Weekly Recap

We have been home for nearly two weeks now. I don't know how the time has passed by so quickly, but it has! I haven't been very active on the blog, but we have had so much to do since we've been home. Besides unpacking the trailer and getting the house back in order {which is so time consuming in itself}, we have been visiting with family and friends, homeschooling, organizing, and going through closets and rooms donating clothes and toys.

I also got a new {to me} dining room table. It is an antique table that my husband's grandmother had stored in their barn. I sanded and painted it a distressed blue, and we bought six more chairs to go around it {we already had four}. It is such a huge table, it can easily seat ten people with room for more. It has been such a blessing for homeschooling, as we can all fit around the table, spread out our books and supplies, and not be crowded. We can also have nice family dinners and invite people over. How we survived with four chairs and a small table for so long is a mystery.

Here is our weekly recap for homeschool. I didn't get to post any pictures this week, as my internet has been giving me fits today.

Titus - Preschool

Titus learned the letter C, the number 3, the color green and the shape triangle this week. He made a caterpillar C with scrapbook circles, put three bug stickers into his bug jar, cut out green pictures from magazines to make a green collage, sorted triangles, circles, and squares, and worked in his Leap Frog Skills activity book. He is learning so much, and I am so proud of him! He can sing his alphabet and the days of the week. He can also count into the teens.

Silas - Kindergarten

Silas learned the -am word family this week, along with the sight words "I", "a", and "am". He had a blast with all of the fun activities this week. He played some games, had handwriting practice while writing his -am word family words, and he really enjoyed all of his worksheets. He is also learning about nouns. I think he is too young for formal grammar, but the curriculum we are using has two days a week for an interactive language arts notebook. He did very well with sorting nouns into categories by person, place or thing.

In math, he reviewed his numbers 0-9, rectangles and circles, and patterns. He is bored with this now, ready to move on to something challenging. As I look forward in his math book {Math Lessons for a Living Education, 1}, I can see that in a few weeks, he will have some harder work. For now, we have been doing 2 or 3 days worth of lessons in 1 day. We are working on counting past 20, and although he can count by 10's to 100, counting by 1's to 100 is not easy for him. I also started an interactive math notebook with him, which he loves. He does fun things like rolling two die and making an addition sentence with them.

Mercie - 3rd grade

Mercie finished lesson 17 in Learning Language Arts Through Literature this week. She worked on pronouns, adding -er to words, reading graphs, and cursive. She also had a review and assessment this week.

She also completed Lesson 5 in Math Lessons for a Living Education. She worked on reading and recording temperatures, graphing, measurements, fractions, and calendars. That sounds like a lot of concepts, but her math takes her about 10-15 minutes to complete each day. I had her make a cup, pint, quart, and gallon robot to help her remember the measurements.

She wrote in her journal four times this week and starting a writing workshop with Mikaela and Eli. She also read several books on her own, which makes me happy!

Social Studies - We learned about towns, states, countries, continents, and our world this week. We made a little flip book to help Mercie remember which is which! We also talked about the layers of the earth and made a flip book with the layers labeled.

Eli - 6th grade

Eli completed five lessons in Principals of Mathematics this week. He worked on properties, order of operation, multi-digit multiplication, and the distributive property.

He also completed Lesson 11 in Learning Language Arts Through Literature. He worked on writing plural nouns that end in sh, ch, x, s, z, y and i. He also learned how to write quotation marks and how to punctuate them and about the different kinds of sentences.  He had a review and assessment this week.

In America the Beautiful he completed Unit 8. He read about the Gateway Arch, North American Indians, Lewis and Clark, the Louisiana Purchase, and Noah Webster.

In science, he learned about fog and lightening thunderstorms.

He read several books, completed a few art lessons, and started the writing workshop with Mikaela and Mercie.

Mikaela - 8th grade

Mikaela completed five lessons in Principals of Mathematics. She learned about metric conversions, multi-step conversions, conversions between US and Metric, and time conversions.

She completed Lesson 17 in Learning Language Arts through Literature. She worked on linking verbs, predicate adjectives, predicate nominatives, dependent clauses and how to diagram them.

In America the Beautiful, she completed Unit 23. She read about World War II, Eleanor Roosevelt, Hawaii and New York.

In science, she learned about hurricanes, storm surges, El Nino and La Nina.

She read several books and started the writing workshop with Mercie and Eli.

Writing Workshop - The kids were getting tired of using Writer's in Residence, and their writing was not improving like I wanted it to. I decided to pause it for a few weeks and complete a writing workshop with them. Mercie wanted to participate, and I gladly allowed her to. We learned about the writing process and our purposes for writing - narratives, expository, descriptive, and persuasive writing. We have fun while learning and they will get their first assignment next week.

I'm still trying to decide if we will go back to BiblioPlan or not. Mikaela has completed 23 weeks out of 30 in America the Beautiful, and I want her to finish it. I think she will feel a real sense of accomplishment when she does.

Mikaela and Eli really enjoy doing some subjects together, though. I am thinking of combining them for science using their MasterBooks science books. I'm still trying to decide. My goal this year is not to change curriculum! I've already had to tweak a few things, like Silas's reading program. I also bought Math Lessons for a Living Education for Mercie and Silas, which I do not regret! There are also a few things I want to implement with Mikaela and Eli, like a 'Word of the Day'. I will write a word on the board, they will copy it in their notebook with the definition and write a sentence and/or illustrate the word. Once a week, I'll give them a spelling and vocabulary test on their words. This will start next week!

How was your week? Have you changed any curriculum so far?