learning together: W9Y01 review

we wrapped up week 9 last week.

language arts:

for spelling we had the words if, is, it, bit, lit.   she got the pattern pretty quickly so we only spent 3 days on spelling.

copywork was 3 days of her memory verse and 2 days from an excerpt of bed in summer.  gibson requested his own copywork a few times so i printed off a few tracing sheets for him.

we went through lessons 30 and 31 in the mcguffey reader.  all words she knew, but it gives her a chance to slow down and talk about some of the words she's read.

literature:

from the book beautiful stories from shakespeare, we listened to the audio version of the tempest.  i think she had a hard time grasping the whole story..."there was this big storm and this man and this girl were on a boat.  the man was the girl's dad and they went to this place and the daughter got married."  but i think she did a pretty good job narrating, don't you think?

we read the farmer and the stork and the sheep and the pig from the book the aesop for children. the aesop stories are usually pretty easy for her to narrate since they're short.  she seemed to particularly enjoy narrating the sheep and the pig...probably because the ending had the word "bacon" in it.  haha!

we read the story how the rhino got his skin from just so stories.  actually, we listened to the audio version and emma and gibson followed along in the book (since we own it already).  it gave me a nice break from reading so that i could do other things, and the kids were able to enjoy the pictures from the book while listening to the story.  narration was a little choppy for this one (possible because gibson kept trying to throw in his 2 cents worth), but she got the basic idea.

we read a few poems from a child's garden of verses.  i can't remember all of them but some were bed in summer, the gardener and marching song.

independent reading:

some of the books read included angelina and the princess, the berenstain bears media madness, greece, the beginners bible, and princess emily and the wishing star.

history:

we finished reading benjamin franklin.  we read 3-4 pages at a time and i had emma narrate after each reading sessions.  there's a lot of information in that book!  even i learned things i didn't know about ben.  we'll be working on a benjamin franklin lapbook week 10 to help gather all that information and put it in one spot.
 
we listened to the warrior queen from the book our island story.  we had already read that in week 8 but emma wanted to listen to the audio version (i guess she gets tired of hearing my voice sometimes...ha!).

we read the story of androclus and the lion from fifty famous stories retold.  side note: i downloaded this book (for free) on my kindle app (also free) for my phone and it's been fantastic to have!  emma really liked this story because of the sweet ending - androclus is reunited with his lion friend.  she did excellent job of narrating this particular story probably because she thought it was so sweet.

math:

i still haven't done much of what i had planned for math except for going through life of fred.  it seems to be enough and there doesn't seem to be a need to supplement with additional activities through out the rest of the week.

emma completed chapter 9 in fred with questions at the end addressing time telling, days of the week, counting by 5s (in nickels), using ordinal numbers and numbers that add to 9.  i think after this term ends, we'll probably do a chapter from fred 2-3 times a week instead of 1 time a week.

hymn:

we listened and tried to memorize "anywhere with jesus."  i found a youtube video of a vbs group doing this song with moves.  i think i had more fun doing the dance moves than the kids.  check it...


bible and scripture memorization:

we read through 1 samuel 9:1 - 12:25 where saul is annointed king of israel.  both emma and gibson colored a coloring sheet and we discussed the story together.

the memory verse for week 9 was from john 14:15.  it was a pretty short verse to memorize, though we also discussed the meaning of that verse, its context and how we can apply that practically.

geography:

we read chapter 9 in paddle to the sea in which grain elevators were mentioned.  we found a couple of videos on youtube of grain elevators doing their thing and talked about their purpose.

i still haven't gotten around to printing out a large sized map for the kids to trace paddle's journey.  i need to get on that!!


handiwork/life skill:

i taught her how to toast bread and she was able to prepare breakfast for herself and her brothers one morning.  oh man, was that awesome...for me.

emma and gibson also helped dad with the raking.  gibson came back in with a muddy face.  i think he had a great time out there.

french:

we didn't spend a whole lot of time on our language study this week.  we did listen to the CD that came along with the book a few times.  

other things:

it finally dried up a bit last week so we were able to spend some time outside.  there was some serious biking and running going on!

ballet has been going really well.  last week they got to dance in the dark with glow sticks and used the barre to do plies and tendus.  emma is very serious in class...at least when i peek in there.

emma was really into making paper bookmarks last week.  there were LOTS of colorful strips of paper. gibson was into doing his own "crafts" too which involved some papers stuck together with glue.

side note on narration: i came across a thread in the AO forums where parents were recording their kids' narrations and then transcribing them.  some of the narrations were pretty funny, and it made me feel better that some days emma's narrations are a bit off the mark.  i think i might have to try recording a few of hers.  it would be interesting to see the progression over the years.