This was another short week of school, due to a grandparent visit for Moose’s birthday, and Veteran’s Day, but we still got a remarkable amount of work done this week! We’ve entered into the period of the judges in our religion lessons. I’m thinking that pretty soon we’re going to leave the written order of the stories in our Bible storybook, and delve into the prophecies regarding Jesus’ birth, and then His birth, as well, as we approach Advent. I’ve never done it that way before, and I think it will be a good way to focus on those parts of the Bible. Our thankful tree is also continuing to grow…according to Turkey, it’s a very unique tree, because it gains leaves during fall, instead of losing them!
Math was interesting this week. In addition to continuing to work on scientific notation, Turkey and Bunny began working on binary. Seriously?!? I am almost certain I never learned binary. I will admit, it’s hard for me to teach lessons that I fail to see a point to, but I’m doing it anyway…maybe there will be some practical application for it in their lives that I’m missing. Ladybug is now borrowing while subtracting, and somewhat surprisingly, thinks it’s super easy. I’m not complaining though!
Spelling was challenging for Turkey and Bunny this week, because their whole list was French derivations. There were a few words on there that I had to think hard about! They mostly seemed to have mastered the words those, with the possible exception of chauffeur, which is one of the words that gave even me trouble.
Our history lessons this week focused on knights and samurai, which is the lesson that Turkey has been looking forward to since the beginning of the year, and the Crusades. It’s fun to learn about knights; it’s not so fun to learn about the Church’s darker moments. We’ll be studying more about the Crusades next week, as well, so there’s more unpleasantness to come.
We finished our leaves lessons in science. In addition to the general wrap-up we do at the end of each chapter, we also worked on identifying the leaves we found last week by name. Even with a good leaf identification book, it’s no easy task…for example, there are an awful lot of different maple trees with leaves that look very similar!
Now that we’ve finished The Hobbit, we’ve moved on to American Poetry and Short Stories. I’m really looking forward to some of the things we’ll be reading in that text, including works by Poe, Longfellow, and Irving. Bunny is especially interested in the poetry aspect, as she loves reading (and writing) poetry. We’ve also moved on to the third book in the Grandma’s Attic series, and it’s really fun to read them to Ladybug for the first time, as well as to listen to Turkey and Bunny’s reactions when they hear which chapter we’ll be reading next.
Next week is the beginning of our yearly “Thanksgiving School”…I can’t wait!