ECC 2nd Edition: Week 9

I really feel like the first day in a new country/continent is really long. We ended up having to do Geography and Science after lunch. Part of it is the coloring of the John 3:16 page for the new country. I love that my kids want to make beautiful pictures, but I may have to make them wait until they are done with the rest of their school!

It is kind of a relief not to have Hero Tales for Bible time this week. I really need Pooh to work on spelling, and I want to make copywork pages that are related to his spelling. But, if he has a Hero Tales copywork and spelling copywork, that is too much for him.

ECC 2nd Edition: Week 8

Our final week in North America.

This week Bible time consisted of learning about the people of Greenland, reading about George Muller in Hero Tales, and continuing on in Matthew. Taking the Sermon on the Mount in small chunks has been good.

Geography was learning more about North American industry, and trying to pronounce a few French words. The kids definitely know their North American countries.

Science was learning about relationships between living things. My kids didn't really notice the animal reproduction pictures in Living World Encyclopedia, but some kids might. I kind of glossed over some of those things. We did do the celery experiment. I think it is the third time we've done it. I didn't do as good a job as before getting all the xylem out of the celery stalk. And we used blue water so the kids could see the water getting up to the leaves.

Rabbit finished up Anne of Green Gables early, so has started on Bruchko. I am having her write up a short summary on each chapter after she reads it. After doing the detailed analysis of Anne of Green Gables, I thought it was important to at least keep up a little writing on each chapter.

She is doing great with her Country Summary reports, though often having to do a little homework on the weekend to finish them. She is getting better at summarizing. She wants to interject her own opinions on some of the topics, though. For example, the Mexican tradition of putting stuff on the graves of dead relatives so they don't come back and haunt them. She really felt like this was an unusual superstition and shouldn't be done. I had to work with her to keep her country summary report to the facts. I told her when she did her Country Report later on, she could put in a little more opinion.

Rabbit is doing pretty well on her science. She even got an 84% on her first quarterly test! I was very proud of her, because that was a hard test. And, her Applications of Grammar tests are improving. She got an A on her last one.

The boys have finally got the hang of long division. I was concerned, but it is really sinking in on the steps to do. Tigger really enjoys Writing Strands, and writes his lessons himself. Pooh is doing okay with it, and we're starting to get the hang of me scribing with him dictating. English seems to be going well.

Oh yeah, I've been having Rabbit do The Easy Spanish with the boys each day. Her Spanish is really improving, and she tries to use it throughout the day. She even occasionally will get on Rosetta Stone and work on it for a few minutes. Not sure if it is helping the boys any. I'm also considering looking into Duolingo - a website some people on the facebook page have mentioned as a good way for the children to learn. 

I know some people say learning a foreign language can be difficult for dyslexics, but Rabbit is really doing well. Now, Pooh's dyslexia is a little worse than Rabbits, so we may have to do something else with him - like American Sign Language. 

Looking forward to South America now.

ECC 2nd Edition: Week 7

I feel like we've really hit a rhythm now with the curriculum. Days are going fairly smoothly. Doing Spelling first really has helped get our days going.

I did feel that it was a bit disjointed to be reading about the Garifuna people, who live in Central America as we started studying Canada, but that was okay. Hero Tales was back again this week. It was interesting to learn about the founders of the Salvation Army. And we are having some lively discussion on the book of Matthew.

The geography lessons seemed pretty short this week. If we're suppose to play the geography game, I wait until after science so we don't go too long on it. We've pretty much got the North American countries down. 

In science we learned about food chains, food webs, and scavengers and decomposers - a nice change over deserts. 

I did let the kids do the soap carvings. They enjoyed getting out their multi-tools and using those. We used Ivory soap. It is very soft. I made them carve/shave their soap bars into bowls so we could collect the shavings for use later. A note of warning: some dogs might think Ivory soap is tasty - at least ours did. Poor Tigger. He had made a baby seal, but the dog bit off the head. She's a white fluffy dog, so we decided she was a polar bear eating the baby seal, LOL! The dog doesn't seem sick or anything, so we're guessing that the Ivory soap didn't hurt her. Tigger later went back and carved a bear - and did a pretty good job, too!