I almost missed that one!" 

This week Beth learned that c says /s/ if it comes before an e, i, or y. Before any other letter c says /k/. I am amazed over and over again that there are so many wonderful rules for spelling! I am incredibly thankful to be learning them myself since spelling was always difficult for me. All About Spelling is hands-down the easiest and most thorough curriculum I have seen for spelling.

Bigger Hearts for His Glory: Unit 25

Rose learned a great deal about the gold-rush, Kit Carson, and much more! She enjoys the history readings as well and in preparation for more independent studies next year I have begun having her read her assignments on her own. Her narrations have improved so much from where they were at the beginning of the year. Ever since Christmas she has caught on to how to narrate. This was new to both of us this year so it has been a joy to watch her skill improve so much.

Her vocabulary page has also improved! After I took the picture went back and edited her mistakes, but then I forgot to snap another one! I don't believe in ignoring kids' mistakes in writing. After teaching junior high students who came through programs which felt it would stifle their creativity I can say it only seems to cripple them. By the time I got these kids I had to teach such basics as capitalizing I consistently that there wasn't room to help them learn to craft their writing. With this experience in my background I make certain my girls correct their mistakes in writing. They don't seem to mind and frequently Rose even thanks me for helping her!

Cursive continues to go well, but I'm trying to stress to her the need to be careful when she copies her words. She tends to forget letters in what I think it a rush to get finished. I am very pleased with how pretty her handwriting has become!

She particularly enjoyed one of her grammar lessons this week. It focused on making sure all the sentences in a paragraph pertain to the topic of the paragraph. The examples in the grammar book had random thoughts placed in the paragraphs and she got quite a giggle out of them!

We also started studying homophones for practice this week. We have talked about them before in the context of her writing, but haven't formally practiced them. She enjoyed this activity a lot!

She typed up her writing assignment for the week about being healthy. She has moved on to two-paragraph expository writing. She sometimes still has trouble thinking through what to write, but the outline sheets (part of the curriculum) help her so much!

Finally she worked on memorizing more state locations and their abbreviations. She learned the 13 colonies plus a couple more the last time. This week she learned the rest of the states which were around when the Civil War began. If she couldn't find the state I'd give her N-S-E-W directions. She did a great job!

We had another wonderful week! How was yours?