Wrapping Up Week 12 (2016-17)

Posted on October 1, 2016 by Deanna

We are officially a third of the way through our school year! I can’t believe how quickly the weeks are flying by, but it feels good knowing we’ve gotten in twelve solid weeks and we’re moving along at a good pace.

Preschool

I had grand plans to get back into some preschool activities this week. We started off with a tea party where I read How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World, one of our favorite books from Five in a Row. I figured it would be a great way to build upon our field trip to the apple farm last week.

But then we didn’t get any farther than reading the book. Granted, Arianna spent one night at Grandma’s house, and then she had ballet one morning, and we had a park day with our friends. Still, I’m frustrated by our schedule this year, which doesn’t give us any long mornings at home. We’re squeezing in bits and pieces here and there, but I’m sad to not have more time to spend doing fun learning activities with my preschoolers.

Elementary

History

We’re taking a break from The Light and the Glory for Children because I wanted to spend a little more time dwelling on the Declaration of Independence before plunging ahead with the next chapter. To learn more, we watched an episode of Animaniacs, “The Flame”; Pups of Liberty: The Dog-claration of Independence on Izzit.org; and Learn Our History: The Declaration of Independence.

We also watched four episodes of Liberty’s Kids:

#12 Common Sense
#13 The First Fourth of July
#14 New York, New York
#15 The Turtle

We did go ahead and read guns-for-general-washington Guns for General Washington by Seymour Reit, which tells the story of Henry Knox leading a group of men in transporting the cannons from Fort Ticonderoga hundreds of miles to help General Washington reclaim Boston. We learned about that event last week, but I’m glad we read it, because it really helped the story come alive for the boys.

Biography

I decided to go back and spend a little more time on George Washington this week. Because Ian learns so well through audio resources, I recently purchased a collection of old time radio and other audio dramatizations: The American History for the Ears Ultimate Collection. From that collection we listened to an audiobook of the section on Washington from Four Great Americans by James Baldwin, as well as two episodes of the old radio show “Mr. President.”

The boys also read a cute story, George Washington and the General’s Dog by Frank Murphy. They both really enjoyed this true story about Washington returning General Howe’s dog to the British leader after a battle.

Writing

We got all the way through Lesson 4 in All Things Fun and Fascinating, and I continue to be blown away by the boys’ progress. This week they wrote their key word outlines completely independently, and then typed up their stories all by themselves. (There was a little grumbling about that, with one boy thinking it would take him way too long to type himself, but I think he was surprised at how quickly he did it, and I don’t anticipate any such complaints in the future.) The only place I needed to offer some guidance was in choosing a title and helping them find appropriate places to add in “dress-ups.” This was Eli’s story: