This was a weird week of school. It’s always a little hard to get back to work after a week off. But, we started bright and early Monday morning (a little earlier than usual, since I didn’t have to take Moose to school), and got to work. We’re back to our regular religion lessons, after having used the whole month of October to learn about the Reformation…we spent this whole week going over the story of Joseph and his brothers.

While we got back on track with religion, we went a different direction in history. This week (and part of next) was our annual “Thanksgiving School,” which meant we took a break from our regular US history to learn about the history of Thanksgiving, from the first celebration at Plimoth, through it becoming an national holiday in the 1800s, and on to modern-day festivities. In addition to our special themed read-alouds, we made a few crafts, and even tried an ethnic food. If you haven’t seen what we’ve been up to, check out our Thanksgiving School activities throughout the week!

• Thanksgiving School 2012 Day One
• Thanksgiving School 2012 Day Two
• Thanksgiving School 2012 Day Three
• Thanksgiving School 2012 Day Four
• Thanksgiving School 2012 Day Five

Our science lessons were a continuation of what we started before our vacation…learning about the respiratory system. We had fun doing a few experiments and adding on to our “Personal Persons.” I continue to be impressed with the Apologia curriculum, and the children must be, too, because they’re placing requests for which of the other topics we’ll be able to study someday!

In math, Turkey and Bunny have started multiplying double-digit numbers by double-digit numbers. The way the book explained it was very unclear to me, and I had to bring in Ryan to figure out how they wanted me to teach it. I ended up abandoning their examples altogether, in favor of teaching them the way I learned. So far, it seems to be going OK! Meanwhile, Ladybug has been counting pennies in her math lessons…she’s already almost finished her kindergarten workbook because she enjoys math so much!

Ladybug continues to read three-letter words, and to try to read everything else. Her handwriting is, I think, finally starting to improve…it’s funny how our girls have the bad handwriting in the family! Turkey and Bunny continued working on writing interesting, varied sentences in Writing Strands, and working on past, present, and future tense verbs in grammar. They also grudgingly redid the spelling lesson from two weeks ago that they both struggled with so greatly. I think maybe now they’ve got the whole “i before e” thing figured out!

Next week is a short week because of Thanksgiving, but I’ve still got a few special things planned!