Weekly Reporter 10-02-2010

We are in total chaos lately.  Bubba is in scouts and scouts are selling popcorn every weekend.  Bubba, Tadpole, and Big Sis are playing soccer with the parks and recreation for the city.  So we have practice and games for 2 teams right now.  There is only 1 night of the entire week where we have no where to run.  School has suffered immensely because of this hectic schedule.

We also go to co-op weekly for an afternoon.

We have managed to school about a week of work into 2 weeks. 

First Day of Co-op

   

History/Social Studies

We have been reading about how King James wanted only the Church of England to be observed and worshipped.

We are reading in Stories of the Pilgrims about the Brewsters.  Their inn was once a palace.  This is one of our art projects to make a stone wall with vines trailing up and dab red paint for roses.

Religion

We studied Ruth and did a project where we made bundles of grain and stray grain to show how Ruth worked faithfully to gather grain for food.

Science HOD

We studied pollination and did an experiment to show how bees transfer pollen from one flower to the next.

 

Science Zoology

We finished Lesson 1 and worked on the mini-books.  The girls looked up endangered and extinct species on the internet.  We often use KOL to search.

Math

We are finishing Singapore 2B with the girls.  I have decided not to continue with Singapore.  The girls were in public school prior to homeschooling and Singapore is just not working for us.

We are starting R&S Math 4 on Monday.

Bubba has been working with Houghton Mifflin Math 2 and I am not keen on the “trick” methods to do math facts.  I much prefer good old fashion math.  I learned with Abeka and I guess that is my comfort zone.  So we will begin Abeka All About Numbers 2 starting Monday. 

Language Arts:

This week we are reading/read:

2nd grade-Little Bear by Else Holmelund Minarik

4th grade-Matthew Jackson Meets the Wall by Patricia Reilly Giff  and Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren

5th grade-Farmer Boy by Laura Ingalls Wilder

The kids are each doing LLATL and it is going well.  We add in GUM Grammar and Learn at Home Spelling. 

GUM Grammar is fun and put out by Zaner Bloser.  The girls have already studied complete subject/complete predicate, simple subject/simple predicate, direct objects/indirect objects, adjectives, nouns, and prepositional phrases since the school year began.

 

I am hoping that the curriculum changes will help our kids with math.  We plan to be really strict on school starting this week and just make it work even though we are juggling so many extras.