Week in Review IX

Overall this was a very smooth week. If I could change anything it would be starting earlier. I know this is an ongoing theme. It is so hard to get up when my nights are so late. Plus, it has been very cold lately and that makes it even harder. We don't ever skip anything, we just end up going later. I like to have our afternoons freed up for other things.


In Language Arts Midge is coming along in her phonics. This week we worked heavily on phonetic sounds. I would lay out all the letter cards, say a word, and she would have to spell it with the letter cards. She does very well with this. We are also working on just plain reading for enjoyment more often. Tea finished up her All About the Farm unit and will move on to Forrest Fables next week. She is also reading at least one chapter book a week. We worked on contractions, pronouns, and apostrophes this week. Chiggie is continuing a unit on Tall Tales. I actually have found it to be confusing. We enjoyed reading Tall Tales, but writing one is a lot harder than it sounds. Separating it from a fairytale or fable is difficult. We will continue through next week. She's also reading a novel for history and starting a new writing curriculum that we both love so far. Whew, LA is heavy right now.

We are still learning about the Trinity in Bible. This was a bit longer of a section so we'll continue with that for the first part of next week.

Only Chiggie is working on typing right now. She is just trying to improve speed as she has mastered the keyboard. Tea was overwhelmed and it wasn't worth it.

Math is getting more difficult every day for all 3 girls. Midge is learning place value and measurements. I think it is easier for her to grasp it than it is for me to explain it. Tea took a test this week on unit 7 and didn't miss a single problem. She is adding and subtracting double digit numbers, working more complex word problems, and beginning to work with fractions. She is great with money problems as well. Chiggie is working with multiplication with carrying, division, prime numbers, factors, and place value in the 100 billions. She is starting to like math.

In history we have now covered the Algonquian, Cherokee, Deleware, and Abenaki Indian tribes. We should finish the section early next week.

Science was fun this week. We finished our chapter on Venus with an experiment with radar. I wasn't sure how well it would work but we forged on and it worked fantastic. Even Boo was able to help.
We made a terrain in abox and then covered it with a gridded paper towel. Using a color coded dowel the girls pushed through the grid and color coded their paper.

This is Tea's fake pout face. She was pretending to be mad about the color she got. Right after I took this picture she was laughing.

Here is Midge's almost finished grid. They were able to tell by their papers what parts of the were flat and where the "mountains" were. I think they all have a solid understanding of how we can sometimes find things out about planets that we can't get safely close enough to see.

Next week I have a few fun crafts planned for the season. I'm glad we are more settled here and things are feeling more organized. I need to get our calendar and seasons board up though, they miss that.