School Summary - Raleigh, Cartier, and One More War

Field trip to Valley Forge

Field trip to Valley Forge

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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

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

Painting with berries

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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

School Summary - Slavery, Renaissance Art, and Martin Luther

Field Trip to Hershey Gardens

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A Summary of April 7-25

The end of our co-op year always seems to free up our days much more. We are getting closer and closer to the end of our year. It's getting hard to stick with it, especially since the weather has finally turned to spring. We did two weeks of work with a week-long break for Easter. It was nice to have a week off but getting back to school that following Monday was a little rough.

Here's what we did:

Things that were scheduled:

Math
Soprano has been enjoying Life of Fred interspersed with her Saxon math. She finished up Life of Fred Apples and began Life of Fred Butterflies.

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

Electives:

Typing, Spanish, and Civics for both.

Tenor finished Greek and continued with PA History. Soprano had two weeks of organizing lessons in her Home Ec book.

My Father's World Rome to the Reformation

We're so close to the end. We are on weeks 30-31 of MFW. We finished up the Central/South American explorers and then went back to Europe for studies about slavery, renaissance art, and then the beginning of the Reformation.

Bible: We continued learning our passage in Philippians (Chapter 2:3-13) and finished 1 John. We read about various heroes of the Reformation including, John Wycliffe, John Huss, Martin Luther, and William Tyndale. It's amazing what the men and women of that era endured to spread the truth of the Bible and get Scriptures into the hands of the common people. We owe so much to them and their sacrifices.

Science: We completed several lessons from AIG's Our Universe. We continued studying the individual planets: Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and the dwarf planets: Pluto and Eris. We did several demonstrations and experiments including seeing how big Jupiter is in comparison to the earth, seeing how Uranus rotates differently than the other planets, showing why Neptune looks blue, and figuring out how much we would weigh on other planets.

Filling "Jupiter" with many "Earths"

The sun (red exercise ball), Jupiter (white bowls), Earth (marble)

History: 

We finished up reading about Cortes and Montezuma and then talked about slavery. We (with some grumbling) tackled the painting the Sistine Chapel Ceiling activity. The next week we dove into reading about the start of the Reformation.

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 few drawing assignments based on Da Vinci's works. We also listened to "Masters of the Renaissance" by Jim Weiss.

Extras:

Web:
We are really far behind on watching our web videos but they're saved in my playlist. You can see them all in my Youtube playlist for MFW weeks 19-34.

Videos:

Explorers of the World: Cortes and Pizarro by Schlessinger Media

Explorers of the World: Ferdinand Magellan by Schlessinger Media

Explorers of the World: Portuguese Explorers by Schlessinger Media

Animated Hero Classics: Leonardo Da Vinci by Nest Entertainment
Leonardo: A Dream of Flight by Nest Entertainment

The Life of Leonardo Da Vinci by Questar

The William Tyndale Story by Nest Entertainment

Favorite Books: 

Da Vinci by Mike Venezia
Leonardo's Horse by Jean Fritz
Breaking Into Print by Stephen Krensky
Fine Print: A Story About Johann Gutenberg by Joann Johansen Burch

School Summary - Ancient India, Explorers, and Mayan, Aztec, and Incan Empires

Part of my 4th-6th grade choir

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A Summary of March 24-April 4

We had a few more busy weeks as our co-op finished up for the spring. We participated in the annual spring concert (the younglings sang, did a dramatic reading, and some sign language; I directed two choirs.) They all did a great job!

The sign language class signing "How Deep the Father's Love"

Prepping for the concert and an additional week of co-op after the concert (a snow make-up day) ate into our at home time a little. We still kept up with our regular assignments though.
Here's what we did for the past two weeks:

Things that were scheduled:

Math

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

Electives:

Typing, Spanish, and Geography for both.

Tenor continued with Greek and PA History. Soprano had two weeks off from her Home Ec lessons. We'll still finish the book by the end of the year.

My Father's World Rome to the Reformation

We're so close to the end. We are on weeks 28-29 of MFW. As we start looking at the era of exploration, we spent a week studying India and then a week on the Mayan, Aztec, and Incan Empires of Central and South America. The Indian groups of the Americas had some really disgusting and horrific religious practices. *shudder* It reminded me of the Indiana Jones movie, Temple of Doom. I'm thinking some of those scenes were quite historically accurate.

Bible: We continued learning our passage in Philippians (Chapter 2:3-11), and read quite a bit of the book of 1 John.

Science: We completed several lessons from AIG's Our Universe. We talked about the phases and origin of the moon and then began studying the individual planets: Mercury, Venus, and Earth. We did several demonstrations and experiments including making moon phases with Oreo cookies, testing the capture theory (it's not credible), demonstrating how Mercury's lack of atmosphere affects the temperature, demonstrating how Venus' atmosphere acts like a greenhouse, making earth models (like the ECC experiment), and showing why Earth's atmosphere looks blue.

Yummy Moon Phases

Ice on an arm wrapped with a towel representing Earth's atmosphere vs. ice on bare skin representing Mercury's lack of atmosphere

Watching the temp go up in our Venus greenhouse

History: 

We spent a week reading about the history of India which is where the explorers from Europe were trying to get to. We skipped making chapatis and a sari for Soprano. We did wrap Tenor up in his snuggie to look like an Indian man's traditional dress. He didn't want me to take a picture of him though. :)

Then we had a week talking about Vespucci and Magellan which led us to the Aztecs, Mayas, and Incas. We drank hot chocolate like the Mayans and had popcorn like the Incas.

We also skipped making a Mayan Codex and coiled clay pots because we just ran out of time.

Other MFW: 

Music: We listened to Beethoven's Fur Elise (a recital piece of mine from years ago) and his 9th Symphony.

Art: They had a few drawing assignments. I don't know that their technique is really improving; mainly because they don't practice in between lessons. But they do art without complaint and seem to enjoy most of the lessons.

Extras:

Web:
We are really far behind on watching our web videos but they're saved in my playlist. You can see them all in my Youtube playlist for MFW weeks 19-34.

Videos:

Ancient Civilizations for Children: Ancient Africa by Schlessinger Media

Ancient Civilizations for Children: Ancient Inca by Schlessinger Media

Ancient Civilizations for Children: Ancient Maya by Schlessinger Media

Explorers of the World: Magellan by Schlessinger Media

Favorite Books: 

A Picture Book of Christopher Columbus by David Adler
Columbus by Ingri and Edgar d'Aulaire

School Summary - Constantinople Falls, Spain Unites, England's Roses War, and Africa

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Tracking the Movement of the Sun

A Summary of March 10-21

If you are paying attention to the dates (which I don't blame you, if you don't; I only include them for our personal records), but you might have noticed that March 3-7 went missing. I had originally planned to take a week-long winter break the third week of February, but my folks asked to take the younglings to Washington D.C. Um, yes! :) They needed to schedule their trip around my dad's work schedule so they wanted to go from March 3-5. It was really, really hard to push our winter break off a couple weeks, especially since I had been talking it up to the younglings and we all really needed a break. We pushed through those weeks of school though and they had a great time with my parents. Of course, a trip with Gram and Pop-pop usually means eating out more than usual, extra treats, souvenirs, and extremely late bedtimes. They went to the Air and Space Museum, the Smithsonian's Museum of Natural History, the Capitol Building, and quite a few of the monuments (Jefferson, Lincoln, Washington, WWII, Korean War, and the Vietnam Wall). It's not quite what we're studying in history but it's a good foundation for next year and the year after.
We took the remainder of that week off to recover from those late bedtimes. :) The next Monday we were back to our routine.
Here's what we did for the past two weeks:

Things that were scheduled:

Math

Tenor finished Saxon 7/6 and went right into Saxon 8/7. We're planning to finish all of the maths before his last semester of his senior year so that he can take a math class (or 2 depending on timing) at a local college to earn dual credit. He's doing well. Soprano is also working through Saxon but at a reduced pace. I'm debating on exploring switching her to Teaching Textbooks.

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

Electives:

Typing, Spanish, and Civics for both.

Tenor continued with Greek and PA History while Soprano had her Home Ec lessons - more beginner sewing.  She finished her PA History book a few weeks ago. I'm not sure how it ended so soon because I tried to schedule all the electives to last the entire year but it's completed.

My Father's World Rome to the Reformation

MFW has been anything but boring these past few weeks. We are studying a wide range of topics in European history and then spent a week on Africa in the early to middle ages. We tend to think of Africa as not being as advanced as our western society but back then, they were equal to or more advanced than their European neighbors. As we keep studying, I'm interested to find out why they did not advance the way Europe or the U.S. did.

Bible: We continued learning our passage in Philippians (Chapter 2:3-11), and read all the way through the book of Philippians.

Science: We completed several lessons from AIG's Our Universe. We talked about the sun, its structure, solar eclipse, solar energy, the moon, and Sir Isaac Newton. We did several demonstrations and experiments including tracking the movement of the sun:

History: 

Like I mentioned, we've been tackling a variety of topics in history. The Muslim Turks conquered Constantinople. Ferdinand and Isabella united Spain. Henry the Navigator from Portugal began exploring the African coast. The War of the Roses took place. 

The War of the Roses was particularly funny to the younglings because we live in Lancaster (the Red Rose city) and not too far from York (the White Rose city). Yes, both towns were named after their English counterparts. I'm pretty sure that's where the city symbols came from too. Fortunately, the only "war" going on in our towns today is the minor league baseball rivalry.

After touching on events in European history, we looked at the main three African kingdoms during the Middle Ages. The younglings played mancala too.

Other MFW: 

Music: We finished the Beethoven biography and listened to the 5th Symphony.

Art: They had a couple of lessons with no assigned projects and a few drawing assignments.

Extras:

Web:
We are really far behind on watching our web videos but they're saved in my playlist. You can see them all in my Youtube playlist for MFW weeks 19-34.

Videos:

All About the Sun by Schlessinger Media

Favorite Books: 

Ludwig Beethoven and the Chiming Tower Bells by Opal Wheeler
Isabel Saves the Prince by Dan Holub
The Moon Book by Gail Gibbons
What the Moon is Like by Franklyn Branley

School Summary - Middle Ages Russia, The Black Death, and Joan of Arc

Meteor shower!

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A Summary of February 17-28

We are living in the land that is always winter and never Christmas. Well, not quite that bad but this has been a snowy season that seems to be dragging on and on. We're still getting school work done but we're all looking forward to sunnier days outside.

Here's what we did for the past two weeks:

Things that were scheduled:

Math

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

Soprano has been enjoying her writing curriculum, Creative and Crafty Writing, which is good since Tenor is fighting tooth and nail to complete his writing assignments. He's now about 4 weeks behind but with some persuasion from the principal, aka Bass, he's going to get it done.

Electives:

Typing, Spanish, Civics, and PA History for both.

Tenor continued with Greek while Soprano had her Home Ec lessons - beginning stitching. 

My Father's World Rome to the Reformation

After two weeks focusing on the history of the far East, we finished up with Genghis Khan and Marco Polo and then shifted to Russia; then back to Europe for the Black Death, the Hundred Years' War, and Joan of Arc.

Bible: We are still reading through Luke and studying the life of Jesus. We continued learning our passage in Philippians. (Chapter 2:3-11).

Science: We completed several lessons and a quiz from AIG's Our Universe. We talked about various heavenly bodies (stars, nebulae, quasars), then went more in depth about asteroids, comets, and meteors.

Our town awaiting a meteor strike

Sprinkling salt to represent the majority of meteorites that actually hit the earth. Zero damage to the town.

And a large meteorite hitting the town... flour went everywhere! It made a crater and knocked some things over.

We also did an overview of our solar system and discussed the difference between astronomy versus astrology.

History: 

Reading about Russia's origins was well-timed with the Sochi Olympics taking place. The opening and closing ceremonies were fascinating to watch having just read about how the country began. We did however skip cooking Borsch.

I decided that Mystery of History wasn't working for us. Earlier in the year I had been using it in place of some of the Streams of Civilizations readings. I was struggling with the emphasis of the author's opinion over historical fact and didn't really enjoy the writing style. I know lots of families use and love MOH which is great. It just isn't a resource that I was gelling with. There were only a few more places I was going to substitute it anyway so I decided to just be done with MOH instead. We ended up selling both volumes on-line and recouping most of my original cost.

Other MFW: 

Music: We finished up listening to the assigned Mozart pieces. Then we began the Beethoven biography. We have missed out on using our lunch break as a listening time so I'm going to need to be more intentional about that again.

We also borrowed "The Planets" by Gustav Holst from our local library to listen to. Soprano loved "Jupiter" which she said sounds very wedding-ish. The main melodic theme was also borrowed for the song, "I Vow to Thee My Country". (Charlotte Church has a beautiful rendition of it here.)

Art: They designed and drew towers and read about Giotto.

Extras:

Web:
We are really far behind on watching our web videos but they're saved in my playlist. You can see them all in my Youtube playlist for MFW weeks 19-34.

Videos:
Marco Polo by Nest Entertainment

Explorers of the World: Marco Polo by Schlessinger Media
Beethoven Lives Upstairs by The Children's Group DVD

Joan of Arc by Nest Entertainment

Favorite Books: 

Ludwig Van Beethoven by Mike Venezia
Stars: Lights in the Night Sky by Jeanne Bendick
Joan of Arc: the Lily Maid by Margaret Hodges

School Summary - Ancient China and Japan

Tenor's Japanese Samurai notebooking page

A Summary of February 3 - 14

We are in the part of the school year that seems to start dragging along. We finished the 3rd quarter; we didn't have to take time off for snow days like the local school districts who have been slammed with closings and delays; we are getting work done with good attitudes... I think we could just use a little more sunshine and outside time. It's getting done though.

Here's what we did for the past two weeks:

Things that were scheduled:

Math

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

Electives:

Typing, Spanish, Geography, and PA History for both.

Tenor continued with Greek while Soprano had her Home Ec lessons - washing dishes and making a bed.

My Father's World Rome to the Reformation

These two weeks focused on the history of the far East. It was interesting to read how Asian cultures were developing in such a different way during the same time as the Middle Ages in Europe.

Bible: We are still reading through Luke and studying the life of Jesus. We continued learning our passage in Philippians. (Chapter 2:3-11). We read about Peter Waldo and the intense persecutions the Waldensians suffered in Trial and Triumph.

Science: We completed several lessons and a quiz from AIG's Our Universe. We talked about the earth's movements, telescopes, an overview of our galaxy, and stars, and we read about Galileo. I don't have any pictures but we did demonstrations to show how the earth's rotation creates day and night, reflection/refraction, and light pollution interfering with telescopes and experiments with a Foucault Pendulum.

History: 

We backed up chronologically to get more of an overview of the beginnings of Ancient China and then continued through Chinese history to the Middle Ages. Then we jumped over to Ancient Japan which was very intertwined with Chinese history. It was cool to read how the Samurai had a Code of Honor similar to the European knights' Code of Chivalry.

Soprano's Japanese Samurai notebooking page

The younglings also wrote some Haiku. Tenor's reads: 

Rock

Dull, gray, black silent

A mystery, yet not so

Thrown down a river

Soprano's says:

Apples are juicy

Straight from the green apple tree

Now they sit in bowl

This year, I'm also incorporating Story of the World Volume 1 as well as Mystery of History Volume 1 and 2. 

For week 22, we didn't have any substitutions.

For week 23, we only read the intro of Streams of Civilization on Day 2 and added MOH 2 p156-158 and p282-285. I also cut Streams on Day 4, using MOH 2 p356-358 instead.

Other MFW: 

Music: We listened to a few more Mozart pieces and kept up with listening at lunch some days. We've kind of been slacking on that again.

Art: They created a Triptych one week and painted a Diptych about Daniel the next.

Tenor's painting

Extras:

Web:
I have about 7-8 videos this week. You can see them all in my Youtube playlist for MFW weeks 19-34.

Videos:
Ancient Civilizations for Children: Ancient China by Schlessinger Media
All About Stars by Schlessinger Media
Galileo: On the Shoulders of Giants by Devine Entertainment
The Adventures of Robin Hood by Warner Brothers
The Magic School Bus: Super Star Power by Scholastic

The book "basket" is overflowing all over the school room. There are so many great books for this era of history.

Favorite Books: 

Adventures in Ancient China by Linda Bailey
Marguerite Makes a Book by Bruce Robertson
You Wouldn't Want to Live in a Medieval Castle! by Jacqueline Morley
The Sword in the Tree by Clyde Robert Bulla