Week in Review #65: New Subjects and Old

Sometimes it is hard not to laugh.  As you can see from the picture above, Makayla brings a book everywhere, but most especially to the breakfast table.  I remember doing the same thing at her age.  I wonder if my mom ever had a hard time getting me to stop reading and do some schoolwork . . . sorry mom! 

It has been a good week, even with adding in several new things to our homeschool and places to be outside the house on two separate mornings.  The only comment about the new subjects was made by Makayla at the end of the first day, “I feel like Hermione (from the Harry Potter series) with all these subjects Mom.”  Thankfully it was said with a smile!  Here is our report:

Math is trucking along for all the children.  Makayla had no trouble with multiplying by zero and one.  Joseph and Emma are starting to remember a few math facts that they’ve been doing over and over.  Daniel counted things all week, and Oliver threw things all week.  Oh well, you win some, you lose some, right?

All About Spelling now involves 4 of my children.  I didn’t plan it that way, I was shooting for my 3 oldest being involved.  Makayla learned that i and o followed by two consonants can often be long vowels.  A few examples include:

• find
• most
• told
• cold
• kind

Joseph and Emma have begun using AAS as their reading program (read all about how and why we’re doing it here).  They practice a few phonograms a day and read from the reader.  My fourth student is Daniel – this was not planned!  He likes the cards and when I pull out the phonogram cards he is right there repeating what his bigger siblings are learning. 

All About Homophones has been a fun addition to Makayla’s workboxes this week.  She really enjoys words and so three days this week she worked on some homophone pairs.  She’s making a picture dictionary with definitions, synonyms, and drawings for each pair, plus she has a worksheet where she uses the right word in each sentence.

Gg Letter of the Week for Daniel and Oliver was fun, coloring gumball machines, dot painting letter g, and more. 

Hey, Andrew!  Teach Me Some Greek is going smoothly too for Makayla.  We’ve settled into an easy pattern for this review item.  She does 2 pages of a letter per day (each has 4 pages).  The next day she does the last 2 pages of the first letter and the first two pages of the next letter.  It’s easy, she’s getting constant review, and so far she likes it.

The Psalms study for Makayla and I is easy to do each day.  We’re actually using the King James Version of the scriptures, (the product came with verses written out from the New International Version), so I print a copy of the psalm and each day we have some defining, highlighting, or question answering to do.

Makayla’s writing this week - she wrote her own version of the Ant and the Grasshopper this week after reading Aesop’s fable.  I posted it here.  She also wrote a song/poem this week, which she informed me I was NOT to post on the blog.  I think this was inspired by her second week of piano lessons.  Her teacher encouraged her to play around on the piano and make up her own songs as part of her practice each day and Makayla is loving that.

We did finish A Bear Called Paddington this week.  The kids all loved it, and I have several other Paddington books on my shelves now to read.  We are still trying to decide what to do for our next read aloud.  Some of the kids want me to read the second Fablehaven book to them, while others are voting for more Paddington Bear. 

Our introduction to modern-day Greece has been fun as well.  We’ve learned a lot about this country in just a few days.  The funniest thing was hearing my children make connections with the historical and myth things they know of, such as Zeus, Mt. Olympus, and the Parthenon. 

That is enough about our week.  It is over and the children are ready to play outside – so I’m off to oblige them before it gets too hot out!  I hope you had a great week, be sure to link up over at the Weekly Wrap-Up when it is available!