School Summary - Raleigh, Cartier, and One More War

Field trip to Valley Forge

Field trip to Valley Forge

I respectfully ask that you not pin pictures of my children to Pinterest. Thank you!
A Summary of May 12-23

We did it. We finished the year. Phew! There were some bumps in the road this year so I'm glad that we made it through. Well, the younglings are done. I still have paperwork to compile and portfolios to assemble, then on to prepping for next year. But I don't really want to think about that yet. :)

Here's what we did the past two weeks:

Things that were scheduled:

Math
Soprano finished Saxon 5/4 and did a few more lessons in Life of Fred Butterflies. She'll pick up Life of Fred next year. We're moving Tenor through his math faster so he's part way through Saxon 8/7.

Language Arts (Grammar, Penmanship, Reading, and Writing)

Tenor completed his last reading book, Caddie Woodlawn while Soprano finished up a several week lesson in writing. She had to write a short story which turned out really cute.

Electives:

Typing, Spanish, Civics, and Geography for both.

Tenor finished PA History. All the electives are done!

My Father's World Rome to the Reformation

Our last week of scheduled studies (week 34) were about explorers and England and Spain at war.

Bible: We reviewed our memory verses from the year and finished How the Bible Came to Us.

Science: We finished AIG's Our Universe; although, we had to spread it out over our last 2 weeks of school. We learned about astronauts and Sally Ride. They took a quiz and a final test about Astronomy. Then we attempted to make a solar system model by creating string balls (string dipped in glue, then wrapped around balloons until dry). It didn't work. All our balloons deflated before the string was dry so they didn't stay in a ball form. Earth came out okay but the rest were mush. They got the idea but I should have just bought the styrofoam balls.

A previous lesson's experiment---two-stage rocket

Escape velocity demonstration from a previous lesson

History: 

This week, we read about Walter Raleigh, Jacques Cartier, and about how England defeated Spain. Can you imagine how different the world might be if Spain had won?

We played Fox and Geese, did some notebooking sheets, and finished off our timelines.

Fox and Geese

Other MFW: 

Music: We listened to a few pieces by Beethoven and kept listening during our lunch time. We also were blessed to have been able to get the local library's pass to the city orchestra. We got to hear Beethoven's Fifth Symphony and Haydn's Second Piano Concerto for free.

Art:They finished art with lessons on Di Maniera, El Greco and The Ascension, and working with a model. We have a jointed model from Ikea so they used that instead of creating their own out of clay for sake of time.

Extras:

Web:
We caught up on watching our web videos but it's a lot of work to link them all here. You can see them all in my Youtube playlist for MFW weeks 19-34.

Videos:

Explorers of the World: French Explorers by Schlessinger Media

Favorite Books: 

Roanoke the Lost Colony by Jane Yolen
Sir Francis Drake by Tanya Larkin
Sir Walter Raleigh by Tanya Larkin
All the World's a Stage by Rebecca Davidson