Just Another Week- Painting the Door Frame & Grammar Ninja

Bible
This week we began the lessons that prepare for Easter. We are using Ann Vokamp's Trail to the Tree Easter study series. And then using the little pictures the kids made last year (or making some for the ones we missed) to review each morning. I love how simply powerful the little devotions are.

One day last week we read and talked about the Passover. How the blood around the door showed that they obeyed and trusted God so that the death "passed over their homes and allowed them to escape from the control of the Egyptians. I think that is just a awesome picture of Christ's blood "protecting/saving/sealing" us. And so we did it:

Language Arts

Last week during Grammar with the middle two I introduced dictation. They did pretty well... yay!!

And then we took a new color and "Grammar Ninja-ed" the sentence finding the verb, noun, article and prepositions. They loved it;)

And if you haven't played Grammar Ninja... you are truly missing out... LOL!! We are definitely nerdy enough around here to enjoy Grammar practice with Grammar Ninja;)

We finally finished Rifles for Watie... loved it!! It definitely had us holding on at the end! We started Across Five Aprils but it started way too slow for us:/ We started a new book on the way to visiting parents ... totally read Bridge to Terabithia in 2 days! I selectively read it aloud because it contained a LOT of stupid, dumb and uses of LORD... that I really would prefer my kids NOT to say, just as a heads up;)

Math
Chugging along... lesson by lesson:) Anna working through word problems, ratios, calculating tax, and longer division;) Chris starting multiplication families while reviewing other concepts from Saxon 2 and adding fractions to make a whole.

Lydia had some memorable lessons:

History
We began our 1st back in Story of the World vol 4 after our 6 week study of the Civil War. While we've loved using Story of the World the chapters for the next few weeks feel really rushed covering 2 or 3 events in totally different countries. I am actually debating about either slowing down and doing one "event" each week and just using SOTW vol 4 next year too or skipping over seemingly "insignificant" events to finish sometime in the summer. Honestly, I'm leaning more towards slower and savoring for a couple of reasons:)
 
So last week we studied the rise and fall of Paraguay and the role of Great Britain in the ruling of Canada. We did the outline, maps and read a little about each country:)

Science
Here's where I dropped the ball last week;( Sadly!! It seemed hard to jump back into a new topic after finishing simple machines soo strongly:/ I know BAD excuse.

We did though begin a "side" unit of identifying birds. I printed off some little bird "cards" and the kids have been finding the birds in a identification book and then reading together the information about each bird! We are excited and hopeful that soon we will be able to tell what each bird in our yard is:)

Art
We discussed two more of daVinci's works, The Last Supper and Madonna (or Virgin) on the Rocks. The kids would much rather paint B&W sketches of famous works. But we did do something a little unique. We have a Biblical art book that we pulled out to compare daVinci's works with other artists to painted the same "scenes".

Another week:/ Wow! They seem to go soo fast!