Saturday, April 9, 2011

Weekly Wrap-Up: Revival Week School Rush

This week spent most of our evenings last week eating with church members and attending revival services. It's amazing how having activities each evening affected our teaching time/schedule each morning. The biggest change was to get most of Anna's work completed earlier so she could rest and I could bake a treat for the family (just a part of having food allergies!!)

Surprisingly though we did complete most of what I had "crazily" planned... but not as slowly and in-depth as I'd like :( Next revival week, I'll schedule less for us to attempt to complete:)

Bible
Since we didn't have Awana last week (due to Revival services at both churches) we concentrated on completed the Easter devotional we started last week. I really have liked it although I'm really working through the stories each day and trying to relate the stories to Christ in a way my kids understand.

The devotion we're using is called Trail to the Tree and is free from Ann @Holy Experience. I love the stories and simple words. AS well as each passage is pointing to the sacrifice and need for Christ. Some of the pictures have been a little graphic for my crew, so they have been drawing the scenes... I look forward to working on having an Easter tree and hanging these pictures on them. Hoping to do that this week... really though, the lessons and time of study has been great even without having a "tree".

Reading
More reading this week. While we started working through OPG with Chris (and Lydia), it was clear that he really needed a break. So we ended the week reading the Big Blue Book.


Anna wrote her first composition about her morning routine. It was very simple. But it was a simple and non-stressful start to writing. I'm really hoping to include her writing more into a summer routine... real laid-back, but practicing!

Math
Again we worked through some Saxon lessons each day!! Chris started counting dimes and pennies together and Anna started counting quarters, dimes, nickels and pennies together. I have really liked how Saxon ties soo many of these basic skills to money. It is easier for the kids to grasp AND very practical... definitely life-long skills!

This week both Chris and Anna had some fun activities, so we all did the "lesson" together.

Number line and Rounding to the Nearest Ten from Saxon 2



Tweaked a peanut activity in Saxon 1... I changed it to gummies in Easter eggs;)


Science
Unfortunately Science got pushed to the back burner this week :( We finally did get to do some Science on Thursday. We started working on STARS. The kids and I read a couple of books and did a lapbook element about the "life of a star". I like that the lapbook element will help review the stages. I was amazed with how much new "star vocab" we needed to really understand everything. We didn't quite finish with that... Anna and I have some more "investigating" to do:)



On Friday we read about some of the stars we could find in our night sky. And we read a boom that focused on the Big Dipper and North Star called The Big Dipper and You. It was a great book and now we're really excited to get outside and start "star gazing".

Social Studies
In an attempt to finish Story of the WOrld vol 2 by mid-August, we attempted to cover 2 related chapters (I know... what was I thinking!!). In the beginning of the week we talked about Genghis Khan and his grandson Kublia Khan!! It's interesting to see the kids reaction to some of these infamous dudes and to see some of these guys strengths and weaknesses. We made paper lanterns!



Then on Friday we read through another chapter learning about Marco Polo and the Silk Road. On an outing, I also read another book about Marco Polo to the kids! I'm hoping to review both chapters on Monday with an activity about the Silk Road!

Picture of the Week
"I don't want to!"

A realistic look into balancing the roles of mommy-teacher!

Some days it bothers me, other days it doesn't! This week I "handled it" by taking pictures... LOL!! And encouraging Chris to complete the task so we could move on to something he enjoyed more. BTW... this was taken minutes after the 1st Math picture!

5 comments:

Unknown said...

Some days are like that, huh? My youngest has "that look" a few times a week (especially when he would rather play than a few addition problems). Stopping by from Weekly Wrap-up.

Jessy

Ritsumei said...

Looks like a busy week - and then all that church too? I'm impressed! Love the grumpy-face pic; one for the scrapbooks!

Jenny said...

I love that last pic! Good for you being able to handle it this week. Abby does the whole "I'm not doing it" thing and sometimes it makes me crazy! LOL!

Phyllis said...

I love this post! I love all the activities and I love the last picture. I should have one of those every week, too.

Anonymous said...

What science curriculum do you use? Where did you get the lapbook ideas? I love reading your weeking wrap-ups.