Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Up to Week 23 in RTR

Sigh. Five weeks since my last update. Let's see if I can get caught up.

In RTR, Rabbit and I have been cruising along just fine. We got up to about 1400 or so in Europe, and the curriculum backtracks a bit to cover the same time period in China, Japan and Australia (I think we hit Russia next week). It has been interesting to note how a feudal system developed in both China and Japan, without having any contact with the West.

One of our fun projects was to build the model of a medieval castle (it comes with the curriculum). It's a lot of work, and I did most of it, but once I got into a rhythm, it wasn't bad. I bought a 1/4 inch thick poster board and we built it on that. We tried some different craft glues and Elmer's. Different glues worked better in different situations. Rabbit did a presentation at our homeschool group on castles after we made it (she cut out and glued on all the figures):
In science we finished up the Human Body and began Astronomy 2 weeks ago. The last unit in the Human Body was the reproductive system. Don't miss The Wonderful Way Babies are Made. I didn't read it to my 6 year olds, but it was perfect for Rabbit. Now that we've switched to Astronomy, we had another great "line-up." We're studying Mercury this week, and Mercury is visible in the sky just after sunset, along with Jupiter. We hope to get out tonight to be able to see it. (This website has details.) I've been trying to do all the experiments and projects. It's tough, because our days go longer, but the kids really enjoy them. Here is our model of the solar system:
We used a bead for Mars because it was so small. We should have used a bead for Mercury too. But it looks great and the kids really got a feel for how things compared in size.

We finished up memorizing 1 Corinthians 13 and are now on to Philippians 2. These are great verses for a family to "rememberize" to remind us how to love and how to treat each other. In Luke we're up to Passion Week, which I think is perfect as we approach Easter.

We haven't been doing as many of the Art lessons from God and the History of Art these days, but we are reading the History. And, if there is a lesson that she finds interesting, we do that. We have been listening to the music and really enjoying Mozart. We recognize lots of the movements.

We are now in Singapore 4B in math. I really like the way they've been teaching fraction to decimal (and back) conversions, and wish I would have learned it that way when I was in school. I will say that the reviews, in both the workbook and textbook seem WAY longer than in 4A.

English and Writing Strands continue to step up, but Rabbit is usually up to the challenge. Our latest Writing Strands assignment was to write a description of our home. I don't think we did as great a job as he implied we should do in the lesson. But, we have a rather large house, and it would have taken us many more days to complete the lesson. I told Rabbit I'd like for us to try again with it this summer, now that we have more of a feel for the lesson.

We're still in Level 5 in All About Spelling. I'm not sure if she is going to finish it this year. More of the tricky words ("If the sound is /long-e/ then it's i before e except after c") are in this level, and they are giving her trouble. She is recognizing more and more when she misspells, but still can't always figure out the correct spelling.

School has been going pretty well. We added in piano last week, so that is also adding to our days. Rabbit has taken right to it, and practiced every day.

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