Ending the 2010/2011 Year

Today is our last day for this school year.  Princess L finished up on Monday.  We finished the Old Testament in her MFW Bible Reader.  We will probably read this once or twice a week over the summer break and do the notebooking. 

For Princess E and Princess S, it has been a very busy week.  We spent last week and this week focusing on our science and IEW.  We completed our science book - Our Planet Earth - from the God's Design for Heaven and Earth series.  We skipped many of the lengthier experiments but will be building a life-size volcano out of ice cream, crushed oreos and chocolate syrup.  Okay - maybe not life-size - but we will be building a small volcano yet.  It will be an activity we decided to wait to do when Nanny comes to visit sometime next week.  They also finished their IEW writing course - Student Writing Intensive Level A.  It was a lot of writing in a short amount of time, but we got through it.  I debated doing the SICC-A next year.  I decided it was just two pricey for us right now.  So we're going to be doing the Ancient History Writing Lessons to go along with Tapestry of Grace Year One.

Today we are doing our last school activity for the year - our CAT testing.  Princesses L & M are over at a friend's house and we are doing all six tests in one sitting.  Then they are officially on summer break.  More on how we will spend our summer later.

Princess L Funnies

Today, we were driving past a cemetery.  There were workers mowing the lawn and trimming around all the headstones.  Princess L was watching and said, "Look, Mom!  Is that a flower park?  Can we walk around and look at all the flowers?"

TOG Year 4 Week 36

We have one week left of this school year.  I think I blinked - it's gone already.  I have been working hard to get most of next year's stuff ready so that I can have some summer days where I'm not doing school-related work.  Most everything is done other than printing.  I usually print off all the student pages I will be using for TOG, three hole punch them, and put them in file folders by weeks.  I may do this by unit this year, as I'm not yet sure to what extent I will be including Princess L, and am not sure yet how or when I will transition Princess S up to the D level.  I've been toying with the idea of switching her for Literature first.  She can certainly handle the amount of reading and the depth of the reading.  It's the literature elements that she needs the work on.  But moving her up to Lit first I think would be easier than moving her up in both history and lit as I did with Princess E.  So, I think I may do my printing a unit at a time.

I have tentatively sold several things that I have decided against using with Princess M.  I have buyers that need to wait until the end of the month when they get paid.  Then I plan to make a few small purchases for Princess L for next year.  I am leaning towards doing the Letter of the Week Curriculum with Princess M next year.   It will mean quite a bit of printing and laminating with contact paper.  I don't know if I will print out all the activities in color.  That might get a bit pricey.  I may print some in black and white and let the girls color some of them for Princess M before I laminate them.

Here's what we did this week:

Princess E - 6th Grade - Dialectic
Contined working on a review sheet I put together to study for the year four D level exam.  She's taking her own sweet time - but she's going to have to speed up.
Science:  Lessons 17-26.  Took a quiz on Rocks and Minerals.
IEW:  We completed lesson 11 on taking notes from different sources.  They each completed three individual paragraphs.  We began lesson 12 - which is a continuation of lesson 11.  They each had to pick three sources and make a list of possible topics.  Then they had to make a KWO for three topics.  They will take these three topics and write a three paragraph essay.

Princess S - 4th Grade - UG
Growing With Grammar 4: Chapter 8.8 - Chapter 8 review
Science and IEW:  same as above
 
Princess L - K - LG
MFW First Grade: Lessons 117-123. (We will complete lesson 124 on Monday and end for the year.  She will have read through the OT in her Bible Reader.)
Calculadder:  Book 1 Level 3
Explode the Code Book Two: Finished the book

TOG Year 4 Week 35

 This was our last formal week of our Tapestry Studies.  Week 36 is, for the most part, a review of the year (for Princess E) and a review of the unit (for Princess S).  We are supposed to read Revelations, but we are going to hold off on that for now.  We have to do our annual CAT testing on the 27th - which will be our last official day for the 2010-2011 school year.

Princess E - 6th Grade - Dialectic
Latin for Children Primer A: Done
Math-U-See Epsilon: She finally finished lesson 8 and lesson 9 seemed to go better.  She will take the test for that and then the Unit test that I realized I forgot to give her after lesson 8 (blush.)
IEW:  We will be finishing the last few lessons over the next two week.
Foundations 1:  Done
MCT Language Arts: Done
Practice Island: Finished the last 10 sentences - Done
McCrabbs: Done
Science:  See IEW above
TOG Yr4 Wk35: Timeline; SAPs; AQ/TQs; Reading - Mao Zedong's china; Homeland: The Illustrated History of Israel; The Making of Modern Africa; Raising Dragons.

Princess S - 4th Grade - UG
Growing With Grammar 4: Chapter 8.5-8.7
Math-U-See Delta: Lesson 9
IEW, MCT Language Arts, McCrabbs and Science: same as above
TOG Yr4 Wk35: Quizlet vocab; important people; SAPs; Reading - All the People; Countries of the Middle East; Falling Up.
Princess S has a few lessons of Grammar left and a literature SAP.  Then she is done except for science and IEW. 

Princess L - K - LG
MFW First Grade: Lessons 110-116.
Math-U-See Alpha: She is going to do the online drill a couple times a week through the summer but I decided just to stop before lesson 8.
Calculadder:  Book 1 Level 2 was just passed on Wednesday and she started Level 3.
Explode the Code Book Two: Lesson 10
I haven't decided yet where we will end.  I'm thinking we will go one more week.  I knew when I switched curriculum after the first quarter that we wouldn't make it through, but I'm happy with the progress that has been made so far.

Princess M - PreTOGger
I think Princess M is quite excited for us all to end for the summer because it will give her sisters more free time to play with her. 

Kid Funnies

Princess S:  Hey Mom, can animals get sickness?  You know - like fevers or dyslexia?

Me:  Do you know what dyslexia is?  It has to do with not being able to read normally.  Animals can't read, so they can't get dyslexia.

Princess S:  Oh yeah.

Field Trip

Seeing as how this week's topic is the presidency of Barak Obama, I thought the opportunity we had today was too good to pass up.  There was a tax rally on the steps of the capitol in my state.  There were many speakers, but the highlight was listening to Congresswoman Michele Bachmann.  Though she is not our direct representative - we choose to lay claim to here just the same as she does represent our state.  She is a breath of fresh air to listen to.  Both of the princesses seemed rather bored and said they didn't understand much of what was going on, we did have a good conversation on the way home about why we went.  We talked about how our freedom in America comes with responsibility; and that in order to preserve that freedom for themselves in the future, they need to pay attention to what is going on in the government and peaceably speak out when it is in the wrong.  We acknowledged that without changes in the way that our government is functioning, they will perhaps experience some of the atrocities we have read about this year.

TOG Year 4 Week 34

It really is a weird coincidence that we were studying the eight years of George W. Bush's presidency.  Hoopla of this past week has made this week's studies much closer to home.  Princess E and S were so young when 9/11 happened.  Yet, they have been impacted by it as all of us have been.  No matter what your stance is on how things went down, or whether there is closure given in photographic form, the truth is that God has orchestrated all things to come together for His purposes.  And we rejoice that His plans have included a modicum of retribution for those directly affected by 9/11.


Princess E - 6th Grade - Dialectic
Latin for Children Primer A: She has finished this book and I am getting it ready to be used next year with Princess S
Math-U-See Epsilon: Working on lesson 8 - still.  It's a matter of not rushing through for her.  It's been a busy week and she's been in a hurry to finish, but that doesn't get you out of corrections, as this princess is learning.
IEW:  We are going to take a break from this to finish our TOG studies, then take the last two weeks of May to finish our IEW, MCT and science.
Foundations 1:  -ED (dropped e)
MCT Language Arts: See IEW above
Practice Island: Sentence 86-90
McCrabbs: We have now finished book A.  We will not start book B until next fall.
Science:  See IEW above
TOG Yr4 Wk34: Timeline; SAPs; AQ/TQs; Reading - The War in Iraq; Homeland: The Illustrated History of Israel; Idiot's Guide; Poetry for Young People: Maya Angelo; . Read Aloud - SOTW 4.

Princess S - 4th Grade - UG
Growing With Grammar 4: Chapter 8.2-8.4
Math-U-See Delta: Lesson 8
IEW, MCT Language Arts, McCrabbs and Science: same as above
TOG Yr4 Wk32: Quizlet vocab; important people; SAPs; Reading - All the People; Countries of the Middle East; September 11, 2001; Falling Up. Read Aloud - same as above.


Princess L - K - LG
MFW First Grade: Lessons 103-109.
Math-U-See Alpha: Continue lesson 7 +2  - We added in the online drill at Math-U-See. 
Calculadder:  Book 1 Level 2
Explode the Code Book Two: Lesson 9

Princess M - PreTOGger
One of Princess M's favorite shows to watch is Little Einsteins.  She knows the theme song by heart and is so funny to watch when it is on.  I like this show because it combines art and music throughout the show.  But she also still has an affinity for "Monkey George" as she calls him.  She usually gets to watch one half hour show while I work on the first part of Princess L's school.