School Week 27 2011

This week we are reading Book 3 of Hope's Revolutionary War Diaries. A9 has really enjoyed this series. I usually read 10 pages a day, well last week we were so into the story that we finished it a day early, A9 did not want me to stop reading!!

I have a feeling the same thing is going to be happening with book 3. It's so funny to see A9 get so upset over the "Redcoats" taking over Philadelphia. I had to keep reassuring her that we win in the end!!

We are almost done with the George Washington book as well, the chapters are about a page and a half long and a big font, so she has no problem reading them aloud, we read two chapters a day.

Also this week we are going to be reading the book The Star Spangled Banner by Ingri and Edgar D'Aulaire. The kids don't know the national anthem and I thought this is the right time to teach it to them. We are also going to be watching the movie The Patriot!

We have been having a great time learning about the American Revolution!

X6 will be rowing the book Grandfather's Journey... this week we are learning about Japan!

School Week 26 2011

This week we (A9 and I), are reading Book Two in the My America series... We are Patriots. We are also reading about George Washington.

X6 is rowing the book The Story of Ferdinand. We love this book which is set in Spain!
It is times like these when I'm so glad I have my whole year planned out. February is always a hard month to get through and once March gets here it's even worse.
I'm starting to do an outline for next year just to keep myself motivated for this year :) Weird, I know!!!
We were able to go outside a couple of days last week and just take a nice long walk while the kids rode their bikes, it was a nice thing to do in the late morning. No such luck this week since it was snowing last night.

Coop is supposed to start next month, not sure if it's going to happen at all this spring, since we don't have enough Moms volunteering to teach a class.. we'll see.

School Week 25 2011

This week A9 and I are starting the next books in the My America series... Hope's Revolutionary War Diaries, Books 1-3. A9 loved the 1st 3 books and I'm sure it will be the same with these three!
Besides the My America books we will be reading about George Washington, Paul Revere and Ben Franklin again!

After we read all three books we are going to watch the movie The Patriot, yes the one with Mel Gibson... I love the way the movie depicts how a bunch of farmers defeated the greatest army of the time...

We also started a new writing curriculum.... after starting Writing Strands and doing it for two weeks I was not happy with it, neither was A9... I didn't want creative writing, which is what this seemed to be.. so I switched to Writing with Ease: Vol2, I also purchased Vols 3 & 4. This curriculum is more of what I had in mind. Lots of narration and dictation as a way of building up her writing skills... We did our first narration exercise today and the workbook really helps the parent ask the right questions. Tomorrow will be our first dictation exercise... I will be dictating back the same sentences she herself came up with to summarize the story we read.

X6 is rowing the book The Greatest Treasure, we are learning about China! I have been working very hard on a language lessons workbook for X6 for next year. After using LLVY 1&2 with A9, I knew that I wanted something very similar to do with X6, the things is LLVY has TOO much copywork. Sometimes over five days of copywork in a row, torwards the end it has 20 copywork lessons in a row..A9 was so tired of it after awhile. So, when we did LLVY2 she did NO copywork at all.. that was over half the book. She had it all done by December.

She is now doing Primary Language Lessons, which she absolutely loves!! I will be doing the same with X6 when he is in 3rd grade. For next year I decided that I wanted the grammar and picture study of LLVY and the narration and copywork of Writing with Ease Vol 1. The copywork is only two times a week, no more!

So I did it!! I made my own language lessons workbook using the elements I like from the two other books. I will be using it with X6 for the next two years and then we'll start PLL and Writing with Ease Level 2!

School Week 24 2011

This week we are reading our last Jamestown book, Season of Promise. We really enjoyed reading this series and are looking forward to the next one, the American revolution.

X_6 is rowing the book A New Coat for Anna.

Here's hoping February goes by very fast!!!