WEEKLY REVIEW

This week, we finished up Edward Lear for poetry, and will be moving on to someone else next week.  I am not sure who, though.  I am finding very few poets left whose work I like enough to want to focus on reading it for the length of time it takes to memorize one of their poems.  I am thinking about just choosing a poem to memorize, then reading from some poetry book each day. We have Favorite Poems, Old and New, and could mark any poems that would be worth memorizing as we come to them.  I think we would like the variety.  Also, there are some great poems I'd like to do, but the rest of the particular poet's work is either too hard, too boring, or whatever.

For our artist this week, we did Georgia O'Keefe.  She is famous for her abstract paintings of flowers, as well as skulls and bones of cows, and the New Mexico landscape (also abstract) paintings.  I wanted the girls to be exposed to her because of her fame, but we didn't really enjoy her paintings very much at all, and will be moving on to another artist this week.   I haven't looked to see who yet.

We continued listening to Benjamin Britten (at least, whenever we remembered to), and will stick with him for another week, since we are changing both artist and poet.  

We started reading about England and looking at the map and flag, which we put on our bulletin board.  It is hard to find anything that just focuses on England, and not on the UK.  We found a little book written in 1982 or so, that is really well written with some nice pictures.  Even if everything isn't up to date, it is the England that I want my girls to be exposed to, with the rolling hills, quaint villages and houses, and historical districts.  

For our Middle Ages History, we started If All the Swords in England, a historical fiction focusing on Thomas Becket and his time.  For American, we are continuing to read Little Britches.  Also, just for fun, we are reading The Search for Delicious, by Natalie Babbitt, because we like Tuck Everlasting so much.  She is a really good writer, and I love reading her writing.

Speaking of Tuck Everlasting, Big Girl and I read through the second third of it this week, and have one more week to go.  We used the Glencoe literature guide online to discuss what we had read.  Her lesson in Critical Thinking was Eyewitnesses and Circumstantial Evidence.  She did her usual Easy Grammar and math and vocabulary lessons, as well as continuing in Module 2 in biology.  We started her Wordsmith writing this week.  The first lesson was supposed to be to write a two page paper on "what I did last summer."  But since we school all year, I changed it to something that would interest her more - horses.  The idea was that it would be a very broad subject that would be too hard to write about, and she realized it immediately.  But I had her do it anyway because the book says she will be taking it out and working on it throughout the year.

Little Girl did lesson 12 in MUS Delta, and did 4 lessons in her CLE Language arts.  It is still really just review of stuff she already knows, so I am starting to skip lessons.  I noticed the next light unit gets into things that are new.  Something I did discover, though, is that she does not really know how to write a paragraph.  She can tell me exactly what one is, and how it is supposed to be, but when she was supposed to write one, she didn't do well at all.  She had two quotes that were unrelated.  So I decided we would do just the writing lessons in her R&S 4 English book.  It is just right, because the focus in this particular level happens to be paragraphs.  I am thinking of adding some copywork again, of good paragraphs.  We will see.  As for her reading, I finally decided to just drop the light units and let her just read the stories.  She was glad and said she really likes the stories.  She finished up Pinocchio this week.  Not sure what I will start her on next.  I was going to have her read Edith Nesbit's Five Children and It online, but I am not so sure I like depending on the computer so much.  I will decide this weekend.

We are still doing our Gospel harmony overview, and I really need to get planning what exactly we are going to do next.  I have a basic idea to go through the NT (excluding the Gospels) chronologically using Acts, like Veritas Press does.  Just got to get it all planned out.

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WEEKLY REVIEW

We continued looking at paintings by Edward Lear this week, and will start a new artist next week.  We will continue with him for poetry though, because there are many more poems we'd like to read, even though the girls already have The Owl and the Pussycat memorized.  Our current composer is Benjamin Britten, famous for Peter and the Wolf and The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra.  

We finished up the "introductory" chapters 1-3 in our BJU Geography this week, so we will be moving on to the actual countries.  We will read the pertinent section in BJU, then stop and do a study of that particular country, with books we own, library books, websites, and videos, if we can find any.  We have a spot on our bulletin board for it, too, where we put the name, flag, map, and some pictures of things the particular country is known for.  Our first country will be England.

Little girl did 4 lessons in her CLE Language Arts (all but the spelling and handwriting parts), and we did the CLE Reading orally.  I think we will finish it up orally.  There are some good things in there I'd like to expose her to.  But I am sure we will not continue with a reading program.  Of course, knowing me, I know better than to say "never."  She also did her MUS, spelling, typing, and independent reading.  She is currently only reading the Vos Story Bible, Abeka 5th grade science book, a COFA book (not sure which one), and Collodi's Pinocchio, which she will finish up next week.  

Big girl is working through her Apologia Biology, 16 days per module.  This was her first week doing it that way.  The way I scheduled it out, she has reading to do 3 days, then looking at the extra book links on Friday.  She did about two pages per day of EG Plus, and is still working through Key To Algebra and Jensen's Vocabulary.  We are still working through Critical Thinking together.  I like the topics covered, but we don't always feel the need to do all the exercises once she has the idea.  She started her first book for our literature this week - Tuck Everlasting.  We read from a guide online about the author and the introduction to the novel, and then both she and I are reading it at the same time and taking notes.  Then, on Monday, we will have a discussion and read the pertinent notes from the Glencoe guide online.  I thought it was best to start with an easy, but really good, book.

We finished up our reading about Castles this week, and will be starting on the first Crusades next week.  This will be something that is hard to find accurate information on, I am afraid.  But we will see.

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WEEKLY REVIEW

This week in world history, we started studying about castles.  We are reading one fact book and one fiction book, Castle Diary.  I also have a couple other books with lots of pictures for the girls to look at.  

In U.S. history, we started reading Little Britches, and are reading the chapters in our spine for this time period.  We also started a big anthology full of Paul Bunyan tales and poems.  We are still reading On the Banks of Plum Creek, and we also are reading a biography of Robert Frost that I didn't realize we had when we were studying him. 

I am going to start having Big Girl do her vocabulary in one week per lesson, instead of two like we have been doing.  Also, we are cutting back the pages she will do in Easy Grammar so that we can add some writing and literature study.  I ordered Wordsmith for her.  She likes the looks of it, and so do I.  Also, we are going to start doing a literature study of one good book at a time, reading it slowly and taking notes and using any guide I can find online for additional discussion.  She and I will read the same chapters, take notes, and then discuss.  For her Apologia Biology, I am going to start planning out 4 weeks (16 days) per module.  There is no rush to get through it, as there are only 16 modules, and this will allow time to look up things on the internet and anything else we might like to add.  She also commented that science was much easier to digest in small chunks than in big ones.

I have figured out that the CLE reading that Little Girl is doing is just not for us.  It is pretty much just busy work, which we don't need.  I am going to keep doing the lessons, but orally.  At least until I get tired of it.  I may end up just letting her read the stories.  There are better things to spend our time on.  

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