Weekly report....

It has been a pretty good week! Not too hurried, not too slow, and beautiful sunny, warm weather.

Elf
Worked some more on writing and ciphering secret codes. He looked up some words he was curious about from his incessant reading, and I had him write the definitions from his Children's Dictionary, and use the words in sentences. He did some copywork, in cursive. His work in Writing Tales also included using synonyms in a paragraph, something he found to be great fun.

In math, he did a few worksheets on multiplication and division that I printed out from online. He is getting better with his 4's facts, and now has 1-3, 5's and 10's down. I am hoping to get through 6's and 9's soon, and then we'll tackle 7's. I have a handy little trick up my sleeve with 9's, so I am guessing that won't take too long! He also read The Best of Times: Math Strategies that Multiply.

Fairy
She's been watching 15 minutes of phonics videos a day - she loves anything with music/singing, and she follows along with her whiteboard. She did copywork too, and worked on words with the short "O" sound. She also read to me from her Bob Books.

In math, she worked on more addition and subtraction, doing fact families up to 10. She loved using her unifix cubes for this, especially with the addition. She had some tables to fill in, and she would choose two different colors of unifix cubes, one to be the PLUS number and the other to be the number she was adding to the PLUS number. So she's had 6 yellow and add 3 blue, or 5 yellow and 3 blue, etc. Having the hands-on really seems to cement things in her mind.

Both
This was our week to focus on county history (to satisfy the charter school, and because it is interesting). We read some more in Valley of the Moon: The Diary of.... and found some great rancho printouts online. We looked back at pictures of out trips to the local rancho, and talked about what life would have been like in those times. They remembered a lot from the Living History Day a couple of years ago! They're doing the Living History Day again this year - maybe we'll go.

We also read a story about Saint Patrick from Living Books Curriculum. The kids made green paper shamrocks, and leprechaun/rainbow/pot of gold pictures complete with green and gold glitter. We had seen Celtic Legends just last week, and the lead man discussed a little of St. Patrick's history. When LBC sent me a free study on it, I thought that all tied in nicely.

In science, we studied the eye and ear, finally. We got Eyes and Ears from the library, and found some printouts that the kids could lable and color. We made paper cup telephones, using 3 different types of string - yarn, twine, and dental floss. All worked, but the kids agree that the yarn worked best. We discussed how remarkable it is that our eye sees upside down and our brain instantly translates it to right-side up. Pretty amazing things, the eyes!

We also got in some time for nature studies. We spent part of the day yesterday working on our front yard, which has sadly become overgrown with weeds on one side of the walkway. While I pulled weeds, the kids relocated all the ladybugs we found to the "safe" side of the yard. Both remarked on what a good job the fairies did in painting the ladybugs this year! We also took an evening walk, with M, at a (new to us) local wetlands preserve. We saw several types of birds, and the kids learned how to identify poison hemlock, which is easy to tell by its "bloody" stems. I also showed them a spot where three different kinds of oak trees are coming into leaf, so they could see how different the leaf structure is. I got to practice some of the techniques I am learning in docent training as well.

In home ec, I had Elf write the grocery list this week, and as he went, Fairy illustrated it so she could help read the list at the store. We made a delicious Morroccan lamb stew last night, although with all the flavors going on, beef would have worked just as well as the more expensive lamb. As per a few other recipes I browsed, we added a can of chickpeas when we added the tomato, etc., and sprinkled the finished dish with finely chopped roasted pistachios and chopped cilantro. The kids each ate two servings, so I'd say it was a hit!

We have just about finished up Despereaux, and have, after much discussion, decided to read The Twenty-One Balloons next, one of my personal, all-time favorites!

And in other news, while I plan to continue with my fun math plans, we discussed various resources, and decided to keep Saxon Math on hand as well. I was very lucky and found Saxon Math 5/4, second-hand student manual and the solutions manual, for only $18! I also realized, duh, that I don't need the teacher's manual for Saxon Math 2 (I've never used one yet), so I just need the workbooks, which are very inexpensive too. The kids like Saxon becuase the work is always mixed, since it uses an incremental, spiral approach. We also decided to stick with Story of the World for history, and to go ahead with earth and space sciences, keeping nature studies as an informal and fun side topic.

And there's our week!