Weekly Wrap-Up: Two Weeks in One

These last two weeks have been a little different. We planned a vacation trip to Grandma and Grandaddy's in the middle of our school week and then when we returned home to finish our schooling for the week;)

Everyone can use some Grandma (and Grandaddy) time:)

Bible
We have worked on Awana verses and letting those verses lead into a "spiritual lesson/challenge". Like we were learning about God's love being eternal... and stirred from a Bible Study I had been reading I spoke to the kids about God loving them and nothing can remove His love for us. It's still resonating in my heart, too!

And while we didn't do much "schooling" about St Patrick's Day, we did use our devotional time to explain that he was a missionary/priest to Ireland. And what a missionary does!!

Reading
Besides Grammer and Spelling lessons, Anna did a bit of books we have. I finally was able to sit down with her and READ, I was kind of concerned the book I had chosen was too hard.... but I was very pleasantly surprised that it challenged her on a few words she had to sound out, but other than that she READ it!! I am soo thankful she has taken off with reading and hoping to find more books that correctly challenge her.

Chris is working through the "silent e". He is gaining more and more confidence and starting to look for the "silent e"s on his own. I really LOVE the logical organization of Ordinary Parents Guide to Teaching Reading (OPG)!!!

He got a kick out of the "banana phone" activity!! At first he was a little leery about having to read the script but he got the hang of it at the end:)

Lydia and Chris worked on some ABC order activities... cutting and pasting is a favorite here!! Nice to use it to start Chris on the journey of ABC ordering and Lydia on getting her ABCs in order:)

Lydia has gotten a bite of motivation the last couple of days. She has really, really begged to use the OPG!! So we have been reviewing the lessons she's already done and working on her sight words!! She's been independently (with Anna reading the instructions) going through some workbooks I had gotten for her!!

She's also been tracing letters... which I'm thankful for because she's had the least interest in writing than Chris and Anna. Again, she's young so I haven't pushed it, but it would be wonderful if she motivated herself to write numbers and letters.

Math
Lydia has also been having a great time with Math. She loves using IXL for one review session each morning as I get the older kids started.

She's also been enjoying a game we've called Which is Bigger? It's actually taken from the WAR card game I played as a kid but I use some #1-20 cards I made for Anna when she was doing pre-k work.

To Play: we pick a card a piece from the pile and who ever has the biggest card gets to keep both. The winner is the one who has the most cards. It's actually been good for her to start identifying the numbers with their names and then learning which is bigger :) Oh, and it's simple enough that Anna has been playing with her, too.

Chris has been chugging along with Saxon. He's been introduced to two more addition families and claim that they are "too easy"!! BUT he loves doing the worksheets (even volunteers to do the backs!!!! yay!) and doesn't seem to show signs of being bored... so I am thankful:) I have to include his worksheet from the other day, he little birds were too cute;)


I was lamenting on the last Wrap-up about Anna's math lessons being too simple....

I should have stayed quiet:) LOL!!!

She's had a couple of BIG lessons the last few days, the first was using the less than, greater than or equal to signs.... figuring out which number is bigger was fine, but then getting the sign right (even with the alligator eating the bigger #) and then having addition on one or both signs... phew:) we made it though:)

The second biggie was subtracting two-digit numbers when you have to "borrow". Anna is great at math, so she got the concept pretty easily, it was just getting all the steps in order! Again, we survived and she's a great little mathematician:)

Science
Each week we covered two planets:) So during the two weeks, we knocked out the rest of the planets:) The kids have been doing really well with the planet studies. They have enjoyed being "detectives" by filling in their charts and finding the planets names and fun facts:)

Our favorite fact: Neptune has a gas in it's atmosphere that gives off a smell of rotten eggs. Lovely, I know;)

History
Our history topic was The Crusades!! There really isn't a whole lot about the Crusades for younger children!

I read them parts of The Canterbury Tales (by B. Cohen) which was recommended, but didn't read all just because most of it was talking about what people did when they were drunk and raping women, etc! I remember reading it my Senior year of high school and finding it "trashy"... LOL, funny to call a "classic" trashy, but I didn't feel bad about NOT finishing it when I realize my goal of maintaining the innocence of my children and teaching them to think on godly things! Maybe when they are more mature and in high school it won't seem as bad, but there are still Disney movies I cringe to think what they are picking up!

We did get to read some more information about the Crusades from a variety of books ranging from Medieval Times to Islam history books for kids to a Knight book by DKReaders (which was our favorite, I had picked it up at Ollies for $.99)!!

Besides our normal coloring page and map work (which the kids LOVE), we also made pilgrim badges since one reason the Crusades started was because of the access to Jerusalem for the pilgrims was denied.


Shirtless Chris proudly modeling his:)


And then they learned how to play Checkers;)

The book suggested learning Chess, but they don't even know how to play Checkers yet and Chess seems harder!! We'll be learning soon though because Chris has been asking to learn... I guess I better start reading because I've never played Chess before;)

I'm linking up to the Weekly Wrap-up;)