Week 4

We had some fun this week. We enjoyed apple picking, a corn maze two birthday parties, some school and a few fun projects.

Math: Quinn is nearing the end of 3B and they are now reviewing "time". You would think this easy for a fourth grader but in a world filled with digital clocks he has much less practice actually figuring out the time than I had as a kid.
I am wishing that I had kept RightStart level A for Evelyn. I really liked the way it explained place value and trading or borrowing. Ah well....we do still use the abacus though and it provides great visual examples of concepts for her. She also spent some time on Rainbow Rock.

Spelling/Dictation. This week we did list 16 in Spelling Plus. I attended a class on right brain learning this week also and decided to try to follow some of the instructor's hints for making words into stories and pictures. I know that this does help for Quinn since we did Times Tales for multiplication and that is virtually the same thing. But I was inspired and decided to try it with spelling words. This week's list contained words like: talk, walk, war, warm, large etc... For walk I made the 'w' black the 'a' was bright red with an extra thick tail and had a sad face. The 'l' was green and had squiggly lines around the edge and the 'k' was wearing sneakers on his feet. I then went through a story with them about how the a was sad and the l was shaking and nervous because he is worried that you will leave him out of the word because he is silent. The 'k' of course has his shoes on because he is going for a walk. Talk was the same except the 'k' was talking, saying hello. Quinn really eats this stuff up. He loved it with Times Tales too. Both kids really enjoyed all of the stories I made(though Evelyn is a natural speller anyways and doesn't need funny stories.) Quinn really did show an improvement when it came time for the dictation. He still forgot some stuff but he remembered things he would normally forget instantly. Like the 'l' in talk and walk.

Science:We finally received our science books in the mail. We are doing anatomy this year and plan to follow this free science schedule that some very gracious woman made and posted. So I ordered the books and this week we started by reading Enjoy Your Cells . We also watched some of the Brain Pop videos about cells and played some of the recommended games:
Explore a Cell
All Systems Go

History: Vikings! The kids wee very excited to read about vikings this week. We Read from Child's History of the World, Story of the World, Usborne Time Traveler, and Usborne World History. We also watched a free online Imax video about vikings and we built viking ships from SOTW activity book. We listened to SOTW audio from the beginning up to where we are now. It was good review.














Read Aloud: We began Ginger Pye this week. This is one I never read. I hope it doesn't end the same way virtually all dog stories end :( ...Reading: Quinn read Guardians of Ga'Hoole book 1 and Evelyn read Ramona Quimby Age 8. they also read numerous other small books throughout the week. We went on our first Pizza Hut Book It trip.

Piano: Quinn's teacher and I have decided to take a break from piano lessons. He feels badly about it like he failed or something but he just needs to step back for a bit. I really feel like he needs to work on his note reading 'til it becomes second nature. Until then I don't need to be paying 20 bucks a week. I can find ways at home to help him with this. I think we will re-instate Music Ace Deluxe for a while.

Dance: Evelyn is loving dance!

Co-op
Drawing: Quinn settled on drawing one of his more complex balsa wood airplanes. This is it.He is not changing it again.
Rockets: yes
Public Speaking: This week was impromptu speeches. The kids had to pull a topic out of a hat and speak on it with only one minute to prepare. Quinn pulled the topic of education. It was brief and silly but then again so were all of them... I can see how impromptu can take some serious experience to be good.
Sign Language: yes
Art/Music: yes