Catching up

Well, we got it in gear and started doubling up on some assignments, along with cutting out a few "extras", so now we are officially only 3 weeks behind my original schedule.  I think that's pretty good since today is exactly 2 months from my surgery.  We'll do one more regular week of school, then we'll modify our schedule to do some regular school and some holiday school until the end of the year.  I'd like to start the new year with a clean slate and be totally caught up by then.  Heaven forbid we have to go into the summer!  That's my swimming time! Hee Hee.

Fine Arts:

Still going to Willoughby Fine Arts Center until December 17, when they will have their sharing night. I'm sure my next homeschooling post will have pictures.

Memory Work:

Reviewing poems, language arts lists, French & Latin flashcards, science vocabulary, etc.  This time, though, we've added in Newton's Laws of Motion to the Memory Box.

Language Arts:

We've been cruising through Grammar Town.  To wrap up the section on parts of speech, the boys did this assignment:

 


 We've also finished the section on parts of a sentence, and are now learning about the different kinds of phrases and verbals.  The verbals are a little confusing, but I'm sure it will get easier with time and more practice.

In spelling, we've done a couple more phonics combinations:

I don't need a name on this
page because only Eddie
would draw guns on his
spelling paper.

 

We're still not back on track for reading, so the only thing they've read is Flat Stanley for book club, along with some books for history.  The New Year will bring new reading.

They are still practicing in their cursive books.

We've read about metaphor and simile in Building Poems, and they wrote the definitions and we talked about examples of both.

We had started listening to The Pinhoe Egg on CD in the car, but no one was into it, so we ditched it for Jefferson's Sons by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley.  This is an excellent story about Sally Hemming's children with Thomas Jefferson.  We are all enjoying it thoroughly.

Math:

We've finished Chapter 10 in MUS and have done some more measurement worksheets.

 


Eddie seemed to think that finding the area of a triangle was challenging, but he eventually accepted the explanation of why you consider it as half the area of a rectangle or parallelogram.

History:

Our Civil War study continued.  I had great plans for our Civil War study, but some of it had to go by the wayside.  However, we did read quite a bit about it, and I think the boys have a fairly thorough understanding of what tore the young nation apart.

First we listened to the SOTW version of events and filled out the outline and colored the map.

Then we read a whole bunch of books:

The Union and the Civil War in American History by Mary E. Hull
Allen Jay and the Underground Railroad by Marlene Targ Brill
Freedom's Gift: A Juneteenth Story by Valerie Wesley
When Harriet Met Sojourner by Catherine Clinton

Secrets of a Civil War Submarine by Sally M. Walker

DK Eyewitness Books Civil War by John Stanchak
Strange but True Civil War Stories by Nancy Clayton
Abraham Lincoln by Amy L. Cohn & Suzy Schmidt

And then we did some related activities, like word searches, definition pages, and stuff like this:

Today we made hardtack so that we could see what the soldiers had to eat.  Stirring the mixture was the most difficult part of this recipe.  The boys actually liked the hardtack, although it was rather "hard" to bite.  Andrew tried dipping his in water, which didn't really help.  Then, we tried smearing it with butter, which did help a bit.  They liked the taste of the hardtack.

 

 

They formed the dough into a face before we baked it.

 Science:

We haven't achieved terribly much in science that past few weeks.  We did review Ch. 4 in RS4K Physics and we did Experiment 4 in the lab book, which was about momentum and the laws of motion:

They had to roll different kinds of marbles down cardboard tubes, so to differentiate the marbles, they gave them names:

Methinks some kids have been hanging around their father too much!

Oh, yeah- we also read the first two chapters in Basher's Physics book.

French:

We've moved on to the next chapter in First Start French:

Latin:

The boys took a test on Chapter 2, which produced better results than Chapter 1's test, but they still need to review a tad more thoroughly.  They were delighted to point out that I had made a mistake on the matching portion of the test, though.

We started Chapter 3 this week, so maybe we'll all do a little better on the next test!  Ed did fine on this one, but Andrew's wasn't so hot.  He does not like foreign languages at all.

Health and P. E. :

We investigated some websites about neurons, and we decided that we want to make "thinking caps" like these. (Scroll down on the page until you come to the thinking caps.

I've been making them do calisthenics periodically, as well as playing outside when possible, and they are still dancing at Willoughby Fine Arts.

Extra:

In the days before Thanksgiving, we worked on some Thanksgiving projects and activities.

Andrew couldn't be bothered writing the hidden word because, according to him, "It is so completely obvious that the word is Thanksgiving!"

Eddie wrote his name in Angry Birds characters on this one.

And, I can't forget the infamous Thankful Turkeys, where Andrew wrote an inappropriate feather on his turkey.

All in all, not a bad few weeks.