literature:
we read 2 stories from the aesop for children: the gnat and the ox and the plane tree. since both stories were quite short and emma was still engaged, we read both in one day instead of splitting them up over two days. for the narration practice, i asked her to summarize the gnat story and whether or not the tree was indeed useful for the plane tree story.
this week, some of emma's books of choice for independent reading have been a tiara club series book, a junie b. jones series book, 100 things you should know about ancient rome, a nancy drew book, an angelina ballerina book, and big anthony and the magic ring by tomie depaola.
history:
on monday we read about cincinnatus from fifty famous stories retold. the rest of the week was left open to start benjamin franklin by ingri d'aulaire, but wouldn't you know i didnt have the book ordered yet. oops! so we jumped ahead to week 9 and read about boadecia from our island story.
boadecia was a celtic warrior queen who fought against the roman invasion of britain. the title of the story alone, the warrior queen, captured emma's attention. ooooh! a fighter queen! the topics of revenge and suicide did come up during our reading, which caught me a bit off guard since i didn't read this story in advance. but we had a great, in-depth discussion afterward about those subjects.
math:
we are in the second life of fred book (butterflies), and finished chapter 8 this week. some of the topics covered in this chapter include counting by fives and ordinal numbers. the practice problems were a mix of review from previous chapters and new topics introduced in chapter 8.
i didn't do a whole lot of supplementing this week since emma went through the practice problems easily. the only thing we did was practice identifying u.s. coins and adding coins together.
bible:
right now we are going through 1 samuel. this week we went through 1 samuel 3:1-20 (samuel is called) and 1 samuel 4:1-7:2 (the capture and return of the ark). we use the curriculum from this site, but i don't always print out the activity sheets. gibson likes to do the coloring sheet so sometimes i'll print that for him. emma likes to alternate between the coloring sheet and the fill-in the blanks so we did that for this week. other than that, we really just take some time after reading the scripture to simply talk about it.
for scripture memorization we currently use the weekly memory verse from the kids' sunday school. it keeps things simple and streamlined that way. this week's was from matthew 6:13.
language arts:
for daily copywork i used the memory verse emma needs to memorize for church. not only is she practicing her handwriting, but it's also another way to help her memorize the verse. sometimes i'll add a few sentences from a poem we've read for variation, but i didn't get to that this week.
spelling words for this week were went, sent, spent, felt and melt. by the third day of spelling review she had mastered the words so we bagged spelling practice for the remainder of the week.
we did lesson XXIX and XXX from mcguffey's first eclectic reader this week, and talked about how some words are spelled the same but pronounced differently (wind and wind) while other words sound the same but are spelled differently (fair and fare). the more i teach her about the english language, the more i see how difficult the language is to learn. all those exceptions and grammatical rules...wow!
nature study:
we collected a few leaves and did some leaf rubbings. gibson found a few sweet gum pods and took them home, while cash was quite content to gather a few leaves of his own. the unseasonably warm weather was perfect for plenty of outside time, and the kids managed to return from our walk with some sort of leafy collection.
emma also managed to capture a moth while she was sweeping the leaves in the backyard. the kids were enthralled by the little guy, and emma recorded her findings in her nature journal.
french:
we reviewed the phrases we've learned so far from this book (a great library find for us!) which included identifying family members, days of the week and simple greeting.
arty stuff:
in music we learned the hymn "for the beauty of the earth," and had fun singing it each day. we discovered two different melodies for this hymn so we listened to both.
in visual art, we are still looking at camille pissaro's market at gisors rue de cappeville. we didn't get to using the oil pastels as i had originally planned but hopefully we can for week 9. she did make a hot dog out of our leftover salt dough and she's waiting for it to dry before painting it.
ballet class has been coming right along. she's learned first-third positions, demi plie and some basic stretches. and of course her teacher also provides plenty of opportunities for creative dance.
that wraps up our week!
