Not a bad week, overall. We ended up starting last Thursday, so our "light and independent Friday" falls on Wednesday. This will be good, as the boys will be taking a P.E. class on Wednesdays, and Rabbit's dance class will be on Wednesdays when it starts. We'll need a lighter school day.
Bible this week covered Gideon and Samson. It is the time of the Judges. I find it interesting that the Israelites had trouble following God unless they had a strong leader. And even then, some of the Judges weren't that great (especially Samson).
Our new Greek root this week was helios. We had fun finding words in the dictionary and guessing what they might mean based on the other Greek roots we already know. Rabbit missed one (logos) on her quiz, though. I haven't started playing the games recommended in the T.M. with Rabbit. I really should, as they look like fun. But, some days Kindergarten is taking 2 hours with the boys!
We are progressing well on spelling. We've almost finished Book 3. Rabbit's spelling is not perfect, but it is improving greatly. I went ahead and ordered Book 4. I think the new format is really helping Rabbit learn her words better.
Rabbit is having trouble mastering her divide by 4 and divide by 6 facts. I keep working with her. We've moved on to calculating averages. She wanted to know why, and it was hard for me to come up with reasons.
Monday and Tuesday, and a little on Thursday, were History days. We learned about the people of Canaan, the Hittites and the Philistines. I personally read a book recommended in the manual called Hittite Warrior. First, it is a very good book, and is a great fictional story set in the time of History we are covering. I've chosen not to read it to Rabbit as a read aloud as she is only 9. The book covers a lot of the sacrificing to the other gods of the time, Molech especially. It was hard enough for me to read it. I'm sure it would have upset Rabbit.
Science... Sigh... Once again, we're about 50/50 on the success rate. For the life of me, I cannot get Match Rockets to work. The foil just burned up. The match might "jump" off its launch pad, but it didn't fly. I did get the see-through-egg experiment to work and didn't even break the egg. I let the egg set in a jar with a lid for about 26 hours. When we scooped out the egg, it's shell was completely gone. I think the picture in the book is a little misleading. It implies that you could see through the egg clearly. That was not the case with our egg. However, we did hold it up to the light and could easily see the yolk that way. We didn't do the two-state rocket experiment, but it is one I plan on hitting sometime - if we could just find a day with time to do it.
Art this week was all about drawing nature. Alas, it was way to cold to go outside (below freezing!) to do any drawing. So, for one thing she drew a silk flower that I had. We'll have to wait for a nature study when it warms up.
In reading we've switched back to an Abeka 4th grade reader. Rabbit still has trouble with names. We've only been reading together for about 15 minutes. She's been reading her Bible for another 15 at bed time, plus books from the library, so I figure she's getting in 30 minutes, at least.
The Spanish lesson this week was about horses, so at least that captured her attention.
The Abeka K program is driving me crazy. Some days it is taking me over 2 hours to do K with both boys. One thing that is hard is some days (days when they read to me), they'll have lots of seatwork - like 5 pages. That is a lot of writing for my two boys. So, I've changed it so they only have to do the tracing parts on the writing pages when there are lots of pages. That's helped them. I'm thinking next year, even if My Father's World First Grade program has handwriting, I'm going to have to get a Handwriting Without Tears workbook for them to increase their skill and endurance on writing. On a good note, they are reading short-vowel words (okay, they often are still sounding them out, but still) and love the fact that they have special little readers to read. They love using the blocks in the Math-U-See Primer book. It is funny how they each do the book differently. Tigger builds each problem, colors the blocks and writes the numbers one at a time. Pooh builds all the problems, then goes through and colors all the 1 blocks and writes their number, then all the 2 blocks and writes their numbers and so on. It still takes them about the same amount of time to finish the page.
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