Homeschool Week-in-Review: 11/3 - 11/7

We had a good week, except for Chiara being REALLY fussy as she continued to get over her illness. She finally started acting like herself on Friday. The weather was absolutely beautiful (sunny and temps in the 70s), and I made sure that the kids spent time outside to enjoy it. We skipped art this week. I figure that we'll have plenty of time for that as the weather turns toward winter. Yesterday it was back to weather-reality: cloudy and cold :(

Here are some of the things we did this week:

Together:

History - We read some more about ancient China completed the chapter on ancient Africa. There are some fun folktales from both of these cultures that we read.

Art - As I said, we skipped this this week to enjoy the weather. I did finally remember to play classical music during lunchtime as part of their music appreciation. They loved it! They kept getting up to dance when they were supposed to be eating, so I'm not sure if it was a great idea :)

Poetry - The girls started memorizing Thanksgiving poems this week. I'll post them on the blog on Thanksgiving day.

Maria:

Math - Maria had an 'easy' week in math with only 3 lessons and no tests! The lessons were the 'fun' ones - time and measurement. I haven't mentioned how well Maria is doing with her Challenging Word Problems book that we do together on Thursdays. She loves it! I think her real enjoyment started the day she was able to do one that I couldn't :) She does the problems on paper while I do them on the dry-erase board, and then we compare answers. That day, she got to explain the problem to me! Dany did some with her yesterday, and he was impressed, too, by how well she did. This week, there was one problem when she did the 1st part right and I did the 2nd part right. We really work together on these!!

Reading - She still reading Black Beauty for her assigned reading, and she wrote a very nice narration on the 1st half of the novel. Her writing is improving so much this year. It's no longer so stressful for her. I really think the narrative writing that we began this year is what is helping her.

Spelling - She completed 2 lessons this week - one on 4 different spellings of long A and one that introduced her "Silent E book" which helps her organize 5 different uses of silent E in English.

Latin - Maria can now count to 10 in Latin! I should take a video for the blog.

Chemistry - Every week Maria does at least one experiment and lab write-up. This week she started complaining, asking why she has to do this lab report when "no one will ever read it!" So, here is the one she wrote this week, so that someone will read it :)

Cati:


Math - Cati learned the "doubles + 1" facts this week (i.e. 4+5, 6+7, 8+9, etc.).

Reading - We mostly read about whales this week to go along with her biology topic of the week. We also read "The Story of Ping" to go along with history.

Grammar - She continued studying nouns.

Spelling - Her lesson this week was about words with the "/er/ of her."

Biology - She completed a lapbook on whales this week.


Here is a video of Cati talking about the lapbook. You can actually hear her in this video thanks to her baby sister napping at the time :)



I haven't posted about things the kids have done in their classes at St. Vincent before. One of Cati's classes this semester has been about plants, and I think they've done some great activities. Here's a picture of a "man" with grass hair that grew on my kitchen counter this week. It's like a homemade Chia-pet!

Here is a shirt they made. They made the dye by boiling flowers and leaves.

Here is a mask that she made in her 3D art class. She loves making masks and often does it at home.

If you saw the video of Cati playing the piano last week, you could see our TERRIBLY messy playroom. Well, I've spent the past few days cleaning and reorganizing. I'm thinking of setting up some subject centers in the schoolroom and part of the playroom, but it'll take a while to get it all together.

Matteo and Chiara:

I feel bad that I never have anything to post about Matteo. What can I say? He's just a good kid who occupies himself quite well during the day. I'll try to post something soon, though!

Chiara, on the other hand, is definitely on her way to the 2s! Her sentence of the week was "I don't want to!" She spends the day getting Cati's math manipulatives, running and scattering them just because she knows that it drives us crazy!