School Summary - Reformation, Good Queen Bess, Shakespeare, and Indians

Painting with berries

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

A Summary of April 28 - May 9

We are so close to finishing for the year. Only two more weeks to go!! It's super exciting! We're at the point where various subjects are wrapping up which makes our days a little less full. I'm trying to keep the younglings motivated to finish strong though.

Here's what we did the past two weeks:

Things that were scheduled:

Math

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

Tenor finished all of his writing assignments for the year. He had a rough patch in there and a long time of "video game sanctions" while he had to catch up on uncompleted work. He did what he needed to though and is quite happy to be done.
They both finished the last lesson in their spelling books (Rod and Staff). Next week will be a week of review and then a final test.

Electives:

Typing, Spanish, and Geography for both.

Tenor continued with PA History. Soprano had two weeks of hospitality lessons in her Home Ec book.

My Father's World Rome to the Reformation

It's hard to believe we're almost at the end of our MFW studies. We finished up weeks 32-33: the Reformation, Queen Elizabeth I, Shakespeare, and North American Indians.

Bible: We continued learning our passage in Philippians (Chapter 2:3-16). We read more Reformation heroes including, Anne Askew, John Calvin, Latimer/Ridley/Cranmer, John Knox, and Jeanne d'Albret.

Science: We completed several lessons from AIG's Our Universe. After a quiz, we started the final unit about the space program. We learned about NASA, space exploration, the Apollo program, the space shuttle, and the international space station. Looking at the book right now, I'm realizing that I somehow skipped a few of the demonstrations. I'll try to do those next week. We did try an experiment to see how water behaves in space.

History: 

This week, we read more about the start of the Reformation. Then we reached the time of Queen Elizabeth I and Shakespeare. It was neat to read more about them, especially Bess, after having experienced that time period and seeing her at the Renaissance Faire last August. We were able to attend with members of our co-op for one of the Faire's Summer Student Days. (Less bawdy than a regular Faire day)

We also enjoyed beef jerky and blueberries as a snack one day and sunflower seeds the next. With some extra berries (because blueberries were buy one, get one free), we tried painting like Native Americans.

Other MFW: 

Music: We listened to a few pieces by Beethoven and kept listening during our lunch time. We've been trying to rotate our lunchtime composers by revisiting Haydn and Mozart.

Art: They had a lessons on Raphael, Titian, and other Renaissance-era artists. They also drew cherubs, practiced their penmanship, and planned out compositions. We also listened to one of the sections (about Raphael and Michelangelo) on A Treasury of Wisdom by Jim Weiss.

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:

No extra videos this week. Well, we had one but we didn't like it so I'm not going to list it.

Favorite Books: 

Good Queen Bess by Diane Staley
Any of the books in the Shakespeare for Kids series by Lois Burdett
The International Space Station by Franklyn Branley