Week 19 Review -- February 23 - 28

This week was a short one as I seemed to have caught an upper respiratory infection. I am feeling much better, which should make next week much more productive.
Here's the run down of the week.

Everett
Grammar: Growing with Grammar lessons 3.5 -3.7. He continued working with pronouns and is doing really well.

Penmanship: Pages 72-77 of Handwriting without tears cursive was completed.

Spelling: All About Spelling Step 18 completed. This program is working really well for us.

Math: Lessons 35-36 and Quiz 5 were completed, which reviews line segments and introduced different types of triangles.

Geography: Daily Geography week 19 covered reading a political map of the US

Annika
Penmanship: Pages 72-77, as always she's doing great with penmanship.

Phonics: All About Spelling has been going well for her. She completed Step 9 and half of Step 10. She also did a lesson in her Headsprout program and said she'd like to continue.

Math: CLE lessons 38-40 and the 2nd Lightunit test were completed. She is doing so well with this program and we've noticed a lot of her trouble areas are starting to disappear.

Geography: Daily Geography week 19 covered reading a map of a farm.

BOTH:
Writing: We have skipped ahead a few weeks and completed week 22 which covered excerpts from The Velveteen Rabbit.

History: Super history Sunday this week will consist of a simple booklet about the tribes of the Northwest.

Science: This week "Super Science Saturday" begins our study of the animal kingdom. We did a fun activity about classifying creatures. Our creatures were all fictional but was very fun and gave a basic overview of animal classification.

This is the last week of school for the month of February, so hopefully we'll now be done with the "Winter blahs" and spring will be just around the corner.

Come back next week to check out our Week 20 review.

Week 18 review -- February 16-22

It was another nice week here at Fawkes Academy. The kids worked hard and have been enjoying the lessons.
Here's the run down of the week.

Everett
Grammar: Growing with Grammar lessons 3.1-3.4. This began the unit on pronouns. He's done incredibly well. He seems to be grasping pronouns without much trouble.

Penmanship: Pages 64-71 of Handwriting without tears cursive was completed. He's still enjoying the work and his cursive is coming along nicely.

Spelling: We've decided to return to All About Spelling. He enjoys working with the tiles and I feel it explains things really well. He completed a quick review of the phonograms and rules we'd covered in the past as well as Step 17 of the Level 1 book.

Math: Lessons 29-34 were completed, which began teaching about line segments and angles as well as review of multiple step word problems and multiplication of multiple digit by one digit problems.

Geography: Daily Geography week 18 covered reading a physical map of Africa

Annika
Penmanship: Pages 64-71, as always she's doing great with penmanship.

Phonics: We tried the Writing Road to Reading and although I find the methodology great, I was having trouble trying to figure out how to implement it. We've decided to use All About Spelling very slowly and continue reading the simple readers we have. I may also have her go back to her Headsprout phonics lessons as well just for some fun phonics time.

Math: CLE lessons 33-37 were completed. Math is still one of her favorite subjects and this program has made it very easy for me to teach. I love math and sometimes I find it hard to convey the basics on her level. CLE has made that possible for me.

Geography: Daily Geography week 18 covered reading a land and water map of Oregon.

BOTH:
Writing: Writing With Ease Level 1 week 18 which included excerpts from The House at Pooh Corner was completed this week. They really enjoyed this week as they are both lovers of Pooh.

History: Super history Sunday this week will consist of a simple booklet about the Nez Perce tribes. We're also ready Meet Kaya: An American Girl which is about a Nez Perce girl. They are enjoying the story. We have 2 more weeks of our Native American study left and then we'll move on with History Odyssey Early Modern Times Level 1.

Science: This week "Super Science Saturday" was about the Genes. They enjoyed comparing what traits they each had to what Matt and I have. We also discovered the Annika has dimples while Matt and I do not. We also did a finger print activity where they had to compare different finger prints of the family to the "Mystery print" Turns out the mystery print on Everett's paper was Matt's and the one on Annika's paper was mine. :)

On a personal note, Matt has about 2 weeks left before he rotates to his next duty station. He will begin XO (Executive Officer) school shortly which will then mean he will be 2nd in command on his next ship. He was also presented with a Meritorious Service Medal for all of his accomplishments while with the Strike Group. This is truly an honor for him and we are all really proud of him.

Come back next week to check out our Week 19 review.

-Week 17 Review -- February 9-15

After a week long break we were ready to get back to lessons. The kids did really well this week and had fun showing Dad what a day of school is like when he took the reins for the day on Tuesday. I had a class to go to for training in being an Executive Officers spouse. I will have a much more active role at our next duty station so I wanted all the information about what my responsibilities and role will be.

Here's the run down of the week.

Everett
Grammar: Growing with Grammar lessons 2.10, 2.11 and the Chapter 2 review were completed. This wrapped up the noun unit and he did really well on the chapter review (which we use as a test) and scored an A on that.

Penmanship: Pages 56-63 of Handwriting without tears cursive was completed. He's doing pretty well with it and his cursive is looking fairly decent.

Spelling: He finished groups 9 and 10 in Level C of Spelling Power and are now taking a break to use The Writing Road to Reading to get more acquainted with the spelling rules. We covered Rules 1-3 and will continue with this until all the rules have been completed. After the rules are done then I'll decide where to go.

Math: Lessons 25-28 and Quiz 4 were completed. He covered Multiplication with carrying, which I thought would be tough, but he caught on quickly. He scored a 100 on his Quiz which made him very happy.

Geography: Daily Geography week 17 covered reading a physical map of Mexico

Annika
Penmanship: Pages 56-63 completed in her usual perfectionist style.

Phonics: After a bit of thought I decided to take a look at The Writing Road to Reading and found it really made sense to me. We started it this week very slowly. We have covered phonograms 1-26, which she knew already, but I wanted to make sure they were truly mastered before we added any new ones in. I think this will be the best program for her when it comes to learning to read. We'll also add Explode the code back in after the first 45 phonograms have been covered. She likes the ETC workbooks, so I may as well use them.

Math: CLE lessons 25-32 were completed. She is continuing to love this program. This week we started some simple subtraction of -1 and taking away all but 1. We also received our shipment of CLE lightunits for 2nd grade math which we'll use next year and she just pored over them after they arrived. I kept hearing "Wow mom, I'll get to do multiplication," and "Mom the first lesson is about telling time, these are going to be fun"

Geography: Daily Geography week 17 covered reading a land and water map of Hawaii.

BOTH:
Writing: Writing With Ease Level 1 week 17 which included excerpts from The Reluctant Dragon was completed this week. They enjoyed the excerpts so much they asked if I could find the book so we could read the whole thing. I was able to find a copy on Paperback Swap and we're anxiously awaiting it's arrival.

History: This week we decided to institute "Super History Sunday" and covered the Navajo and read If you lived with the Hopi. We completed our Navajo pocket and had fun making a Navajo Necklace, a Navajo Rug and a Pueblo model.
Here's a few pictures of the model

Science: This week "Super Science Saturday" was about the Nervous system and our Senses. We did a reaction time lab, and a "mystery" station lab which had the kids using different senses to figure out what was hidden in the bag or jar. They had a lot of fun, especially when asked to stick there had in a bag with their eyes closed. They were both so worried it would be something like a bunch of slimy worms or icky goo, only to find it was only cotton balls.

Our decision to use the weekends to cover the interactive subjects has turned out great. We love that we're able to take our time and really enjoy the things we're learning about, it's also freed up a lot of time during the week, which means we were able to enjoy the few 70° days we had!

Come back next week to check out our Week 18 review.

Nothing to report

HA-Ha got you!!!



That's right Fawkes Academy had the week off and spent it playing games, watching movies and dealing with a broken washing machine.



Hope you all had a great week, I'll be back next week with our review of week 17.

Week 16 Review -- Jan 26-31

We had a pretty good start to the week but ended on a sick note. Annika got some sort of stomach bug which put an end to the week early. We've also decided to keep Super Science Saturdays and Super History Sundays as a part of our routine, thus cutting our weekly routine down a bit.

Here's the run down of the week.

Everett
Grammar: Growing with Grammar lessons 2.8 and 2.9 were completed. He worked with plural nouns, irregular plural nouns, possesive nouns and began learning about comma placement.

Penmanship: Pages 52-55, his cursive is still coming along and he is enjoying it.

Spelling: He worked on group 8 this week and did fairly well.

Math: Lessons 22-24 were completed. He was working on multiple step word problems and some basic multiplication. The Teaching Textbooks program continues to be a big hit.

Geography: Daily Geography week 16 covered reading a physical map of Canada.

Annika
Penmanship: Pages 52-55 completed in her usual perfectionist style.

Phonics: Winterpromise's Advanced K phonics is working well. She is enjoying the pages from Explode the Code as well as the other phonics and spelling activities.

Math: CLE lessons 23-24 were completed. She still really likes this program and it has made math time a lot more fun for us.

Geography: Daily Geography week 16 covered reading a land and water map of Arizona.

BOTH:
Writing: Writing With Ease Level 1 week 16 which included excerpts from Master of All Masters was complete this week.

History: This week we covered the Sioux and read If you lived with the Sioux. We completed our Sioux pocket and had fun with an Amazing Buffalo Activity.

Science: This week we have decided to have "Super Science Saturday" regularly and worked on our units about the Respiratory and Digestive systems.

Art: We've decided to use the projects from our Native American studies as art time and will continue to do that for the next 3 weeks.


Come back next week to check out our Week 17 review.