Off on a WELL-EARNED break!

Well, folks. We have been working hard around here since the beginning of the year. For once, I actually feel like we have EARNED this vacation. I wanted to let any loyal readers (if I have any loyal readers, I thank you!) know that we will be out of town for about a week. We'll be back mid-week and will be recovering from tons of fun, sun and lack of sleep. I'll do my best to get back to you next week sometime. If not, we will be "Back to School" the following week (May 29th). Wishing you all a lovely week.

I thought I'd leave you with some pictures of past vacations to the same spot. My how time flies! Look at my babies!!!

The Princess 2005

The Hippie 2005

The Princess 2005

The Hippie 2005

The Princess 2006

The Princess 2006

The Hippie 2006

The Princess and Daddy 2006

The Princess 2006

The Hippie and Momma 2006

The Hippie 2006

The Princess 2006

The Princess, The Hippie and my nieces 2006

The girls 2009

The girls 2009

The girls 2009

The girls 2009

2009

2009

2009

2009

The Four Girls ~ 2010

The Four Girls 2010

The Four Girls 2010

The Princess 2011

The Princess 2011

The Hippie 2011

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And, that's a wrap. I hope you enjoyed my little trip down memory lane. Just a few shots of other times we've enjoyed our own little private hideaway! :)

Week in Review

Week 16 (5/6/2012 - 5/11/12)

This past week was very productive. I knew that we were going on vacation and taking a two-week break from school, so I sat down and looked at where I'd wanted to be by the time we went on break. I chose our materials for the week based on that information rather than on our regular weekly schedule. This means that we didn't do some subjects and we did extra in other areas. All in all, though, it was a great week and we got a lot done.

BIBLE:

This week's Bible reading was about the Ten Plagues that God sent to the Egyptians in an attempt to get Pharaoh to let the Israelites go. Of course, as you know, Pharaoh was a stubborn man and allowed his people to be subjected to:

• Water turning to blood
• Frogs
• Lice
• Flies
• Sickness upon all of the animals
• Boils
• Hail
• Locusts
• Darkness
• Death of every first-born

The Hippie copied a couple of sentences from our chapter this week and decorated that page. She also decided to draw out scenes from all ten plagues.

FAIRY TALE:

We actually read two fairy tales this week. At the beginning of the week, we read the story of King Thrushbeard and the Princess copied a sentence from it and drew a picture.

 
We also read the story of The Wise Hare this week. If you've never heard the story, I rather enjoyed it because I immediately saw the correlation to Jesus. The Wise Hare is in Heaven and decides to come down and walk among the people, teaching them how to treat one another and how to be wise and good (sound familiar?). He told them stories in order to teach them (sound familiar?). He gave whatever he had to the poor and needy and eventually had nothing left to give. At that point, he decided that he would have to give himself to the next person who came to him in need (sounding familiar, yet?). An angel in Heaven decides to disguise himself as a beggar to see if the Wise Hare means what he says. Sure enough, when the beggar says that he is hungry, the Wise Hare builds a fire and begins to give the beggar himself. Suddenly, the fire burns cold and the beggar reveals himself, saying that the Wise Hare will have a silver throne when he gets to Heaven (sound familiar?). Anyway, I thought it was beautiful to see the story of Jesus woven into a cute little fairy tale.

The Princess drew a picture and copied a sentence from The Wise Hare.

 
CHARACTER:

We read two chapters in our Wisdom and the Millers book this week. The first was about how important it is to Obey Quickly. The second was about how it is hurtful to "steal some one's thunder". You know what I mean. When one of your children is excited to tell you about something that happened and then the other child bursts in and tells you first. I continue to be amazed at how well this book applies to us! It's like the author knows my children personally and knows exactly what we need to discuss! Hmmm. Or, is it maybe that all children deal with these issues? :-)

HISTORY:

We have been focusing on American History only for the moment. I'm undecided on how we'll proceed from here, but we are enjoying our study of American History. We may just read the CHOW (Child's History of the World) chapters, one per week, but focus our attention on the American History for now.

Anyway, this week we finished reading Leif the Lucky by D'Aulaire. We also read two chapters in A Living History of Our World. We learned about Christopher Columbus and the other explorers that came in the 1500s ~ Ponce De Leon, Coronado, De Soto and John Cabot. We got to hear about Saint Augustine and how France claimed much of Canada (and talked about how that's the reason that they speak French in Canada). We learned about the Lost Colony of Roanoke and the settlement of Jamestown. We learned about John Smith and the Indian Princess, Pocahontas. We also read D'Aulaire's Pocahontas this week. If you've heard all of the hype about these D'Aulaire books and wondered if you should get them, I will just say that we are really loving them! I chose to leave out the one on Christopher Columbus for personal reasons (I don't agree with the representation of Columbus), but we've read Lief the Lucky and Pocahontas so far and have loved them! We'll be reading the rest of them as they appear in the timeline of History!

Other than all of that reading and the oral narrations, the girls also drew pictures and copied sentences from our readings on most of the topics covered this week.

The Princess ~ Leif the Lucky Drawing

The Princess ~ Leif the Lucky copywork

The Princess ~ Christopher Columbus Drawing

The Princess ~ Christopher Columbus copywork

The Hippie ~ Leif the Lucky Copywork & Drawing

The Hippie ~ Christopher Columbus Drawing & Copywork

The Hippie ~ Explorers Copywork & Drawing

MUSIC:

This was one of the subjects we didn't do in an official capacity this week as we were focusing on getting caught up in some other areas. We did, however listen to Classical Music on Music Choice on the TV all week. We also attended the free Mother's Day show put on by our city's Symphony. That was amazing!

THE PRINCESS:

READING ~ The Princess read to me and to herself this week. She read aloud to me two stories from her Reading Literature book ~ "Little Two Eyes" and "Little Half Chick". She read to herself "Three Billy Goats Gruff", two chapters of "The Perfect Pony" and one chapter of "Titanic: Lost and Found".

MATH ~ The Princess completed the rest of Lesson 7 this week. She did 7D, 7E and 7F and then took the test for Lesson 7.

LANGUAGE LESSONS ~ The Princess completed 9 lessons this week. She learned about "aw" and practiced reading and writing it. She practiced reading several words that followed all of the phonics rules learned up to this point. She learned about "ay" and "ie" and also about the Question Mark.

WRITING ~ As mentioned above, the Princess did a lot of copywork this week. She did copywork this week for Leif the Lucky, King Thrushbeard, Christopher Columbus and The Wise Hare.

DRAWING ~ As mentioned above, the Princess also did a lot of drawing this week. She drew pictures for Leif the Lucky, King Thrushbeard, Christopher Columbus and The Wise Hare.

THE HIPPIE:

READING ~ The Hippie started a new book this week called "More Stories from Grandma's Attic" and she loves it! She has almost finished the book, reading eleven chapters so far. She also read Ribsy by Beverly Cleary this week. Unfortunately, she's gotten to the point that she thinks it is sad (the dog is lost, away from his family) and she doesn't want to finish reading it. I tried to convince her that it would all work out if she would just finish it, but she doesn't want to read it right now. She did read about 4 chapters.

MATH ~ The Hippie completed two lessons in math this week, lessons 13 and 14. She did 13 A-C orally and wrote out 13D-F and the test. She did 14 A-C orally and wrote out the test for 14.

LANGUAGE LESSONS ~ The Hippie completed 8 lessons this week. She reviewed the Days of the Week and Months of the Year, reviewed Capitalization and the Subject and Predicate of a sentence and reviewed Singular and Plural words. She also did a bit of Oral Narration.

CURSIVE ~ She completed 4 lessons this week in her cursive book. These four lessons have been copying short phrases about the painting by Sir Henry Raeburn, called "Boy and Rabbit".

WRITING ~ As mentioned above, the Hippie also did quite a bit of copywork this week. She did copywork for Leif the Lucky, the Bible, Christopher Columbus and the Explorers.

DRAWING ~ As mentioned above, the Hippie also did several drawings this week. She drew pictures for Leif the Lucky, the Bible, Christopher Columbus and the Explorers.


The Hippie also got in the mood to do a little bit of Science Experimenting on her own. She placed flowers in two different jars ~ one in rubbing alcohol and one in water. She wanted to see which was better for the flower. Obviously, the water one lasted longer, but to be honest, the alcohol one never really died. It's like the alcohol "pickled" it or something. She also spent some time with her science kit, mixing colors and trying to see if hot and cold water would separate (they didn't, of course .. just sort of blended).

I think that about covers it, school wise. Now, time to head out on VACATION. We are taking a two week break from school and will be out of town for about a week, leaving the day after tomorrow. I hope you are all having a lovely week.