Week in Review

WOO HOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We have come to the end of our first term. What a great feeling. We had a really good week. I think that can be attributed to two things. First, I got up early each day and went for a walk before the girls even got up. It was nice to be out in the cool air with the moon and the birds and the breezes and God. Second, instead of trying to force an "order" to the day, I wrote what I wanted to accomplish each day on a white board and we just sort of did what we were in the mood to do next. We worked in the kitchen, together. It was nice. Now, I am trying to decide exactly how I want to proceed for the next term ~ a specific "schedule" or a checklist for each day that we do in whatever order floats our boat that day. Anyhoo, here's a peek at what we did this week.

BIBLE

We finished up the first part of our Bible this week (Creation to the death of Jacob). We are now ready to move on to the story of Moses (my favorite). We will be spending the entire second term on Moses, from his birth to the building of the Tabernacle. We will spend the third term of this year on the Laws and finish this school year with Moses' death. We only read and narrated this week, no drawings or copywork related to the stories (because we were copying poems and I only ask for copywork once in a day).

POETRY

This was a big one this week. We studied poems by Robert Louis Stevenson this term, so each girl chose a favorite poem of his to copy, illustrate and memorize. We spent the week copying the poem (which without even trying creates memorization) and the girls drew pictures. I just need to get some page protectors to slide these into for their notebooks. The Hippie copied (she actually has two more days of copywork with this), illustrated and memorized "Bed in Summer". The Princess copied, illustrated and memorized "Rain".

Bed in Summer ~ The Hippie

Rain ~ The Princess

ART

This was another big one this week. We studied the art of Renoir this term. To finish out our study of Renoir, we did one final picture study on "Girl with a Watering Can". I also read this awesome book while the girls colored their own pictures of "Girl with a Watering Can". I will be looking for a used copy of this book to own! If you can find it, it is really great. It not only introduces you to some of Renoir's work, but it takes you on a journey through paintings by lots of artists. EXCELLENT living book! Anyway, as a silly treat we also watched these two little videos on Nick Jr. The cool thing was that we watched these the day AFTER reading the book mentioned above and the second little video was a painting by one of the artists we'd "met" in the book. We instantly recognized his style! Very cool to make connections like that.

• Nick Jr. I Love Art: The Umbrellas by Renoir
• Nick Jr. I Love Art:  Surprised by Rousseau

 

The Hippie

The Princess

MATH

The Hippie learned some Algebra this week. She thought that was pretty cool. :) Really, she learned to solve for an Unknown. She completed every page for Lesson 8 and then we moved onto Lesson 9. We watched the lesson together and she completed 4 pages. We'll get her to do the test for Lesson 9 on Monday and then move on.

The Princess completed Lesson 3 this week. It was simple ~ memorizing the colors of the blocks so that we don't have to count the units. It was fun to come up with the little ways to memorize the colors, like "sky five" (because they rhyme and the five is blue) and "turquoise nine" (b/c her sister is 9 and her favorite color is turquoise). I am continuing to go at a slow pace with her.

LANGUAGE ARTS

The Hippie finished learning all of the letters in cursive this week. After learning to write the letter Z, she practiced every single letter again and then practiced blending the letters. She gets to start the actual "Pictures in Cursive" part next week (where she will copy phrases and sentences in cursive about a famous works of art). She's pretty excited about that. I am really impressed with how much she has improved over the past 12 weeks!

The Hippie spent the entire week working with subjects and predicates in her Language Lessons book. I saw significant improvement there as well. On Tuesday (our first day) she had each one wrong, mixing it all up. Once I explained it to her, she caught on quickly and did beautifully the rest of the week. She melted my heart the night before last at dinner. She started telling Daddy how she was learning how to put sentences together correctly and she taught him all about subjects and predicates. She was saying that she felt like she was at a good age to start writing a book because she'd been reading and copying such good literature and learning this stuff about sentences. It was a proud teacher moment to listen to all of that. On a side note, I have been noticing that the girls are getting really good at correcting their own grammar ~ saying well instead of good when it's correct, finally saying brought instead of brung, things like that. It's finally starting to click/sink in. LOVING it!

The Hippie also finished reading The Children of Noisy Village (narrating each chapter to me).

 
The Princess and I finished the Delightful Reading lessons on "Rain" this week. She drew a picture in her Word Book and added the words and sentences that she "learned". I still don't believe she needs these lessons (she can already read everything on these lessons). But, she WANTS them. :)

The Princess also read "The Straw Ox" and "The Boy and the Fox" to me from Harriet Treadwell's Reading Literature First Reader. She has been reading A LOT on her own. I need to get more Level 2 and Level 3 type readers for her. She is capable of reading anything, but she still needs the larger font and more space on the page that a reader provides. But, she is reading away. Another proud teacher moment. :)

 
We read several chapters in Twig this week (I believe about 8 or so) and Daddy read some more of Black Beauty. The Hippie even helped out and read one of the Twig chapters aloud to her sister and me yesterday because I was busy chopping collards. That was a nice change.

OTHER

Other than that, we've just been enjoying ourselves. Both girls read some stories about Egyptian Gods and Goddesses (I had a leveled reader about them as well as a couple of regular books about them so that each girl got her own book).
 

The Hippie started writing a book. She drew the characters first (three penguins) and then asked me to open a word document for her. If the girl could type well, she'd be off (I plan to add that next year for her).

The girls made cats and accessories out of duct tape and played with their friends on the street a bunch (as usual).

 
We also had an afternoon park day with our Homeschool Group. And, we were visited by this amazing creature yesterday. Coolest moth I've ever seen!

This sign is hilarious if you know my husband ~ He is the LEAST possessive/obsessive/jealous person on the planet!

Let me think, oh yeah. The girls also played Titanic a lot with our Hawaiian drum. Must be great to have an imagination like that!

Oh yeah, I almost forgot. The Hippie planted her pineapple plant. We'll see if it takes off or not.

 
I think that about covers it. Now, I must figure out our checklists for next term and get things ready to go. Hope you are having a lovely weekend.