Sunday, April 12, 2009

Week 26 in ECC: China

I changed things up a little this week. We still started with Rabbit's Awana verses every day. Then, we did cross-crawls, ear-eights, jogger lunges, fencers, and cross-legged toe-touches. I was always forgetting those, so I thought we could get them out of the way. It only takes a few minutes. (We're still doing writing-eights before we do English/Spelling/Writing, and eye-eights before we do reading.) Then we did Bible time. We finished up Hero Tales with Gladys Aylward. It matched up perfectly with what we were reading in the YWAM biography.

For Geography this week, we made a Chinese flag (Tigger and Pooh joined in), played the geography game (the Around the World version), did Tangrams, and made Chinese lanterns. I let Tigger and Pooh do the lanterns too. Pooh did an incredible job cutting his lantern. I was concerned about his fine motor development, but I think he is progressing well. Here are our lanterns - we each made one:


In Science, we looked at Glaciers and Mountains. On one day we were to locate the highest mountain on each continent on our big wall map. The interesting thing was for two of the mountains we couldn't find them. So, a quick Google search and we found alternate names for them, and they were on the map with the alternate names.

Rabbit surprised me this week and did her whole spelling list each day in one sitting, rather than splitting it in two. I set the timer for 15 minutes, and it is taking us just about 15 minutes for the words in each day's list.

Rabbit did great in Math this week, finishing her times 8's and getting a 100% on her test. Next is a Unit Test, so we will be practicing all the times facts until she feels ready. Our goal is next Wednesday, but we'll see how it goes.

We've been plodding along in English, just working through the Primary Language Lessons book, doing most of it orally. And for writing, Rabbit wrote really well this week. Her spelling was still atrocious, but the ideas and content of her writing was much improved. She even wrote 4 sentences one day. I've also cut back to one vocabulary word each week. She did much better with that. And, she wrote 4 sentences for her vocabulary page. Seems to be a trend this week.

We got Quarter Mile Math this week. I got a really good deal through the Homeschool Buyers Co-op. Rabbit has been using that for her math drill this week. She really likes it. You can set it up to be either a race car or horse, and she likes to race as a horse. The boys like watching her race as a race car. We'll see if it improves her basic math skills.

We haven't been doing Power Glide every day this week, but I think we did 3 days. This is our 3rd time through the 3rd book, so I'm okay with taking it easy.

The art project this week was suppose to be making handmade paper, but we didn't really have a lot of fresh leaves and flowers to use, so we did Tangrams instead.

Reading Gladys Aylward's biography is fun. I did skip the part about the public execution.

Another new thing I started this week was being more organized. I got the idea from The Workbox System. This is mostly for me. I got an old hanging file-folder box that we weren't using any more and a bunch of file folders. I put in our books, paper, copies, etc., in each folder in the order we do our subjects. So, in the first folder is our Bible verse, and paper for copywork. In the second folder is any books for geography. In the third folder is our book for science, and so on. I even made a "seatwork" folder, to give to Rabbit when it is her seatwork time. I was always struggling to find our English book on English days, or our Spelling books on the bookshelf. This way they are all right there, and I can easily find everything.

Next week: Japan!

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