Weekly School Summaries - Europe, Germany (January 2-13)

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 Ahh... the holidays are over; the decor is packed away for next year; we're already decluttering for our spring yard sale; and school is back to it's regular routine. Here's what we did for the past 2 weeks:

Math: Similar to usual. They each had 4 days of lessons and 1 day of math games on the computer. Tenor is doing much better with math because he's taking his time rather than doing all the work in his head and just rushing through. Soprano continues to do well. She's thriving with the Saxon Math method of teaching. She did have a little trouble figuring out a.m. and p.m. I found this site that gave her a visual on how a.m. and p.m. don't mean when the sun is up and when it's dark but how it relates to Noon and Midnight.

Reading and Language Arts: Soprano finished The Hundred Penny Box  from 'Across the Centuries' with a some reading and an evaluation. Then she read 'The Tale of Peter Rabbit' and did a couple worksheets, a watering can activity, and drew the various characters' points of view.

She began her second Phonics book and is showing leaps and bounds of improvement. I'm glad I got these books to help review and cement the phonics concepts. I think she really needs that this year.

English (learning pronouns) and spelling are going well as is her handwriting. We're up to Rr.

Tenor continued with his 'A Reason for Handwriting C' and 'Writing Strands.' But I'm not loving Writing Strands and neither is he. We don't need writing prompts or copying other writers' works, we need a step by step here's how to get your thoughts in order kind of thing. I went to the local Education store and got a couple of workbooks to try. We'll finish Writing Strands in 3 more weeks and then switch. Again. The 5th time's the charm???

He began Homer Price from 'Across the Centuries C Level 1' with some worksheets and an evaluation about the Cosmic Comic and The Doughnuts.

English (learning proper verb tenses with helping verbs) and Spelling (Rod and Staff Level 4) are going well. 

Electives:
Typer Island for their typing instruction and continuing with SOS Elementary Spanish. The new schedule seems to be helping. Our days are getting done at a more reasonable hour. I also am setting the timer on Computer Math games which is helping. Tenor now has 2 days of typing and 2 days of Spanish. He gets Wednesdays off, while Soprano has 2 days of typing and 1 day of Spanish.

They had a safety survey to do for health. We also talked about Irish immigrants in PA and how mechanics are community helpers.

Phys Ed.: Basement scooter riding is going strong. It's a little scary how fast they're zipping around, but we're injury-free so far. I had them do Wii Zumba with me one day. That was fun! They also just started a Tae Kwan Do/Karate program through a local church. A local police officer and trained sensei? is offering free classes for children, families, or adults. They'll go every Monday night and have class with Bass. And it's free! Tenor has been interested in martial arts for awhile but we were concerned about the school of Eastern thought/philosophy that tends to go along with it. The program that they just joined is run by a Christian man who requires Bible verse memorization to advance to the next belt level. And it's free. What a huge, huge blessing!

Bible: The past two weeks included:
Reading about Spain and Turkey
Reading Matthew 12:1-13:30
Memorizing Matthew 11:29-30 and Matthew 6:19

Reading about Martin Luther and John Wesley.

Geography:
We've moved onto studying Germany. We read about German castles in several books.

Coloring the German flag and writing down interesting facts about it.

We also took a field trip to a local shopping area that was modeled after a European village. We walked around and visited a few of the shops. 

Illustrating notecards for headwater, mouth, ford, and meander

And playing the geography game with North and South America and Europe.

Tenor's Europe pages from World Geography were Languages and Religion.

Science: Discussion on Lakes and Ponds, Freshwater Plants and Animals, Getting Oxygen Underwater, Rivers and Streams, and Living by Rivers and Lakes.

Venus Fly Traps and a Playtpus

We also did an experiment on how the freezing properties of saltwater and freshwater differ.

At the beginning

At 30 minutes

At the end, we had a very thin layer of ice on the top of the freshwater glass

Soprano finished the Science and Animals and Animal Facts and Fun pages from The Complete Book of Animals.

Other MFW: Wee sing: Swiss Hiking Song, All My Little Ducklings, My Little Rooster, My Burro, Where is the Ring?, and Ring Around Raja. I played music by Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Chopin, and Liszt too.
 
Art: The first week we skipped the Beeswax Modeling but did the 'Draw Your Own World' activity.  The second week, we painted clothespin nutcrackers and made German hats.

To fill in a bit, we read other books about western European countries and borrowed DVDs from the library. We focused on Poland, Czech Republic, Austria, and Hungary.

Next up, week 18! The half way point for our school year and a new continent, Africa.

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