Our first week back to school after the holidays was a busy one!
Like a silly girl, I didn’t do any lesson planning over the holidays so I found myself needed to do it during school time! I also decided to switch from lesson planning one week at a time to planning out the whole month. I think it might be easier for me to work on grading and record keeping during the week if I don’t also have to lesson plan for the next week. (We’ll see.)
Considering everything that I needed to work on during the week, the fact that we got behind on chores over the New Year’s weekend (now THAT was smart) and also the fact that the girls went on an impromptu field trip to a museum with some friends on Friday… I’m really quite pleased with the amount of work we got done! We did a little extra on Wednesday and Thursday and the girls will need to do an extra math lesson on Monday. It feels good that we didn’t let those things get us behind.
Here’s a few highlights from our 1st week back at school (wish I’d taken the camera out there with us!)
We picked up where we left of with our Westminster Shorter Catechism for Kids, taking a few minutes to review Questions 1 and 2 before learning Question 3. Drama Queen is always first to raise her hand to recite Question 1. She’s proud of knowing the answer and rarely even waits until we’re done reviewing memory verses before asking if she can recite it to me. Our new memory verse for this week was 1 Corinthians 15:33:
Do not be deceived: “Bad company ruins good morals.”
The girls dove back into their math without too much trouble. Drama Queen, whose curriculum had just introduced the concept of multiplication jumped right back in and took to multiplying by 0 and 1 in a matter of minutes. (Now the “REAL” multiplication begins.) ; ) Princess happened to have a quiz on the 2nd day back, but had no trouble with it at all. (Hallelujah!)
While working on their various handwriting pages, grammar assignements, etc, I suddenly noticed a significant improvement in Drama Queen’s normally exceptionally messy handwriting. Seemingly all of a sudden her writing is significantly less cluttered, messy and scraggly. I noticed the same thing with her numbers on her math assignment! Yes! LOVE, LOVE, LOVE such obvious signs of improvement. Also, it’s sooo much easier on my eyes while grading. =)
Science this week involved reviewing and wrapping up the chapter on Venus. With all the skipping and postponing of science that happened earlier in the year with various sicknesses and such, we’re much farther “behind” in our science book that I wanted us to be at this point. Each chapter was designed to be stretched out over 1 or 2 weeks so we’ll be switching back to 1 week per chapter for a while to catch back up. One thing about the notebooking — the girls are really taking to it and getting the hang of it and I most love that they do it together, helping each other, without my help. There’s something sweet about watching them work together like that.
History! Quickly becoming my favorite subject.. We’re a little bit behind in history, too, though I’m not sure how much. This week we learned about Moses & The Exodus, The Ark of the Covenant & The Tabernacle, and Joshua & Jericho. I enjoyed the discussion about determining when the Exodus occurred and the possible pharaohs that may been in rule at the time. I did try to find a Ten Commandments type movie we could watch online with Netflix but no such luck. We did, however, watch the VeggieTales “Josh and the Big Wall” today — that counts for something, right? 😉 Next week will be all about wrapping up Ancient Egypt and I’m really looking forward to that. Over the holiday break I FINALLY ordered and received our timeline figures. I worked on making our Wall of Fame during school this week. Placing all the semester one figured on the timeline will serve as a good way to review what we’ve learned so far, don’t you think?
Looking ahead to next week, I’m glad all the lesson planning is done because there is still PLENTY to do! Our school space is still quite cluttered and our books and papers could stand a good organizing. I’m going to try to work on that while the kids work on their lessons. We also have a compass experiment and an Egyptian meal on the schedule for next week. Sounds fun, right?!
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Sounds like a productive week. I really like the idea of putting figures up as a review of what you’ve done so far. It’s interesting that you say that history is becoming your favorite subject…I used to hate it when I was in school, but now that I am teaching it to the kids, I am learning so much and finding it fascinating!
Love the name drama queen. Is there a male term for that one?