Weekly School Summary - USA (Sept. 12-16)

I respectfully ask that you not pin pictures of my children to Pinterest. Thank you!

This was our first 5-day school week and it went well. Friday is a lighter day for MFW work so that helped us get done a little earlier which was nice after 4 full days.

Here's what we did this week:

Math: Tenor had 5 lessons while Soprano did 4 and played games at www.coolmath4kids.com on Friday.

Reading and Language Arts: After 4 days of lessons, Tenor had his first language arts test. He did well so we're moving on to the 2nd LightUnit. Soprano is still struggling with her phonics and some of the pronunciation key stuff. It's still up in the air whether or not we'll keep going or if we'll start looking for a new curriculum.

 
Electives:
The kids spent some time on www.freetypinggame.net for their typing instruction.
They did a health worksheet about the differences between white bread and wheat bread (complete with taste test.) It was funny to watch them record their observations and act like scientists but keep sneaking little bites of bread. I guess they were hungry!
We did a PA History worksheet about the first settlement in Pennsylvania.
Tenor continued with reviewing and practicing cursive letters: Pp, Qq, Rr, Ss, Tt, and Vv. One more week of individual letters and then we'll be ready for words and Bible verses. I think he'll like that more.

Civics... sigh... I'm required to teach Civics (for our state's homeschool regulations) but it seems strange to have it be it's own subject. Maybe I'm missing something here. :) We're going the easy route this year just to have something to put in the portfolio. I found a set of Community Helper flashcards at the local education store. So every other week, we'll talk about a Community Helper along with what they do and the tools they use. We'll also get a couple of library books about that career for our book basket. This week, we started with dentists. We talked about what they do and why they're important for the overall community as well as us personally.

 
A new addition to our school room! 2 pocket charts from the $1 bin at Target. These currently hold our Community Helper of the week but will also hold info about different habitats/biomes that we'll study this year.

Bible: We started reading in Hero Tales about Dwight Moody. We read several stories about his life as well as a short biographical sketch and learned about his repentance, boldness, and strength. We're using the copywork printables from Mama Jenn's blog to go along with all of the character traits in Hero Tales.

Micah reads the Kingdom Tales stories at night as part of bedtime. Although he said he likes to start them in the morning after reading the Bible so he can leave the kids with a cliff-hanger.

Our 'Greek' Matthew bookmarks.

Geography: We used the Classroom Atlas to talk about various features and info about North America and then the United States and identifying different locations. We also started learning state names and large bodies of water while labeling them on a US map .

Tenor will be doing a selection of pages from World Geography to learn more about North America. I went through the book and copied pages that I thought were at his level and then divided them out for our 6 weeks studying North America. It amounts to 2-3 pages per week. This week, he did 'Physical Features of North America' and 'Rivers of North America.'
They also did their vocabulary cards this week.

Soprano illustrating isthmus for her geography vocab cards.

Science: We learned about forests and their layers. We also colored a world map representing 3 types of forests and where they exist (mountainous, deciduous, and coniferous.) We did our nature study at the park. They each picked a tree to write and draw about. They both collected a leaf specimen so we could come home and try to identify the type of tree, and Tenor did a bark rubbing. Soprano started working through the North American Animals sheets from The Complete Book of Animals.

Other MFW: We continued with Wee Sing Around the World. Gotta say though, 'The Crooked Path'... not my fav song. For our art project, we did the motion picture flip books. Mainly because I had the supplies on hand, and it wasn't messy!

Soprano's flag flip book

Tenor's fish flip book

Phys Ed.: We've been having nice weather so they got a lot of outside play time this week. We also went to a local park that has several climbing playgrounds and 2 good size rocks that can be climbed for an afternoon.

I'm impressed with all the other MFW homeschoolers out there who are looking for additional activities to do and extra creative ways to present the material.... it takes us a long time to get everything completed each day. I feel like I have a new full-time job. Phew! It's good but it's a lot of work!

Linking up at www.weirdunsocializedhomeschoolers.com and
at http://discovertheirgifts.blogspot.com.