Weekly School Summaries - Japan (March 26-April 6)

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

 I just realized that I've been calling these weekly school summaries all year but after the first few weeks, we got too busy and my updates have been every other week. Hmmm..... we're so close to the end of the year, you'll forgive me if I don't change it now, right? Next year, if I do school summaries, I'll try to be more accurate. LOL After a wonderful, wonderful, wonderfully awesome week off (at Disneyworld!), we're back to work. It was hard to come back to the daily grind so these past two weeks didn't have many fun extras but we got our work done. We've only got 30 school days left so we're trying to finish strong. 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 had lots of fun activities and a couple of worksheets before finishing "The Runaway Bunny" from 'Across the Centuries'. She made a doorhanger, a pop-up bunny, did a stuffed animal hide and seek, a word search, and a map worksheet.

She's doing well with consonant blends (beginning, middle, and end) in her third Phonics book. In English, she's being introduced to descriptive words and how they can tell how we feel, hear, and see. Spelling and handwriting are continuing well. 

Tenor continued with his 'A Reason for Handwriting C' and moved on to the next level of writing workbook.

He started 'Helen Keller' from 'Across the Centuries C Level 2', with some reading and vocabulary word work. English (friendly letters) and Spelling (Rod and Staff Level 4) are going well. 

Electives:
Typer Island for their typing instruction and continuing with SOS Elementary Spanish. Tenor's on track to finish the whole Spanish course this year. Soprano will finish half of the lessons and do the next half in the coming year.

They did two health worksheets about exercise. One discussed stretching and the other aerobic vs. non-aerobic exercises. We also talked about the PA state flag and PA Indians (Native Americans) and how religious leaders are community helpers.

Phys Ed.: Co-op has ended for the year so we need to get back into a routine of exercising regularly. I had them walking several miles a day before our Disney trip to prepare them for all the walking there but we've stopped since we got home. The weather is getting nicer each day so I'm sure they'll be out on their bikes and scooters soon. They're back at Tae Kwon Do and getting ready to test for their first belt.

Bible: The past two weeks included:
Reading about Japan and North Korea
Reading Matthew 22:18-24:28
Memorizing Matthew 22:37-40

Geography:

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

Coloring the Japanese flag and writing down interesting facts about it. Reading about Japan and their language and coloring carp. We had 'bring a doll to school' day to talk about how the Japanese like to collect and display dolls. We stretched it a bit and allowed stuffed animals but the kids both brought 2 favorites down and put them on the work table for the day.
We also had a very cheesy Japanese lunch. It consisted of Ramen noodles and green tea. The kids both liked the noodles. Tenor liked the tea, but Soprano wasn't too impressed with it.

Illustrating notecards for sea, beach, sandbar, and strait.

Playing the geography game doing the world traveler version.

Tenor's Asia pages from World Geography were Population and Cities. He's only doing 1 page per week during our Asia studies.
Soprano did several more Ocean Animal pages from The Complete Book of Animals. She's doing 3 sheets or mini storybook per week for the 10 weeks we're studying Asia.

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

They read about fish, ocean depth, shorelines, and estuaries. They also wrote about the identifying characteristics of beaches. I found a couple of printables at www.homeschoolshare.com to add to their beach page. We used the one on shore birds and the mini book about 'What Lives in a Tide Pool?'

We also did the cold water demonstration but I didn't get any pictures of it.

Soprano had one extra thing that she's been working on.... paper dolls with Asian clothing. I printed off the file, she colored the outfits as we studied each country, and then when it was complete, I put some clear contact paper on them. She cut them all out and has been dressing the doll each day for school.

Other MFW: 

Wee sing: Ame, Ame, and Pok Amai, Amai

Art: We did origami for art the first week and then the kids made Maribana Flower Scenery plates for the second. Tenor's scene is of a forest after it burned down. Soprano's scene is a forest that's starting to regrow after it burned. I'm not quite sure where the forest fires fit in but since we don't have a lot of greenery in the yard yet, I guess they were working with what they could find.

Tenor's scenery

Soprano's scenery

To supplement, we read other books about other Asian countries (North and South Korea, Philippines, Vietnam), beaches, and seas and oceans and borrowed DVDs from the library.
There were some great ideas at www.homeschoolcreations.com but we just didn't have time to get to them.
Maybe next week we'll add in some extras.... we'll see.

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


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