Week 2 in Review: August 3-14

Yes, the second week of school took us two calendar weeks. We had some issues with the Central Air Conditioning which unfortunately forced us to put the week on hold. We just finished up this week by do a little each day after Annika got home from Camp.

Here's what we did.

Everett:
Grammar: Junior Analytical Grammar Unit 2 was completed. It covered Articles and Adjectives. He did pretty well and is still enjoying the program. His final score on the unit test was an 85%.
Spelling: Phonetic Zoo is still working well. He worked on Lesson 2 this week which is the dreaded "I before E, except after C..." rule. He had a bit of trouble in the beginning but he's very close to mastering it.
Writing: This week we took a break from writing while I wait for our new Writing with Ease books come in. I'm going to start him in Level 2 this year and focus on his narrations and dictation. This will also mean he won't have a separate penmanship to do because WWE will have some copywork for him to do.
Penmanship: He worked on a page I made for him about Musk Oxen.
Reading: Everett is still reading The Lightning Thief. He's really enjoying the book and we're very excited for him. He's never read this much without a lot of prompting.
Math: Teaching Textbook 5 is still a big hit. He completed lessons 73-75. We also played a few board games that have a math theme as a fact refresher.
Geography: Daily Geography week 2 completed. The topic was lines of latitude, longitude, the equator and prime meridian.

Annika:
Language Arts: McRuffy phonics and spelling is a HUGE hit. She looks forward to all of her McRuffy curricula lessons. This week she completed lessons 34-41 and read the readers. A Can, The Hat, and Nan.
Penmanship: We decided to use a modern manuscript for her now as a gear up to cursive. She will continue with the one that match her McRuffy Language Arts lessons and once Writing with Ease arrives she'll begin Level 1 again. She did part of it last year but wasn't really ready for it, I think she'll really enjoy it now.
Math: She really likes her McRuffy math. Some of it is review but there's so many fun things in it that she's moving at a fast pace. She completed lessons 11-15 this week.
Geography: Daily Geography week 2 completed. The topic was learning the basics of what was on a map.

Lucas:
Preschool: We worked on a few pages from his Kumon workbooks for Ages 2+. He did 2 coloring pages and got to use markers, which was a real treat for him. Then he did 2 pages in Let's Cut Paper and 2 pages in Let's Fold.

All children together:
History: Week 2 we looked at some of the items that came out of the agricultural and industrial revolution and learned about James Watt and his work on the steam engine as well as Eli Whitney and the Cotton Gin.
Science: In Real Science Odyssey Chemistry this week we learned about how small atoms are and did some experiments that helped the kids to "see" how atoms move in different temperatures. We also read the book What's smaller than a Pygmy Shrew which is one of there all time favorite science books.
Read Aloud: We continued reading Half Magic by Edward Eager. This week we read chapters 4-5.

Annika also spent the mornings at Guppies to Puppies camp at The Little Gym. She had a really fun time and got to see hedgehogs, guinea pigs, many kinds of lizards, a scorpion, a tarantula, some baby ball pythons and an 11 foot snake. She said it was the best thing ever.

If you take out the part about our Air Conditioning going on the fritz and the fact that we then felt like we were baking alive in our 88° house for 2.5 days, it was a pretty good week. We're looking forward to getting back into a normal routine this week.


Tune in next week for "Week 3 in Review"