You can really tell we’re almost to the end of the school year. Only one lesson left in our grammar workbooks, our writing book is almost done, we’re on the last chapter of science, and history is starting to feel more current!
Turkey and Bunny have been working on different types of graphs this week…pie graphs, line graphs, bar graphs, pictographs, and coordinate graphs. They’ve seen most of these graphs before, but I don’t think they’re ever compared the different types so closely and intentionally before. They’ve had a lot of fun creating different graphs to illustrate different scenarios…I didn’t think that graphing would be so exciting!
Ladybug has been begging me to start on her first grade math workbooks this week. I placed our curriculum order last week, and it’s all arrived. I haven’t done “box day” yet, but the boxes were still spotted and peeked into. She found her math workbooks right away, and is so excited about all of the things she’s going to get to do! Turkey is feeling the same way about our science curriculum for next year, because we’ll be studying his favorite subject–astronomy. Bunny just cares about what new books there are to read, and also spent a little complaining about having to do grammar, which is weird, because she used to be very strict about proper grammar. I’m not sure what happened there!
In science, we’re learning fun things about growth and development and genetics. Of course, a lot of the details are hard to understand, but the children are having fun figuring out what traits they have in common with other relatives. It was amusing to try to get them to see if any of them can roll their tongues…none of them could do it, but I know I’ve seen Bunny do it in the past, so she must only be able to accomplish that trick when she’s not thinking about it. Just like Daddy…
I will be very relieved when we start Ladybug’s new handwriting curriculum next year. She truly hates doing it, and I’ve gotten to the point where I hate asking her. I’m pretty sure she’s going to find Handwriting Without Tears to be much more fun, especially since she gets her own little chalkboard. Of course, Turkey and Bunny feel like they missed out on something fun, but that’s just how it goes.
In history, we’ve been learning about the civil rights movement, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Rosa Parks. I’m glad that my children can’t comprehend how people used to be treated in this country, and also a little sad that they have to know how cruel people can be at all. But part of history is learning from our mistakes, so it is good for them to know about it, even if it is unpleasant.
We finally finished our read-aloud. Next week, we’ll be starting Cracker! The Best Dog in Vietnam. We’ll be getting a little bit ahead of ourselves compared to where we are in history, although we did learn about French Indochina as well this week, and how that set the stage for the Vietnam War, so it won’t be completely out-of-place. It’s a pretty long book, so it should take us through the end of the school year. We didn’t get to just one read-aloud this year, In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson, so that will be a book basket option. I’m disappointed that we didn’t get to read it together, but there were just too many days last month where my voice couldn’t make it through one more reading…these things happen.
Nothing particularly exciting planned for next week, just wrapping up more subjects as we draw closer to the end of the 2012-13 school year!