Weekly School Summaries - Russia (April 9-20)

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

 People keep asking how our first year of homeschooling is going. I've heard that it takes about 3 years to really get into a groove and that the first year is the hardest. With that in mind, my answer has been, if the first year is the hardest then we've had a great year. There have been some really rough days but for the most part things have gone really well. All that to say, we're very ready for summer break. :)
Here's what we did the past 2 weeks:

Math: Same as usual for both Tenor and Soprano: 4 days of lessons and 1 day of math games on the computer each week.

Reading and Language Arts: Soprano started "The Little House in the Big Woods" from 'Across the Centuries'. She read through chapter 5, had a couple evaluations, made a log cabin with Lincoln Logs, a rag doll, and a little paper sled.

She's doing well in her third Phonics book. In English, she's working on rhyming words for poetry. Spelling and handwriting are continuing well. 

Tenor continued with his 'A Reason for Handwriting C' and is working his next level writing workbook.

He continued 'Helen Keller' from 'Across the Centuries C Level 2', with some reading and vocabulary word work. He also did a Braille worksheet and learned a worship song in sign language. English (direct and indirect quotations) and Spelling (Rod and Staff Level 4) are going well. 

Electives:
Typer Island for their typing instruction and continuing with SOS Elementary Spanish.

They did two health worksheets. One was about how the heart works and then a final review of physical fitness. We are officially done with health for the year. One subject down.... way to many too go! We also talked about the PA state bird and how police officers are community helpers.

Phys Ed.: We've really slacked off on being intentional about exercising. They're doing Tae Kwon Do each week but that's been about it. Although, they've been shooting baskets off and on in the past couple of days.

Bible: The past two weeks included:
Reading about Russia and the Kyrgyz people
Reading Matthew 24:29-26:16
Memorizing Matthew 25:34-35

Geography:

Things we did included:
Filling out our passports to travel to Russia

Coloring the Russian flag and writing down interesting facts about it. Reading about Russia and its neighbors, Russian people and places, nature, farming, and industry.
Learning more about Russia here: http://kids.nationalgeographic.com/kids/places/find/russia/

Taking a virtual tour of St. Petersburg here: http://www.saint-petersburg.com/virtual-tour/index.asp

We tried out the basic ballet positions and matched Russian numbers to the number of ballerinas on a worksheet. We also figured out what our Russian names would be using their system of feminine/masculine, patronyms, and nicknames.

Illustrating notecards for tundra, geyser, taiga, and steppe.

Playing the geography game doing the world traveler version.

Tenor's Asia pages from World Geography were Language and Religion. He's done 1 page per week during our Asia studies.

Soprano finished the Ocean Animal pages from The Complete Book of Animals. She's done 3 sheets or mini storybook per week for the 10 weeks we're studied Asia.

Science: We had a few pages from the Living World Encyclopedia again these past two weeks. 

They read about the arctic and surviving the cold. We also learned about the tundra. We did a couple of experiments showing how animals who change colors blend into their environment and how 2 layers of fur helps to keep them warm.

Other MFW: 

Wee sing: Veselle Husi

We also listened to Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, and Rachmaninoff via Pandora. On youtube, we watched an old Disney video about Tchaikovsky that was pretty cool.

I also found a recording of Peter and the Wolf at the library and a DVD of Swan Lake that the kids enjoyed.

Art: Jeweled Eggs and Coloring St. Basil's Cathedral 

To supplement, we read other books about other Asian countries near Russia (Ukraine, Georgia, Estonia), the arctic, polar bears, and the tundra and borrowed DVDs from the library.

Linking up at www.weirdunsocializedhomeschoolers.com and

at http://2ladybugsandalizard.blogspot.com.

Disclaimer: I'm an Amazon affiliate so clicking on links to Amazon and then purchasing items will put a few pennies into our piggy bank for future homeschool purchases. Thank you!