Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Weekly Report Week 2

We are having a short week this week. My brother is coming into town today and will be here until Sunday. We still got a lot of fun things done this week.

Journal time-Kids all wrote in their journals everyday.

Math-Math is going really well for all kids. The boys are still working through their Spiderman workbooks for review and Catlyn is trucking away on Teaching Textbooks 6. Things are clicking for all of them.

Charles doing some math.

Grammar-Catlyn did a quiz in SOS Language Arts. She did very well. The spelling part of this program is way to hard for her so we are skipping those lessons since she is already doing another spelling program. Colin is still working with Adjectives and Charles is working with adverbs and diagramming sentences with adverbs. They are all doing great.

Spelling-everyone did great and passed this weeks test.

Writing-Boys completed 1 lesson in WWE1

Reading-Colin completed 3 lessons in OPG. He is doing really well.

Literature-Colin read Glorious Flight and made a lapbook. Charles is still reading Stuart Little. He is really enjoying this book and has added some to his lapbook. Catlyn is almost finished with Black Beauty and she is also still enjoying it.

Nature Study-The all wrote about a really cute baby skunk in one of our nature magazines
All the kiddos working on their nature journals.

Science this week we learned about our lungs. We did a couple of fun experiments and put our lungs on our My Bodies.

Harper teaching about how our lungs work.
Our model of a lung.
Colin's My Body.
Tapestry of Grace- We learned about monks during the Middle Ages and St. Patrick. We had a really great time with this.
We read a chapter from Trial and Triumph about St. Patrick and Tomi dePola's St. Patrick. We talked about some of the legends of St. Patrick. We discussed the Holy Trinity. The kids made a couple of notebook pages on St. Patrick and one on Ireland. We listened to the hymn St. Patrick's Breastplate. This is one of our favorite hymns and we sing it in church all the time. Brings a tear to my eye everytime!
Catlyn's notebook pages on St. Patrick.
One of Charles's notebook pages on St. Patrick.

We read in Story of the World about monasteries in the Middle Ages. The kids took a vow of silence and actually stayed quiet for almost 30 minutes!!:) We made illuminated manuscripts. I checked some cds of Gregorian chants from the library. All the kids found these very relaxing and enjoyed them. The kids also made some mosaic crosses.



Charles's
Colin's
Catlyn's
Charles, Colin, and then Catlyn's
Catlyn did some copywork from St. Patrick's Breastplate.
Working on Geography
Catlyn's geography page.

This week was a blast. Now we are off to go hang out with my brother and nephew for a couple of days.

Sunday, July 12, 2009

Some pictures of our trip to the airplane museum...

You would think they actually like each other!
We got to go on this plane. The boys said this was their favorite part.
This bird made a nest in the wing of one of the planes. Charles named him Steve.

Reminds me of the Marlboro man!
Charles couldn't believe how small the little planes and people were.
Colin brought his binoculars. They are strapped to his hip. Just in case he said.

Friday, July 10, 2009

Music and Art from Week 1 of '09-'10

This week for music we learned about Vivaldi. We read about him from How to Grow a Young Musician, Story of the Orchestra, and listened to Music Master CD Vivaldi. The kids also wrote about him in their music notebooks and learned what the word concerto means.

For art we learned a little bit about Giotto and how he made paints. We made our own egg tempera paints and the kids tried out painting with them. I don't think I grounded up the chalk fine enough because they have chunks of chalk in their paintings. They really didn't get into the actual painting as they did making the paints. We also did a picture study on Giotto's Lamination painting and added a copy to each of the kids Book of Masterpieces.



We had a great fun morning and now we are done with everything until next Monday!:) I love Fridays. Short and sweet!:)


Thursday, July 9, 2009

Week 1 of '09-'10

We started our new school year this week. Things went very well. We are trying a new way of scheduling everything plus we started our new year with Tapestry of Grace 2. The kids are doing great and we have had a great time. We will be doing music and art tomorrow but I thought I would go ahead and post our regular subjects today and music and art tomorrow. Here is a look at what we got done this week.

Journals-Each day the kids started out with their daily journals. I get their daily topics from here. They have a topic for every day of the year. The kids are loving this. Catlyn and Charles do this all on their own. I read Colin his topic and write down what he says or he draws a picture.
Charles working on his journal

Math-Catlyn is still working through Teaching Textbooks 6. She started this a month or so before we took our summer break. She was working on long division this week. For Charles and Colin we have decided to take a little more time on memorizing those dang addition and subtraction facts. They are doing great. I got some spider man workbooks at the dollar tree and they are just plowing through them. Charles even used the words "I love math"*gasp* after working in this workbook!:)

Working on a page from his Spiderman workbook

Grammar-Catlyn is still working on Switched on Schoolhouse Language Arts 7. She is doing really well. This week she worked on spelling, putting words in alphabetical order and writing a report on her and 3 of her friends last names. She had to look up the meaning and the origin of the names. Charles is working on adjectives in FFL3 and Colin was working on memorizing a new poem and review nouns and pronouns in FFL2.

Spelling-Went great for all three.
Literature-Catlyn started to read Black Beauty. She says she LOVES this book. Charles has started Stuart Little. He is making a lapbook to go along with his reading. Colin and I read Stellaluna and he made a lapbook about bats to go with it.

The start of Charles' lapbook. He will be doing a little bit each day. Probably for the next couple of weeks

Colin will start a new book and lapbook next week.

Reading-Colin started Ordinary Parents guide to Reading. We were doing Hooked on Phonics last year and he was just not getting it. He loved having his own little books but was reading the pictures not the words. So, I love OPG since there is no pictures and he is having to actually look at the words! He says that he loves his new reading. We do the extra enrichment with each lesson. He loves building his words with the letter tiles on the lap size dry erase board. Colin also did 2 pages each day in his Explode the Code 1 workbook.

Writing-Charles and Colin finished one lesson of WWE 1.

Handwriting- was done each day by all kiddos. Charles is really working hard on getting his handwriting pages to look nice. Now he just needs to carry that over into all of his other work!!:)

Read Aloud-I am reading King Arthur out load to the kids. They work on color sheets of King Arthur while I read. And yes the boys have been knights all week. Well, actually Charles has been King Arthur and Colin has been his knight.

Catlyn's King Arthur

Nature Study-It is to hot to go out so I am having the kids us books and magazines for nature study during these hot months. This week I gave them each a nature magazine and told them to find one interesting thing to read about and record in their nature journal. Catlyn did dophins, Charles Lungar Monkey and Colin Firefly.

Free Reading-Kids have also had 30 minutes free reading time each day.

Science-We learned about the digestive system this week. Let me just say that it is not all that fun teaching little boys about the digestive system. The have to make everything gross!:) We learned about how teeth grind the food, then we made a paper model of the esophagus to show how food goes down into the stomach. We learned how the stomach, lower and upper intestines work. We placed our organs from this week's lesson on each of the kids' My Body that they have on the wall. Harper did an experiment with the kids on finding out which foods have starch using a couple different kinds of food and iodine. Catlyn is also working through the Americain Girl book Caring and Keeping of You. She is doing the lapbook that goes with this book from Homeschoolshare.com. She is making it into a notebook instead of a lapbook.
Tapestry of Grace
History-We are learning about how the Middle Ages started. We read together chapter 1 of SOTW and parts of chapters 2 and 3. Catlyn read Story of Europe ch. 1-3 and Our Island Story Ch. 1-8.

Literature-We read Brigid's Cloak. This was a really good book. Catlyn was suppose to read Medieval Myths but it never came in at the library. I am hoping it comes in this week so she can read it next week.

Geography- We learned a couple of geography terms and made notebooking pages for them. Catlyn was suppose to make a salt map of Europe with Harper but this didn't get done. Hopefully, next week.
Church History-We read about St. Valentine and Augustine.

This week went very smoothly. We have started doing the subjects we do together first. Which is Tapestry of Grace and Science. Then they go to their desk to do their individual subjects. We are doing a modified version of the WorkBox System. All the kids are doing great and working a lot more indepently. Which I love.

Here is how it is working with each kid.

Charles-This is really working great for Charles. He has been the first one done with his school everyday this week. He loves seeing what he has to do at a glance and dives right in. He only needs me to help explain directions if he doesn't understand. Right now math is only review so he is completly independent with that also. But that will change when we start back up on Horizons but he will still be required to do all review on his own. We also do grammar together. I can not get over how well he did this week!!:)

Colin-is doing well also. He still does so many subjects with me since he is not reading. He does handwriting, math(review), Explode the Code and most of his spelling on his own. Together we do OPG, grammar, and literature. But he did great in everything and staying focused really well.

Catlyn-is doing everything on her own. Most of her work is now on the computer and she does it all with very little help from me. We are in the process of putting a computer in her room. When this happens I think she will be able to stay focused more. She gets very distracted by the boys.
I am very excited about our new system and schedule. I am praying it stays going smoothly!:)

And this is what our dog Argos does during school time!:)

Monday, July 6, 2009

Menu Plan

I am trying to get back on track with our menu planning. I hate to cook, I hate to clean the kitchen, and I really don't like leftovers but I guess I need to get over it and get on track!:) I try to give the kids fresh fruit for breakfast and veggies for lunch. Also, for dinner I always cut up a plate of carrot sticks, tomatoes, and cucumbers for the kids(only way I can get them to eat veggies).

Monday
Breakfast-Cereal and fruit
Lunch-Chicken Nuggets and applesauce
Dinner-Sausage and peppers over rice

Tuesday
Breakfast-Eggs and toast
Lunch-Sandwiches and veggies
Dinner-Spaghetti

Wednesday
Breakfast-bagels and fruit
Lunch-Mac and Cheese and carrot sticks
Dinner-BBQ Chicken and rice

Thursday
Breakfast-Cereal and yogurt
Lunch-Ramon Noodles and carrot sticks
Dinner-Roasted Chicken, mix veggies and rice

Friday
Breakfast-Eggs and toast
Lunch-PB&J and fruit
Dinner-French Bread Pizza

Saturday
Breakfast-Cereal
Lunch-Sandwiches
Dinner-Grill Burgers and corn on the cob

Sunday
Breakfast-Cereal
Lunch-Sandwiches
Dinner-Chinese Food