Weekly Report 10/31-11/6/09

WOW! I haven't done a report in a long, long time. I am so behind on downloading pictures and everything. So sorry everyone but I hope to catch up soon.

Literature: We listened to two chapters of Robinson Crusoe. We are almost done with this book. It was a slow start and I almost dumped it but I am glad we persevered. The discussions we've had from this book have been fabulous. We also did 4 chapters each of Pollyanna and Secret Garden and continue to compare and contrast the protagonists of each. We started a new Shakespeare play, Julius Caesar. For our myth, we read Latona and the Rustics from Bulfinch's Mythology.

Reading: We started our humor unit. The kids are reading the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series. We are examing cause and effect in this unit.

Poetry: Continued working on My Shadow by Robert Louis Stevenson plus reviewed the other poems learned so far in IEW Poetry memorization. We read two Goops poems and covered Jack Be Nimble for our weekly nursury rhyme in popular culture study.

Composition: The kids each wrote a summary about George Washington following the SWI-A guidelines. We added in a new layer and now they are editing each other after the self-edit and before the teacher edit. Wow! The kids raised their own expectations. We had a victory in this subject this week. My son, the one who used to throw tantrums over having to write one sentence, had to rewrite his final draft that took him an hour the first time because he doodled all over. He did so without any fuss!!

Penmanship: Few more pages of HWT Cursive and daily copywork.

Grammar and Spelling: SWR N-6. Worked on changing adjectives to adverbs by adding ly ending plus other derivatives and antonyms.

Latin: Finished up Latin for Children Primer A -Unit 10

Spanish: We had computer issues this week so we only got two lessons of Elementary Spanish done.

Math: Division speed drill. DS9 continued on with Singapore 5A and DD10 worked in 4B.

Logic: DD10 worked in Logic Countdown. DS9 has completed that book but redid same problems dd did for the fun of it. He also did all of Mindbenders A1. Both played chess and clue.

History: We read one chapter in This Country of Ours and five chapters in George Washington's World. Kids are reading Lion to Guard Us as a historical fiction go-along and a non-fiction book on the Sea Venture.

Geography: We read chapter 13 in Holling's book Seabird. We started a new unit on Oceans in Explore His World. Lots of mapwork as always.

Economics: We studied the dollar bill and learned some of the facts about it and learned about counterfeiting. They designed their own money while keeping in mind that it should be hard to duplicate.

Citizenship: We began a new life in our Plutarch book: Brutus to go with our Shakespeare play. This was well received and we had LONG discussions from this reading.

Science: Did 2:1-2:4 in Snap Circuit Student book along with 9 experiments.

Nature Studies: Made a nature video about maple trees in lieu of nature journal this week.

Music: Listened to Hallelujah Handel from Classical Kids; Reviewed some of Bach's works and read about Bach in our George Washington book. Also started He Shall Feed His Flock from Handel's Messiah as our monthly hymn. Reviewed several patriotic songs. DD10 worked on her song for her voice class and DS9 practiced guiar and had a lesson.

Art: Both kids worked on drawing dinosaurs and making stick puppets for a show. They worked on painting with control. They did dinosaur origami too.

Other (Both): Halloween: trick or treating, pumpkin carving.

Other (DD10): Scouts (made family fun jar); Horses (Horse show competiton -two seconds and 1 third plus class); Preteen Worship team and God Squad performances; Bible small group; Odyssey of the Mind; Co-Op (paper albums and American Girl); Drama, Voice, and Broadway Dance classes. She also brought a friend to our park playdate.

Other (DS9); Precepts; Historical Sworsmanship class; Scouts (earned Citizenship Belt Loop and worked on Athlete Badge); Guitar lessons, Lego League; Co-Op (Paper Airplane and Strategy Games); Also went to a friend's house for playdate.

Field Trip: Fort Raleigh and Lost Colony

Last Friday, we went to Fort Raleigh in Manteo, NC. We watched a film on the Lost Colony and toured the old Earthen Fort. The kids took a class on Native American markings and got to design their own markings for themselves.

We toured the backstage area of the Lost Colony. We got to see the stage, costume area, etc. We even got to watch them making scenery for an upcoming production of Oklahoma!

We went to see a production of the Lost Colony that evening. We went a bit early and met some of the actors and interacted with them. My husband even juggled with one of the entertainers. My 8 year old son was positive that he was going to hate this show and really resisted going. However, in the end he really enjoyed himself and was probably the one who enjoyed it the most. We got seats on the last row of the producers circles which ended up being a great spot. Soldiers marched past us several times and when the Native Americans were hiding in preparation of attack, they hid right behind us!!! It made things a bit more exciting to say the least.

Field Trip: Roanoke Festival Park

On Friday, we went to Roanoke Festival Park. It was a great field trip to go along with our history studies. We had a lot of fun and learned quite a bit also. Roanoke Festival Park is very hands on. It has an indoor museum, an outdoor settlement sight and a representation of the ship, Elizabeth II.



The indoor museum has a lot of things for kids to do. They can dress up as explorers, pirates, early colonists, turn of the century beach goers, and farmers. They can learn to use an astrolabe, pretend to be in the civil war, scrub their laundry, and climb all over a variety of boats.

Aboard Elizabeth II, they can see how a real ship looks and interact with live docents. My kids loved turning the capstan and we played a game of Nine Men's Morris while on board.

At the settlement site, the kids tried on armor and saw what it was like to live in army tents. They did a pole arms class too. However, I think their favorite thing was playing skittles, an early form of bowling.

The park is adding more exhibits to include more Native American culture. We can't wait to make another trip to see it. Meanwhile, we satisfied ourselves with playing with hoops.

Memorial Weekend Canoe and Hike

We visited Umstead State Park over Memorial weekend. It was truly a lovely day. It did rain for about 15 minutes and then it was blue skies and gorgeous scenery.

We canoed around BIg Lake for a bit. I have to tell you that after years of kayaking, the canoe really felt unstable! It was still fun looking at fish and listening to the tree frogs. I couldn't get over how calm and peaceful it was, especially since it was a holiday weekend.

We also did a bit of hiking and exploring. One of the coolest things we found was a brown snake that was hiding in the rocks by the creek.

Unfortunately, the snake was musking and left Daddy smelling very stinky.

Weekly Report 5/22/09

This was such a gorgeous week. We had some minor rain here and there but overall just gorgeous. Without any major field trips and outside projects, we got a lot done!!

Literature: We finished Wind and the Willows and started Shakespeare Stealer as our audio book. We read Merchant of Venice from Tales of Shakespeare. We continued Sisters Grimm and The Princess and the Goblin. We also watched the corresponding part of the movie, Princess and the Goblin, to and compared it to the book so far. We also rented Tales of Despereaux and compared it to the book (which we read a few months ago but never got around to movie).

Poetry: We read several poems about birds

Reading: Melissa is continuing Baby Island, and reading Daring Book for Girls. Harrison is reading The Two Towers again. I think that break with easy reads did the trick. He read one Beast Quest book, reread Swords, more Calvin and Hobbes, and Dangerous Book for Boys.

Writing: We managed to do copywork eveyrday!!! We also got in a couple rounds of Legends of Druidawn and they each did a lapbooking/notebooking page on a bird of their choice. Melissa did a blog entry and made an anacrostic poem/card for a friend. Harrison wrote a book report on one of the Beast Quest books.

Language Arts: They did the usual Spanish, Word Roots, and Typing. However they switched to Dance Mat Typing for some variety. We reviewed some spelling rules (strong man e, every syllable needs a vowel, dropping the e before adding suffixes that begin with an i or e, vowels are long at end of syllable). We went over lie/lay and they played Gorilla Grammar and some leapster language arts games. They did some alphabetizing activities also.

Math: Melissa and I went over adding, subtracting, and multiplying fractions, mixed numbers and improper fractions. She did the exercises in 4A and we did some fraction games oneline. Despite covering this in in school, in Singapore, and in Life of Fred, she still doesn't have a good grasp of what to do. I have got to dig deeper into my bag of tricks to figure out why she is having a hard time remembering what to do. If anyone has good suggestions let me know!!! She also made a Roman numeral chart to help her remember those (I suspect that is just lack of interest lol). Harrison continued working on decimals and reviewed fractions and place value and reviewed his multiplication facts playing Timez Attack. They both did subtracting fractions chapter in Life of Fred. We all reviewed symmetry this week when they made mandalas. They both wrote out word problems and solved them and played math games on the leapster.

Logic: Melissa worked on sequencing activities in Logic Countdown

History: We read about Sir Walter Raleigh, Humphrey Gilbert, the Lost Colony and Virigina Dare. They acted out a voyage across the ocean in the backyard!! We also read more about the Spanish Inquistion and the Protestant Reformation.

Geography: We did some mapwork, concentrating on Asia. We read more about Marco Polo. We learned about Mt. Everest and the region of Tibet. We read about the current Dalai Lama and made mandalas.

Nature Studies: We read more Tales of Jasper Jay and they each did a lapbook/Notebook page on a bird of their choice. We spent some time bird watching in the backyard and looking up new birds. We went on a nature walk and drew in our journals. They really enjoyed playing with the goats, sheep, and donkeys at the horse stables. Melissa also got to visit chickens at a friend's house. They had them out of the cages and they flew to the top of the swing set. They had to put them up as a hawk flew over. Harrison watched an episode of Dino Lab.

Science: We spent the week learning about magnets, magnetic fields and the Earth's magnetic field. We had lots of hands on experiments! Harrison also made paper airplanes and conducted some experiments.

PE: Melissa had her first horseback riding lesson. She really enjoyed it and is so excited that she's talked about little else all week. She also had tumbling class. Harrison had football and Melissa joined him in baseball practice this week. They had gymnastics, went on hikes, rode the scooter, and jumped on the trampoline.

Art: We started a biography of Leonardo Da Vinci and talked about his nature journal. We will be watching an episode of Doing DaVinci tonight.

Music: Harrison practiced his guitar and went to his lesson.

Social: Melissa had a playdate and they both played with some friends at the horse stables. She also got to chat online with her buddy from Boston. We had the usual stream of neighborhood kids over every evening.

Other: We took a trip to the dump and Harrison in particular was thrilled at seeing the trash being compacted. Melissa watched It's Me or the Dog and Leader of the Pack. She worked on training our dog to "shake." He's not yet consistant. Harrison watched two episodes of The Deadliest Warrior and wrote out his comparison charts and made predictions. He did a lot of building with K'Nex, Magnetix, and Bionicles. He also helped DH find the hole in a tire, repair it and put it back on. He was extremely thrilled with that!

Wordless Wednesday: Nature Walk Discoveries

Field Day

Our homeschool group had it's field day last week. What fun it was. The kids participated in the following events: 100 m run, jump rope, broad jump, softball throw, potato sack, obstacle course and shoe kick.


Our group finished the 100 m race in time to do an extra race of running backwards.

Melissa won her only blue ribbon in the jump rope competition. 182 jumps

Melissa won the first heat in the potato sack race and then tied the winner of the second heat twice!!! However on the last attempt, Melissa fell and her friend won.