This was a really fun week of school, even with the cold that’s been making the rounds through the house!
Most of our fun came in the form of math. After struggling with long division, it’s so nice to see Turkey and Bunny enjoying math again. We continued our introduction to geometry this week, adding terms for angles and circles. Ladybug was listening in our lessons, and I discovered that she learned how to name angles right along with her big brother and sister. That’s one of those fun things to observe while homeschooling, and gives me hope that learning may come easier to Ladybug, because she’s been listening in the whole time! We also continued to work on logic problems, mostly for fun, and we’re getting quite good at them. And when I say we, I truly do mean me, too. My skill has really increased since I’ve been working through them out loud with the children. It’s good to know the teacher can learn some things, too!
Our Bible studies have been focusing on the early kings of Israel–Saul, David, and Solomon. It’s always interesting to try to discuss David and Bathsheba with children! We also made a banner for Lent for our school room this week. We voted on the phrase we wanted on the banner…Turkey and Ladybug’s choice won, and mine and Bunny’s (two different phrases), lost. Turkey generously offered to let Bunny decide on the placement of the figures and the words, though, to lessen her disappointment in “losing” the vote. (We made a banner for Ash Wednesday/Good Friday, too, but it’s just a plain, black piece of felt…no real work there!)
In history, we continued to learn about factories, strikes, and unions. We spent a good deal of time talking about how a union can be a two-edged sword, and the bad that can come with the good. It’s interesting to watch the children try to process the idea that something can be good on one hand, but bad on the other. I guess they’re starting to realize that not everything in life is black and white.
We finished reading Cheaper by the Dozen, and as a treat, got to watch the original movie. The children really enjoyed seeing some of their favorite scenes from the book acted out, and were surprised at how much the characters in the movie looked like they had imagined them. We also talked about some of the changes they made from the book to the movie, and why those changes were necessary. The biggest disappointment to the children was that not every single thing from the book was in the movie…I think they wished it had been a lot longer.
We finished our initial overview of the nervous system in science…next week, we’ll get even more in-depth. Turkey, Bunny, and Ladybug had fun designing a board game that covered all of the systems they’ve learned about so far. Turkey and Bunny had the most work, of course, because they had to write all of the questions for the game (and make sure they had the correct answers for them!), but Ladybug also helped out by coloring the game board for us, and coming up with categories to represent the systems we’ve discussed. I continue to love Apologia science, and feel bad that Turkey and Bunny haven’t been using it all along. I guess Ladybug, and eventually Chickadee, are the really lucky ones as far as science is concerned!
Next week, we’ll be doing some fun activities for Valentine’s Day, and starting some new read-alouds. We’ll also be having another tea party…I decided that I just wasn’t done being British, after all!