Sunday, May 22, 2011

Weekly Wrap-Up: Last Official Week & Not-so-good experiements

With Anna's core work finished, last week I really tried to keep it simple and them still actively learning. We had our homeschooling group's field day and End of Year party last Friday night, so we are officially FINISHED...

we'll school through the summer though.

Here's what we did our last "official" week:)

Bible
We continued to count our blessings and be thankful using the stars:) WE practiced Pslams 19 at least 2 times:) And the kids have been praying soo diligently for friends and neighbors who are sick, but most consistently for Pey... very sweet to hear:)

On Monday we attended a graveside service for one of our older neighbors and church members. So we also had a lot of conversations about death, dying and heaven.

On Friday morning and Saturday we attempted to participate in our church's Operation IN As Much. The kids helped clean and fill canisters with candy that could be passed out during visitations on Saturday. On Saturday they helped bring a snack to the workers and kept each other busy while I took some pictures;) We had other plans to help out, but they didn't pan out.... so we have a small service "to our church" project planned for this week;)

Language Arts
Since Anna is finished with her core, we supplemented with some grammar worksheets from here and then her and I read in the afternoons!! She also did some writing on her own:)

Chris worked on Ordinary Parent Guide to teaching Reading (OPG). He wasn't as motivated this week, even though I tried letting him choose his reward. He did read each day though and he's really wanting to read library books... so the desire to read is starting to happen... which definitely helps in working to teach them to read!!

Lydia worked on Bob books this week. She asked for OPG, but it was always when I already had Chris and Anna to help or right before lunch when everyone is hungry and needing a BREAK. She works soo well independently (for being 4!!) but learning to read needs someone else to help (at least the way we do it). Really looking forward to our summer schedule so this little girl can read soon:) BTW, she ROCKED the Bob books she worked on, even wrote the words for us to practice!

Math
Anna worked on Subtraction facts this week. Doing some timed tests, Wrap-ups, writing out fact families AND flash cards!! On Thursday we went through the WHOLE subtraction stack of flash cards and sorting the ones she knew and the ones she had to figure out. SO now we can just work on those.

Chris did Saxon lessons each day:) He loves doing math!

Lydia worked on reviewing the number 2,3,4 & 5 number families with us. She also kept busy doing puzzles, Math Mastermind and ixl.com.

Science
We continued our Space unit by watching the Shuttle lift-off LIVE on Monday morning!!

Then Tuesday we talked about the International Space Station. Read some sections of our books, watched some YouTube and colored a pic! We also attempted to launch a rocket I had purchased...




too bad this was the only action we saw :( Hoping Daddy can help us out soon... surely with his "fix it" man skills and degree in high school Chemistry he can make it go;)
On Thursday, we finished our Science week by talking about careers at NASA, besides being astronauts! It was fun to see all the different types of jobs needed to make the space program work... I now have a kid who was to be an astronaut and a paleontologist:)

HistoryThis week we worked on a chapter about Spain/Ferdinand & Isabella and Portugal/Henry the Navigator. For each section we read, narrated, colored pictures and read library books;)

For Ferdinand & Isabella, Anna colored paper dolls to play with.

For Henry the Navigator, we talked a little bit about how they had to use simple tools, not like we use our GPS:) And we tried to make a compass...
Henry the Navigator wanted the Portuguese to sail to trade with West Africa and India. Our history book explained one of the reasons they wanted to trade was for the spices. So I pulled out the spices and let them smell some that were mentioned pepper, cumin and nutmeg.



Other
We enjoyed our homeschool group's Field Day and End of Year Party!!

Pic of the Week
Lydia working on her math.... baby wearing:)


I'm linking up to Weekly Wrap-Up :)

3 comments:

Drea said...

You def. got a gift... I don't know how you do all you do and know what to do with schooling lol. Im in awe.
I love how hands on it is... I just honestly have no clue how to organize it all with everything I got going on. Frustrates me a bit. But well, got to make it work...

Love the babywearing pic :)

Unknown said...

Oh, no! We have THAT same rocket waiting to be launched! Let me know the "trick" to getting it launched if you figure it out. I have several "simple" experiments ready for fun now that we're on summer vacation.

Jessy

Jenny said...

Bummer about the rocket set.

Lydia wearing the baby is adorable!