Weekly Report 5/1

This week went by really quick!

Literature: We continued listening to Wind and the Willows, picked by back up our evening read aloud (Sisters Grimm) and started The Princess and the Goblin. We watched the Animated Shakespeare Tales version of The Tempest and started reading Lamb's version of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Harrison and I co-read his weekly chapter of Pilgrim's Progress.

Reading: Melissa read books four and five in the Spiderwick Chronicles. We did a lot of work of compare and contrast of the characters, the books, and the book against the movie and video game. She read a bit more in Spy for the Night Riders and started reading the Royal Diaries book for Elizabeth. Harrison continued The Two Towers. He started Under Drake's Flag but wasn't interested in it, He also found my stash of Calvin and Hobbes books so now I am doomed. LOL

Writing: We did copywork in our commonplace journals. We played several rounds of Legends of Druidawn with accompanying writing. Melissa worked on her Megalodon report and put up her first blog post. She also wrote her birthday list. Harrison did a compare and contrast sheet on this week's episode of The Deadliest Warrior

Language Arts: They did typing, Spanish, Word Roots. They played a few games of Boggle. We did our normal ad-hoc grammar, spelling, and vocabulary. We also played around with alliteration and abbreviations.

Math: Melissa did review work on angles, area, and perimeter. H is working on multiplying decimals. He also did challenge word problems for money. They both played Timez Attack this week to keep up their times table speed. They did a lot of hands on math with Druidawn.

Logic: Harrison worked on inferences and Melissa worked on analogies.

Nature Studies: Melissa's 4-H group went to visit a beekeeper. We learned a lot about bees and got to do some taste tests on different types of honey! We went to Prairie Ridge ecostation and did some bird banding and a tree study. We read some more of Tales of Jasper Jay and observed the birds around our yard. We saw mockingbirds fight, a Red-tail hawk soar above us and a gorgeous house finch.

Science: We read about Copernicus and reviewed our knowledge of the earth's rotation. We watched a documentary on Megalodons. We learned had some health lessons on body alignment and posture and skin care in the sun.

Geography: We practiced map reading skills with our Legends of Druidawn game. We did our weekly mapwork on the globe for a change of pace. We read more of our Marco Polo book and studied Chinese Architecture and the practice of Feng Shui. We learned about Chinese inventions and the importance of tea in Chinese Culture.

History: We read about early explorers: John Cabot and Amerigo Vespucci. H also watched several Time Commander episodes and this week's episode of Deadliest Warrior on Knights vs. Pirates.

Music: Harrison is working on Worried Man Blues by Woody Guthrie. We also listened to Swan Lake by Tchaikovsky.

Art: We finished our Michelangelo Biography and used the Moses statue for our narration. Harrison worked on drawing circles.

Other Fine Arts: We went to see the Carolina Ballet perform Swan Lake. The kids wrote and performed a skit as part of their tree study. Their tree was the American Holly so they used that as Hollywood and did the tree Oscars. It very funny.

PE: Melissa had tumbling and Harrison had football and baseball. They both went to gymnastics class. At home, we went on evening hike, jumped on trampoline, and did Wii Fit.