This was an especially busy week of school, because in addition to all of our regular work, we added in our Lenten activities as well (Amon’s Adventure and the Jesus Tree), which mean a lot more reading out loud for me…my throat is parched! We also started memorizing a new hymn on Wednesday this week, instead of our usual Monday…”Christ the Life of All the Living.” I’m planning on us memorizing three or four Lenten hymns, plus a Palm Sunday hymn, and a Holy Week hymn, before Easter…we’ll see how that goes.

Turkey and Bunny continued to work on fractions in math. Adding and subtracting fractions with different denominators, adding and subtracting mixed number and improper fractions, finding common factors and lowest common denominators…it was all fractions, all the time this week! Ladybug has been working on adding three-digit numbers and continues to memorize her subtraction facts. And Chickadee has been working on number identification and counting to three! When you’re observing older siblings, I guess “school” begins early!

In language arts, Turkey and Bunny worked on identifying different adverbs, as well as the questions those adverbs answered (how, when, and where). Ladybug has been reviewing pronouns, because they’ve been giving her a little difficulty. She knows them until she’s asked to identify them in a sentence, at which point she promptly forgets them! So, we’re going over the pronoun lessons again.

Our history lessons focused on ancient China this week. We learned about the period of the warring states, the Qin dynasty and the building of the Great Wall. We also learned about Confucius and some of his teachings. Next week, we return to ancient Rome, and most of our remaining lessons will focus on that famous Empire.

We finished our study of Saturn in science this week, and got to have an outdoor experiment, since the weather today was nice. We made an Alka-Seltzer powered rocket! It traveled about eight feet, but due to how not level our front sidewalk is, it tipped over and traveled horizontally instead of vertically. The point was still made, though, and we were impressed that one tablet could create enough gas to make it travel that far!

Next week, in addition to our regular studies, we’ll be learning about Ireland and St. Patrick’s Day, and I’m hopeful that we’ll be having a St. Patrick’s Day field trip this year, too…details to come!