Back to school!

Yep, we're back at it! We finished the last school year in mid-April, in anticipation of Elena's birth, so we've had a good 3-month break (with a little math and reading thrown in to keep our brains working!). Actually, we will only school for about 2-and-a-half more weeks, and then we'll have a 3-week break to enjoy Zia Anna's (Dany's sister) visit with us!

Here's a glimpse of our week...

After Mass each morning, we began our school work with a vocabulary card game, Rummy Roots. It's a game that teaches Greek and Latin word roots. Higher levels of the game put the roots together to make words, but right now we're still learning the root meanings. It's a fun way to begin the school day. Here is a picture of the girls peering over their word lists to look up the meanings of the roots in their hands. You can see Chiara's head in there, too, as she loves to be involved in everything we do. Matteo is to the left holding my card hand.



Then, it's off for some book work!
Here is a picture of Maria's box of work for the week. This is a new system I'm trying this year. Each Saturday, I pull out each child's work for the week and put it in folders in their own box. This saves us a lot of time during the week by having all papers and books on hand. There are tabs velcroed to each folder with the subject names. Each day when they complete their work in a subject, they move the tab to the big label on the front of the box. So, they have a good picture of the work they've completed and how much is left for the day.

Here's a look at our schedule... (To see the curriculum were using, click on the link on the right side of the blog.)

After vocabulary, Matteo and Chiara play, or have a snack, while Cati works on the poem she's memorizing and practices the piano. Maria and I go over her math lesson for the day. While she completes her math, does her mid-morning chore, and some other independent work (memory work, Latin, and literature-Maria's reading Pedro's Journal, Om-kas-toe, and Walk the World's Rim), I work with Cati on Grammar, Spelling, Writing, History and Literature - Cati read Romans (Usborne Beginner) and The Roman News. Then, Cati completes any independent work in these subjects and does her mid-morning chore. In the meantime, I work with Matteo on Reading and Math. Then, I circle back around to Maria to listen to her memory work, question her on her literature, and to study history. Then, it's lunchtime!!

Here's look at Maria's Friday quiz of some of her memory work. Since she's studying U.S. history this year, she is memorizing the states, capitals, abbreviations, and nicknames, and their position on the map. Later in the year, she'll move on to memorizing the presidents.

You may notice that they pages are laminated. Laminators are super-cheap these days, so I got my own! I laminated these two pages, so Maria can re-use them each week with a wet-erase marker. The kids love using markers whenever possible!

In the afternoons, we do Italian, Religion, and Science. Maria also does writing and piano practice.

Cati is studying Earth Science and Astronomy this year. We're starting the year with a study of the weather. She did one experiment about temperature. Here's a picture of a rain guage she made later in the week. It rained some yesterday, so we put it outside and measured 1/4" of rain. Cati had predicted 4" :)

This picture is out-of-order. It is from Cati's history this week. She is studying Medieval history this year, and we started with a review of the Roman empire and it's fall. At the end of the week, she used Play-doh to make something "Roman." She said that these are the Emperor and his helpers, and a "fake god" and his helpers :)

Here is a science project from Maria this week. She's studying Physics this year, beginning with energy. She built a "car" with a rubber band to power it. It showed the differences between potential and kinetic energy. You can see a video of it in action at the bottom of this post.

I'm trying to be more consisten with our Italian studies. We have an audio program that we listen to. I also made these file-folder games to go along with it. Here is one they are doing to learn the days-of-the-week and months-of-the-year.

For religion this year, Cati and Maria are studying together. We read together from their Catechism books on Monday-Wednesday. On Thursday, they study their questions and quiz each other, and on Friday, I quiz them individually. It's fun doing it all together because we have some good discussions.

Matteo is doing a pre-school religion program called "Who am I?" He learned about the Blessed Trinity this week and did a few projects about it...

He practices reading again in the afternoons, and we practice some phonograms. This week he learned all the sounds of /o/, /a/, /s/, and /d/. I also do some read-alouds with him in the afternoons, which he loves. First, we read from a children's Bible. Then, we started the Little Golden Book Treasury. He won't let me get beyond the first story in the book, The Pokey Little Puppy. He made me read it every afternoon!



Here's a video of Maria's car...