Weekly School Summaries - France (December 5-16)

The Eiffel Tower and King Kong

Our MFW curriculum seems to lend itself to posting a summary every 2 weeks. Of course, the busyness of the holidays is probably contributing to me having less time to post too but a 2 week summary is just as good. I had a bunch of Christmas projects to work on so while we had a regular week December 5-9, this past week was a week of 1/2 days. Which I guess technically for us would be 1/4 days. :) Last week, we only did our MFW studies and put the 3 Rs on hold. It was a nice break to have an easier week but still get some work done. Here's what we did:

Math: Similar to usual. They each had 4 days of lessons and 1 day of math games on the computer.

Reading and Language Arts: Soprano continued The Hundred Penny Box  from 'Across the Centuries' with a couple days of reading, a family tree activity, a worksheet and an evaluation. 

She finished her first Phonics book and will begin the next one in the series next week.

English and Spelling are going well as is her Handwriting. We're up to Nn.

Tenor continued with his 'A Reason for Handwriting C' and 'Writing Strands.'

He continued in Stone Fox from 'Across the Centuries C Level 1' with a few worksheets, a cartoon drawing activity, and an evaluation.

English (Rod and Staff Level 4) and Spelling (Rod and Staff Level 4) are going well. 

Electives:
Typer Island for their typing instruction and continuing with SOS Elementary Spanish. I did change our schedule a bit because it felt like the school day was taking forever. So Tenor now has 2 days of typing and 2 days of Spanish. He gets Wednesdays off, while Soprano has 2 days of tying and 1 day of Spanish. It seemed to help us get through the day a little quicker. We'll see how it works this coming week.

They had a review worksheet about dental hygiene. We also talked about fishermen in PA.

Phys Ed.: We brought the scooters into the basement. It's an unfinished space but we have our family room, school room, and my craft space down there. The floors are concrete and there's enough open space for them to scoot around.  We also used the Wii Fit to do Island Cycling to coincide with our studies about France, where bicycling is popular.

Bible: The past two weeks included:
Reading about Albania and Gypsies
Reading Matthew 9:18-11:30
Memorizing Matthew 9:37-38 and 11:28

Reading about Menno Simons and William Tyndale.

Geography:
We've moved onto studying France. We read about the People and Places, Nature, Farming and Industry of Europe.

Coloring the French flag and writing down interesting facts about it.

Making a model of the Eiffel Tower out of K*nex.

I actually took 1 year of French in Junior High and then had a cassette tape course for 2 years in High School. I can't speak French whatsoever but I was able to muddle my way through the pronunciations for the language activity. I can however order a cheese omelet and Coke if I'm ever in France.

Illustrating notecards for cave, sea cave, river, and rapids

Soprano's geography cards

And playing the geography game with North and South America and adding Europe.

Tenor's Europe pages from World Geography were Islands, Climate, and, Animals.

Science: Discussion on Animal Defenses, Adaptation, Caves, the Balance of Nature, Classification, and Eugene Odum.

We read some neat books from the library including:

Pointy, Long, or Round

Caves: Mysteries Beneath Our Feet 
and
What Do Animals Do in the Winter?

Soprano finished the Reptile animal pages from The Complete Book of Animals and then moved on to the Science and Animals pages.

Other MFW: Wee sing: Wee Falorie Man, Coulter's Candy, Lavender's Blue, All the Ducklings, and Frere Jacques. I suppose I could have played some music by Debussy, Delibes, Ravel, or Saint-Saens but it just didn't happen.
 
Art: We got several books from the library about Claude Monet and Pierre-Auguste Renoir and then we did the profile silhouette activity.

Soprano's silhouette

Tenor's silhouette (Yes, those are his eyelashes. Ridiculous, right?)

To fill in a bit, we read other books about western European countries and borrowed DVDs from the library. We focused on Portugal, Spain, Italy, France, Greece, and Serbia.
Some favorite books from the library were:

C is for Ciao: An Italy Alphabet

Count Your Way Through Greece

Linnea in Monet's Garden

and Little Bo in France

We had French Toast for dinner one night (I know, I know, it's not quite authentic) and then went to Olive Garden for an Italian meal. Being quite a bit Italian, the younglings are pretty familiar with Italian food. Ahh.... chicken alfredo, garlic bread, pasta, more garlic bread... yum!

With Christmas just a few days away, I'm looking forward to another week of 1/4 days and then a week off. I know the kids are too. But we're finished with 15 of 36 weeks! Wow! I wasn't sure we'd get this far to be honest. O me of little faith. :)

Merry Christmas to you and your families! I hope your Christmas break is refreshing and filled with joy!

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