Hydrangeas and Harmony: School Summary - World War II, the Atom Bomb, and the Holocaust

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A Summary of February 15 - March 4

I changed our school calendar around to allow for some time to help my parents get settled after a recent move and to host a girls' only crafting weekend at my house. We did a few days of school, took of the rest of the week, the weekend, and the beginning of the next week; then, we finished week 2 with a few days of school. So our winter break was in there somewhere. I think. It didn't feel like a break. lol That was followed up by a regular week of school.
Here's what we did:

Things that were scheduled:

Math

Soprano is moving along with Saxon and adding in Life of Fred for a fun supplement. We had been doing Life of Fred rather slowly but I realized that we should be completing more than 1 book a year. Now, each time I assign it (after every 7 or so Saxon lessons), she does 4 chapters in Life of Fred. She's on Dogs, right now. (And loving LoF days!)

Language Arts (Grammar with Writing and Literature for both; Spelling for Soprano)

Tenor finished up his 1st of 2 literature units, The Prince and the Pauper. Next up is a unit of the poetry of Robert Frost. It'll be our first concentrated effort in poetry analysis. I'm looking forward to it.

Electives:

Greek and Computer Science (Tenor), American Sign Language, Photography, and Sewing (Soprano)

Sewing. sew.ing. *sigh* Sewing is killing us. Soprano is more of a flight than a fight, so when a new skill is difficult for her, she tends to want to give up without really trying. Sewing has been difficult for her. However, it's a useful skill and we've spent quite a bit of money buying all the supplies to make these projects so she has been told that we're going to finish it. All the bits and pieces of a pieced doll quilt are laying on the table at this very moment.

My Father's World 1850 to Modern Times
WWII. This era of history really touches me... I'm not sure why. Perhaps because my grandparents served in the military then? Or I'm just a 1940s gal at heart.... then the atom bomb and holocaust... I cried my way through most of the history readings and the videos we watched.

Bible: This year we will be learning (reviewing) basic Christian beliefs and memorizing key Bible passages. We spent two weeks working on verses from Psalm 46. With the presidential election nonsense, it's very timely to recall that "...know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations; I will be exalted in the earth."

History and Geography:

Project-wise: we figured out the winning parties at the Elections at Bundestag

and Identified War Planes. We also did the outlines and writing from outlines, timeline pieces, and maps. (We skipped the optional research projects though. We had lots of book basket titles to read and movies to watch.)

Science: We're also using the World of Science reading assignments to review what we learned this summer. Because of time (and energy), I didn't pull out the magnet kit. We did it over the summer, and I thought I'd let them try the cards again for review. It didn't happen.

Other MFW:

Music: We have the iPod playing at lunch most days. The Gershwin playlist has been my pick for these two weeks.

Art: More marker techniques this week. I suppose I could let them use my nice Copic markers to really work on shading... um, yeah. No. :)