Weekly Report

What a week! I have a weekend scrapbooking event I'm organizing, so when I go into work-mode for a special event like this, some schoolwork must be done more independently, not at all, or they just get put to work setting places, helping with food prep, or pricing product. They love it, and sometimes when they are especially cooperative & helpful during these times, I plan a girls' scrapbooking morning for the next week to celebrate.

THIS WEEK--

Bible: Explorer's studies are going well but are mostly independent since both girls are in very different books. Sweet Pea is in Luke and Cupcake is in I & II Samuel. Together, we are reading Leading Little Ones to God, but we wait for Munchkin to be home from preschool. Over lunch this week, we enjoyed some pages in a family Veggie Tales devotion book which is always silly but leads to poignant discussions.

Math: Sweet Pea is in her BJU math book this week, still working in review lessons mostly but moving into equations with variables...oooh...algebra! I can hardly wait, though she'd like math to go away permanently while she sleeps. Cupcake is working hard at speeding up her times on drill sheets for some reason. Mostly, she enjoys graphing her time each day and seeing how her line dips. Recent lessons were on mental double-digit addition with fairly simple numbers. She loves it.

TOG: Week 8 concluded at co-op on Wednesday. Our readings focused on Charles Lindbergh, which we all enjoyed. Babe Ruth was another highlight as we are life-long Red Sox fans who lived through the end of the curse in 2004. :) Of course I had to edit the book we read to include this not-so-minor detail! Also for co-op, Cupcake was assigned a bit of 20s research on fashion (cloche hats & oxford bags) so she wrote a few sentences about each and brought in pictures for a class collage.

Writing & Literature: Somewhat related to TOG, Cupcake did some writing & drawing about The Velveteen Rabbit as well as a 3-paragraph piece about Willie was Different after an in-class IEW keyword outline at co-op. She's doing well with this technique. Meanwhile, Sweet Pea is working on revisions for her book report on The Penderwicks on Gardam Street, to be done by the weekend. A new piece of writing is in progress now using the fable "The Lion and the Mouse." We did a story sequence keyword outline (with IEW), and she is now working on taking that and making it her own which is looking like a funny little story so far (by a kid who says she hates writing!). A very successful week in writing, if I do say so myself.

Grammar: Sweet Pea is in chapter 9 of R&S. Cupcake worked up through lesson #117 of FLL. We're working on verbs...state of being, linking, and helping. Can't get the chant out of my head!

Science: Reading Apologia with dad is always a hit. This week they did a lot of reading about whales, dolphins, baleen, echolocation, and more. Today, they read about how sound travels through air and conducted a simple experiment with paper cups & yarns--a classic, really--that shows how sound actually moves through yarn (and water) better than through air.

Field Trip: We all went together on Munchkin's Montessori field trip to a local pumkin patch. I usually don't bring big sisters along but as this is likely our last time going, we splurged and all went. Besides the older two graduated from this school and we've done this trip since for about 8 years now! Hay ride, farm animals, corn maze, fresh apples, pumpkins, fall foliage, and MUD. Lots of it. :)