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If we value the pursuit of knowledge, we must be free to follow wherever that search may lead us. ~ Adlai Stevenson

Friday, September 26, 2008

Officially 4 weeks in...

One month down, more to go! Some parts are going better than I planned, some not at all (we haven't even opened Story of the World this fall). I finally have all my Oak Meadow stuff - the kids' IST ordered new copies of the 2nd grade readers and books, along with a new copy of the Kindergarten Fairy Tales. Gorgeous books. I was nervous about the readers when I opened them - pages of text (albeit a larger font) with very few black-&-white illustrations, but guess what? The Elf loves them! He's reading Ben & Meg to me, just a page a day right now, then we'll aim for 2 pages a day, and so on from there.

So, let's see, what did we accomplish this week? Besides both kids having the sniffles and sore throats...

Language Arts
the Elf read several pages of the aforementioned reader to me. He worked on a couple of worksheet pages from his new anthology set: one exercise was rewriting simple sentences into longer sentences, which he surprisingly enjoyed. We read aloud from Oak Meadow's Animal Stories and the Elf drew a picture to go with a few sentences I wrote down for him, which he copied into his main lesson book.

the Fairy worked on reviewing the letters A, B & C. She colored the corresponding pages in her new Flower Fairy alphabet coloring book. We read a beautiful book by Anita Lobel, called Alison's Zinnia. She completed another 3 pages in HWOT.

Math
the Elf is continuing to work through MathSteps. We have finished unit 1, as of today, which was mainly review work regarding fact families. Good practice & review for him. The next unit is Place Value through 100. Agin, it's a lot of review, but I am trying to make sure he has a good solid base before we move onwards and upwards in math.

the Fairy has reached her target for month one, having finished lessons 1-8, front and back, in Saxon Math 1.

Social Studies
We are wrapping up our Australian studies today with Dreamtime paintings from Global Art. I have a stack of books on South Africa ready to go for Monday. So far, studying world cultures has been a HUGE hit here!

Science
The kids are working today to finish animal fact pages about Australian animals. Over the last four weeks, in addition to learning about oceans, we have learned a great deal about Australian animals, plants and terrain. I am dropping additional science studies I had originally planned, as so much science can be interwoven with our social studies instead. We did read the first chapter in RS4K Chemistry this week - Atoms - and next week we'll start Friday Nature Studies.

Other
the Elf is continuing his self-guided exploration of trains, airplanes, and cars with library books and videos. the Fairy has developed a passion for Shirley Temple movies!

And there's our week in review.

2 comments:

  1. Im trying to get to story of the world too and havent managed to crack it. Looks like you had a good week!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Sounds like a lovely, productive week.

    ReplyDelete

What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.
Emerson

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