Our Week 3, for Lack of a Better Title

The whole gang

This week in the life of  my big and little students:

The Cupcake worked on the letters "C" and "D" and spent much time in review of previously learned letters.  I made up some games to play with her letter cards.  We laid out the ones she knows and played
"We're going to the store and we need to buy some sss-soap, which letter do we need?" and "We're going on a picnic and we need to bring some ppp-potato chips, which letter do we need?"  She lost a tooth, the bottom one I've been trying to get her to blow air through to make the "S" sound.  It sounds so much closer now with the tooth gone, and she's so proud!  In math, we added "hundreds" blocks and numbers to our place value houses.  I think she's quite impressed when she can build 486 with the blocks and say such a large number!  We read books and poems about dogs, especially enjoying our Harry the Dirty Dog Treasury, along with a few new selections from the library.  Today Muffy commented that my English teacher's book had yellow pages, but hers had plain old white.  So, Cupcake felt so sorry for her that she said, "Mommy don't you think you could swap books with sissie?"  We got tickled and explained my book contained the answers so no there could be no trade.  

A little Visitor in the Neighbor's Yard

Muffy finished her first light units for math and for reading this week.  One down, nine to go.  She's been learning about figures of speech.  History this week involved readings on the explorer Pizarro,  King Henry VIII, Cardinal Wolsey, and Queen Katharine.  She's doing Real Science 4 Kids- Biology (elementary age Biology course) as well as a neat science book called Science Lab in the Supermarket.  I enjoyed overhearing her discuss her science tidbits with E over lunch.   As part of her AO studies, she and I began Pilgrim's Progress.  We are going to catch up to where S left off and resume it all together reading the various parts.  She handled the rich language beautifully.   In her free time, she and the Cupcake have been playing with their Calico Critters kitty house.  They have named all of the critters after themselves and the children from two families at church.  

S's Latest Masterpiece

S- has the heaviest school work load.  I feel downright sorry for him, but know it is good for him too!  He's really having to learn to pace himself to manage his time well to get the school work done as well as the daily practice for both instruments.  He learned about Britain as a Roman province in Birth of Britain, global warming in physical science, the Celtic story of Deirdre in The History of English Literature for Boys and Girls, cavemen paintings in The Story of Painting, Ambrose in Saints and Heroes, and continues to make progress in Ivanhoe and Watership Down.  

E finished a report on King John and the Magna Charta this week.  He seems to love the medieval time period.  He is almost finished with Men of Iron.  Although he does not like watching the lectures for his online biology class, he is somewhat interested in the topic.  This week was all about bacteria.  He also likes to share what he knows, especially about BACTERIA when we are eating.  Save it for later E!  I don't think I mentioned it before, but he's been writing song lyrics in his big black journal.

We added composer study and artist study this week for Fridays.  For this term we will listen to selections from Claude Debussy and view pictures of Renoir.  In addition, we worked on AO's hymn for the month, "For All the Saints Who From Their Labours Rest", and AO's folksong "Gypsy Rover" (Irish folk tune).  They don't care for "Gypsy Rover" but I think it is lovely.  To accompany our geography and missions homeschool enrichment classes, we've ben reading aloud  The Kite Fighters, about a masterful kite flyer in the 1400's in Korea.

Dad got some help from the girls

Matt finished his desk/bookcase for the living room.  The bead board back matches so well with the built in cabinets already in the room.  Once he puts puts it in, it will look like it is built in to the wall.  We'll have to post pictures soon.  We'll be able to get all those theology books off the living room floor!    

Busy week, so glad the weekend is here.