Weekly Reporter 10-31-2010

History/Social Studies

Finished reading about the Brewsters and the Pilgrims reaching Holland.   We learned Holland is a low country protected from the sea by dikes.

Added Pilgrims in Holland 1608 to our timelines.

Science HOD

We skipped 2 experiments this week to finish the unit on time.  We are very behind.

Science Zoology

Continued reading about birds and their markings and field guides. 

Math

Abeka Math 2-completed up to the 6 family and took Test 1.  We are starting the speed drills as well.

R&S Math 4-working on copying problems carefully in our notebook so that our answers will be correct. 

Language Arts

HOD Story time-We are finishing up Benjamin West and His Cat Grimalkin.  It is an interesting read and the kids are all enjoying it.

This week we are reading/read:

2nd grade-Little Bear by Else Holmelund Minarik  (finished reading!)

4th grade-Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren (finished reading!)

5th grade-Farmer Boy by Laura Ingalls Wilder (finally finished reading!  dd did not take to this book as I had hoped)

We are beginning Twenty-One Balloons by William Pene du Bois for story time next.

 

There have been many changes to our school time recently.  Wiggles is in Day School which frees me up to focus with the big kids in the morning.   I have realized we overextended ourselves this fall. 

I mistakenly thought I would need to supplement LLATL and we have been doing GUM Grammar and Wordly Wise on top of LLATL.  I am cutting this out of our day.  We will rely on LLATL for our LA needs completely from here on out this year.

We dropped Singapore Math and picked up more traditional math.  This has been a difficult move and the transition is hard.  R&S Math requires the child to copy all work to a notebook and this has been met with resistance.   We are working on it though and they are working on carefully copying the problems.  Abeka Math is going well and ds will continue with it for the long haul or up until Algebra at least.

Science has fallen to the back burner recently as we have been behind constantly.  I am trying to get all of our subjects on week 5 this week.  This means doubling up Zoology this week. 

Our new curricula for the year is as follows:

HOD Beyond Little Hearts for His Glory-history, science, poetry, Bible, and storytime combined for all the big kids.

Zoology I-combined for all the big kids

LLATL-at each kid’s level (ds7-red, dd9-orange, dd10-purple)

Math- Abeka All About Numbers 2 (ds7), R&S Math 4 (dd9 and dd10)

We went to the library several times this week and got compliments on the kids.  Tadpole had to research for her state study in LLATL orange and the librarians enjoyed helping and chatting with the kids.