Weekly Wrap-Up:The Week the Grandparents Visited

We had another action packed week. My mom, Grammie, came to visit Sunday afternoon through Wednesday morning. And then my in-laws, Grandma and Grandaddy, came Wednesday afternoon and stayed until Saturday morning.

We attempted to school each day even if it was a little bit. And I really appreciated the extra hands doing spelling tests, listening to little ones read and doing projects. Monday we went fishing. Friday though was beautiful, as soon as breakfast was over the kids were outside:) And then we ate lunch out, went shopping and even played at the park;) Definitely a FULL day, even without the schooling.

Bible
The kids and I have been working through the Trail to the Tree from Holy Experience each day this week we've schooled. I have loved it, some of the wording and thoughts are a little "above" my kids but the stories are ones that are simple and that speak of Christ. And I have LOVED the pictures that the kids have been drawing to illustrate each story:)

(sorry about the blurry pics!!)

Grammie made us an Easter tree for the illustrations.


We also worked through an Awana lesson for each kid. It amazing that all three will finish their books this year! I am soo proud of them and thankful that we have diligent to complete them, although I know some kids complete numerous books during the year.

Reading
We continue to work through OPG (and will be for a lONG time... LOL!!) Chris and Lydia also listened to library books being read, practiced handwriting and reviewed sight words. I love hearing them read and often have to remind them that learning to read is "hard work".

Anna did her spelling with Grammie and Grandma. And completed a few grammer lessons. Completed copywork and read some for me, Grammie and Grandma;)

Math
Again, the kids whizzed through math. So glad that they enjoy it as much as they do. Wished they enjoyed the fact sheets, though. I've been doing Chris' fact sheet with him orally.... the point of the sheet is to think fast and review the facts, so I"m fine with writing them for him (for now)!

Lydia and Chris also spent some time working on Math Mastermind with Grammie. I really love the hands-on math manipulatives and activities that our kit provides.

Oh, we've been working through the Number Families. So far we've gotten 2,3,4 &5. This week I was supposed to teach Anna her 3 Multiplication Facts.... she already knew them, well... only struggling with 8x3. So I'm definitely continuing to work through each, since they have been soo beneficial and the kids have really enjoyed learning them.

Science
Anna continued to work through some Star stages/vocabulary that we didn't get to last week. None of the books we had used the same language so we had to look up each term and pick out the most important information. It was a good exercise for us and we have 2 more left.

We also continued to learn more about constellations. Our favorite book was this one. We read through each of the constellations. And the kids tried to find them on each page.

I also gave each child a blue piece of paper divided into 4 sections. In each section Anna drew a constellation from the book and labeled it. She then used glitter glue to make the stars in each constellation pop:) Anna was really into making her constellations JUST like the book had them!


One night we were outside with the fire pit and the clouds "finally" moved. The kids and I were able to find some of the constellations that we had read about;) I loved hearing the kids talk about finding "Orion" and trying to figure out which star was the North Star:)

History
This week we worked through a chapter on the first Russians. Very fun to learn about the background of the Russians and put information to the names Ivan the Great and Ivan the Terrible. And I'm hoping to learning more about the Kremlin... the buildings are just soo beautiful.

One of the activities was to make blown eggs in the Russian style. Grammie is the craft woman. She showed the kids how to blow out an egg.

Then Anna and her painted them solid black as the Russian artists did. And they put very ornate religious crosses on them.


Picture of the Week
Grammie giving Farkle lessons ;)

Linking up to Weekly Wrap-up at Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers.