This was another strange week…we seem to have a lot of those!
Moose had off from school on Monday because it was Presidents’ Day. I planned a light day of school so that he could join in. Most of our day involved looking at slides under our new microscope, once Turkey and Bunny had finished their math and grammar and Ladybug finished her reading and handwriting for the day.
Tuesday and Wednesday were fairly normal. We moved on in history, to the time after World War I. Our studies focused on Prohibition, Women’s Suffrage, and the Spanish Flu. We also started a new read-aloud, A Letter to Mrs. Roosevelt. This book takes place during the Great Depression, so it’s set a bit ahead of where we currently are in our survey of American history, but we had to start it now if we’re going to get to the other books I want to read this year. I’ve never read this book before, and so far, I really like it. The children must, too, because they’ve been begging me to read multiple chapters a day!
We also started a unit on the senses in science. This was quite eye-opening to me, because I’ve never heard that there are six senses before (five special and one general). Live and learn! We only got through one lesson this week instead of our usual two, though…we’ll just have to do a little extra next week to make up for it!
Thursday and Friday were another two strange days. We had a lot of snow/sleet/ice, so school was cancelled for Moose those days. Because there was so much ice, we couldn’t play in the snow we had, and the roads were too bad to go anywhere. As long as we were stuck in the house, we had school as scheduled…kind of. Our days are always different when Moose is home, because I try to find ways to involve him in what we’re doing. That worked out well on Friday, because he wanted to have his spelling test when Turkey and Bunny had theirs, so I quizzed him on his words. This resulted in Ladybug also wanting a spelling test, so I came up with a few simple words for her, too. We again spent some time looking at different slides under the microscope…so very interesting and fun!
Turkey and Bunny also had a fun writing assignment that took this whole week. Their task was to pick a window in our house without saying which one, and write about the view from said window. They spent a few days organizing and writing this short paper, and I was very pleased with the final results (Turkey did need a little extra help, though, because he has a tendency to write the way he talks, which makes for a very casual paper!). On Friday, I had them go look out their chosen window again, and write what they were able to see after all of the snow and ice fell…it was very interesting to see how different the two versions of their papers ended up being! They also got to guess what perspective the other wrote from…as it turned out, they had both chosen the same window! They were surprised to see what different things they each noticed, and since that was a big objective of the writing assignment, I’d say it was a success!
Ladybug is struggling a bit with vowels in her reading. First of all, she can’t remember from day-to-day what all of the vowels are. Sometimes she forgets e, sometimes i…you get the picture. And then she tends to confuse the vowel sounds in words (especially a and o), on top of it. Teaching her to read is a little more challenging than I remember it being with Turkey and Bunny, but they also had each other to look to when they didn’t know an answer, so I guess it’s to be expected.
Hopefully next week will be a little more routine, and we can get back to our regular schedule!
