Recap of the past 4 weeks

Language Arts:

Grammar-  We've finished learning all the parts of speech and have moved on to learning the parts of a sentence.  We know what a subject and predicate is.  We will soon start labeling all the parts of speech and parts of the sentence in our Practice Book.

Poetry-  We've learned all about foot and meter- we can tell you the difference between an iamb and a trochee, a dactyl and and an anapest.  We learned maggie and millie and molly and may by e. e. cummings, and now we're working on Winter by William Shakespeare.

Spelling and Vocab- We've worked on different letter combinations that make the same sound like, oo, oul and u all making the same sound in words such as wood, could, and put.  We've also learned the Latin stems ex and spec and have had spelling words with those stems.

Reading- The boys have done some independent reading of nonfiction books from their library bins.  They also took turns reading The Big Wave by Pearl S. Buck to me.  As a tie-in to our history lesson on China, we read a beautiful picture book called The Paper Dragon.  For read-alouds, we read Runaway Ralph and are in the middle of The Three Musketeers (children's version).  We are also listening to The Pepins and Their Problems in the car.  They've also done a couple pages in their Spectrum Reading Comprehension workbooks.

Handwriting-  We've moved on to the loopy letters- e, l, h, k, etc.

Math:    They've learned all the multiplication facts and are working on mastering them, by doing worksheets, flashcards and games.  They've done a couple Multiplication Mosaics pages, too.  They are reviewing addition on a new fun website called Clever Dragons.  Andrew thinks we will be able to move on to division soon, but I think we'll do some measurement and geometry first.

History:  We learned about the 30 Years War, and about Japan isolating itself from the outside world and driving out the Catholic missionaries.  We learned about the Manchus invading South China and driving out the Ming Dynasty.  We learned about the line of Moghul emperors in India and why Shah Jahan built the Taj Mahal.  We learned about the unfortunate King Charles of England who took over from his father James I.  We learned about the Cavaliers and the Roundheads, how Charles was beheaded, and how Oliver Cromwell became Lord Protector of England.

Have I mentioned how much I love Story of the World?  And how helpful it would have been if I'd known this stuff before I went off to college?  These kids don't know how lucky they are!

They also went to a class at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History about Plains Indians.  It was an interesting class- mostly about what resources they used to survive.  Here are a few photos from that day:

Andrew wore his headdress from Grandma, and received quite a few compliments on it.




Science:    Science has been exciting.  We've been discussing chemical reactions and and things such as catalysts that affect chemical reactions.  We looked up some really cool chemical reactions online.  You can see some of them here.   We made some chemical reactions of our own, too.  Below are photos of NaCl reacting with the CO2 of Coca Cola:

French:  We've worked on learning larger numbers, reviewing days of the week and beginning to learn the months.

Latin:  Phrases we learned- Facta, non verba, Dixi, Terra firma, Semper ubi sub ubi ubique, and Non est mea culpa.

Chess:  Watched the video about En Passant and continue to go to Chess Club.

Music:  Working on Jolly Old St. Nicholas on the recorder.  I was hoping to get them to do a duet in time for Christmas, but that's not looking too good at the moment.

Life Skills:  We made checklists for cleaning the living room and their bedroom and went over how exactly to do each item on the checklist.  We also practiced pouring drinks without spilling.

Health:  We covered hair and nail care, health care product advertising (how to read past the claims), following directions on prescription medicine,  and the difference between prescription and OTC drugs.

P.E.  Struggling with this one.  I posted about Swim & Gym, but we need to figure out something more. I do make them do random exercises, but my New Year's resolution is to get a better phys. ed. routine going.

I think I've covered just about everything.  I'm sure I forgot some stuff, but it's getting late, and I'm being beckoned to the second floor for bedtime routines.