Wrapping up the week...

It has been a decent week, though very wet - rain for days on end and it is starting to make the kids cranky. Right now they're okay as they are building a town out of cardboard... they used a huge sheet to draw roads, and now they're making houses, and driving Hot Wheels all over it.

Language Arts
Elf is continuing to read The Magician's Boy. He did all his work in Writing Tales this week too. Next week I plan to start cursive writing with him, probably using Happy Scribe copybooks. I bought their package deal sometime back, so I have dozens of topics to choose from! He also re-read Punctuation Takes a Vacation, and did a few pages in G.U.M. on predicates.

Fairy is doggedly going through Phonics Pathways. She is trying to read more, and spent some time on Starfall yesterday, working on the little books instead of the letter pages. Her handwriting is developing nicely, although she tends to do some letters the reverse of the way Handwriting Without Tears says to. Maybe it is the left-handedness? For example, she does small "e" from the bottom up. I'm not really too picky about this. If her handwriting is legible, I'm happy!

We are still reading The Tale of Desperaux at night (when I'm not at work!), and are very much enjoying it. I think our next read-aloud will be The Phantom Tollbooth.

Math
We are on a break from Saxon. Elf is working on times tables and Fairy is working on number families in addition and subtraction. I make my own worksheets, or find them online. Fairy did a few pages in Houghton Mifflin's MathSteps this week too, since units 5-8 focus on various number families.

History
We are in Ancient Rome! We spent maybe an hour yesterday looking at Rome in Spectacular Cross-Section. My kids love that type of book, so it made for a good, quiet time with both of them sitting in the big chair. They also watched the Rome episode of Time Warp Trio. Next week we'll launch into SOTW, map work, and all that.

On a side note, here are pictures of their Greek Vase project from last week:





Science
This week the kids followed their own interests in science. Elf took apart and re-built both his microscope and telescope, successfully. He spent a lot of time examining rain water, puddle water, tap water, etc. under the microscope, and shared his findings with Fairy. They also watched a few episodes of Magic School Bus this week, since we can't go outside much!

Other
Elf has gotten into stop-motion photography/filming (hence the bend-a-roos on the wall in the above pictures). I'm trying to figure out how to make the uploaded pictures into a film, maybe PhotoBucket? Anyhow, once I get one done, I'll post it.

Both kids spent time playing guitars this week, and their drums. They've played board games, and gone to tap (Elf) and tap/ballet (Fairy) classes. We might go to homeschool gymnastics in an hour if I can find Elf's sweatpants!