Well, that was quick! Our Week-in-Review

I swear, I blinked and the week is over! How did that happen? Oh that's right...mix in a holiday, visiting grandparents, and a tummy bug and things tend to blur together.


This week was a "survival week". Just survive the week and it will all be good. Because we took Monday off, I decided to smush Monday's work into the rest of the week - not too difficult, given the fact that our days tend to end early. I cut out a few things - handwriting, primarily - but overall we hit everything we needed to hit. And the reward was sugar cubes and pyramids! More on that in a minute.


LANGUAGE ARTS:

Both The Boy and The Girl flew through their language arts work this week. Spelling continues to be pretty easy for both of them. So much so that I'm basically just giving them the pretests at the beginning of the week and that's about it. Though The Girl is in a higher level of spelling curriculum, she's still doing quite well. They both have review lessons coming up and we're going to do a bit of a Spelling Bee - with M&Ms for each word spelled correctly. They should love that!


Now that we have The Girl's language/grammar curriculum in hand, she's really taking off on it as well. She rips through 3-4 lessons per week and seems to be enjoying it which is good to see. And I see her making strides in her narration/summarizing abilities...something in which she lacks confidence. Dictation is coming along as well. I explained to her the point of dictation - to train her mind to be able to hold a picture of the sentence inside and then be able to transfer that picture (with correct grammar, spelling, etc.) on to paper. Once I explained that to her, she began to understand the point behind the dictation exercises. Having never done this before, she's only able to handle one sentence at a time (the exercises usually have 2 fairly long sentences in them) which is fine. I'll take accuracy over speed/completion with inaccuracy any day! The speed and ability to handle two long sentences will come with practice.


MATH:

The Girl panicked a bit this week as it dawned on her that multiplication is a third grade skill. She asked if she was "behind" and I answered her honestly - she is at this point. I chose to reteach her multiplication from beginning because she never really grasped it last year. With 30+ kids in a class and a district/state so focused on the end product ("Did we teach the third graders how to multiply?" "Yes. Check the box.") as opposed to mastery, many children do not properly grasp the subject. The Girl was one of them. And, because there is so much crammed into a day/week/month/semester/school year, there really isn't time for practice. And it's great to think that parents can have their children practice at home but the reality is that The Girl was bringing home, on average, 1-2 hours of homework per day. To add to that for an 8 year old is ridiculous.


So we backtracked. I took a look at the placement tests that Math-U-See has online in order for parents to assess their child's ability before ordering curriculum and it was very clear to me that The Girl would struggle with division unless her multiplication skills were solidified. I'm a math nerd and I know that math builds upon itself and if she does not have a firm foundation, the rest of her math experiences will be a struggle. I don't want that for her. Challenging is fine. Struggling is not. My goal is to be through this level (Gamma) and on to the 4th grade curriculum (Delta) after the holidays.


And it's working. The first day of our school year, she was in tears because, as she told me, "I'm not good at math." Yet, by the end of the day - after just one lesson and 3 relatively simple worksheets - she told her grandmother that she "loves math" and is "good at multiplication!". Perfect!


HISTORY:

This week, it was all about Egypt. We read about the Old Kingdom of Egypt. We read about mummies. We wrapped dolls and stuffed animals in linen cloths to make our own mummies. We read about Cheops, the Great Pyramid, The Sphinx, and the weighing of the heart by Osiris. Is your heart light or heavy? If it is heavy, the monster will eat it!


And then it was on to the pyramids! All week long, the goal was to complete our studies so that we could build our pyramids out of sugar cubes. And, of course, there had to be the ceremonial eating of a sugar cube in order to verify that it was, in fact, sugar (it was!).





















We picked up some "stone" colored spray paint and got them to look like "real" pyramids. Though The Boy was disappointed that we didn't get to construct any of the rooms inside or bury treasure in them. I told him to construct one out of Legos instead. He's working on it.


ART & MUSIC:

Aside from listening to Beethoven's music during lunch and reading time, we didn't really get to much in the way of art or music due to the short week. Next week, we are going to dive into DaVinci's most famous work, the Mona Lisa. I have a few CDs on request from the local library that I need to pick up as well - specifically Beethoven Lives Upstairs (upon Carrie's recommendation over at Live, Learn, and Love Together). We are all looking forward to listening.




The local art class that we go to each week was off this week as well so it was a rather artless week. Hopefully next week will be more colorful!


I did get a shipment from Amazon (I LOVE Amazon!!!) this week that included a new typing program/game for The Girl - Typing Instructor for Kids - which she's having fun with. Any time she gets to get on the computer during the week (no video games during the week and no TV until the school day is done) so this is fun for her, which works for me. She gets to type her assignments for the writing workshop she's doing in Co-Op so this should help her typing abilities as well.


Speaking of Co-Op, Friday was a Co-Op day: PE, science, writing workshop for The Girl. It all went pretty smoothly and they are looking forward to next week. In science (Chemistry), they explored "Matterville" and learned about protons, neutrons, and electrons and their assignment for the week is to create what amounts to a Pokemon card for an element of their choosing. They are quite excited about this and have already set to work deciding which is the more interesting element and sketching out their rough drafts of their cards.


Lastly, I am looking into starting up a Junior First Lego League team with The Boy and several of his friends. It's a robotics program using Legos and the Junior FLL is aimed at children between the ages of 6 and 9. This is definitely something that The Boy could sink his teeth into and I'm wondering if it might be a good thing for some of the other boys in the neighborhood...some of which are a little rough around the edges. We will see. Right now, it's just The Boy and one of his friends...I'm not sure who else will join us. Looks interesting though!


And, now that it is MONDAY of the next week (where DID the weekend go?!?) I should get this up. Better late than never, right?




Pau.




- hfs