Weeks Six & Seven

What a hectic couple of weeks! I decided to cheat a little and combine two weeks into one post because, really, that's what they were. We knew that Eric would be gone last week and that my parents were coming down to help us with a work project, and so we worked ahead the week before so that I would be free to help with the work project and not have to worry about history and science (which I sit and read aloud to them).

And it was worth it! We worked on our kitchen and we love it. And even though the girls still had to do all their other subjects they still had plenty of down time.

History: We studied how the Pilgrims came to make the decision about moving to America. I did not realize that they had lived in Holland for twelve years before they made the decision to America. I don't know that I ever understood their reasons for coming to America other than wanting the freedom to worship as they pleased--and while that is true, it was also that they did not like to see their children essentially becoming Dutch and losing their English roots.

Science: This week our Sassafras studies took us to Canada where we studied the farm habitat. We focused primarily on cows, chickens, honey bees, and spiders. I wasn't sure how I felt about this science when we began it but I really like it now. I decided to begin a binder for each of the girls and they can compile each animals picture and their projects. I like to be able to see progress!

Reading: Hannah is finishing up her pilgrim adventure book finally. We did have to do some remedial work on her Reading Comprehension assignment this week. She was rather dismayed when I read her answers and burst out laughing. The questions were something like "What makes tornadoes so dangerous?" She is supposed to read the story about tornadoes and answer the question. Which she did. But she simply wrote "It sucks". And that was it. Oh, dear...so she will have to redo that assignment!

For Grace she is still working through her Bob books but since we moved into the Word families book (which focuses on similar sounds like start, bart, mark, car, barb, etc). She fails to see the connection between the words and instead gets hung up on how long they are. I think we'll be trying something different next week...with Grace I feel like it always two steps forward and one step back...we make forward progress but it is always followed by some backward progress. I do not enjoy teaching beginning reading...it is a very challenging prospect!

Next week life should return to normal and Eric doesn't have any more trips scheduled that we are aware of. I am ready for a little bit of normalcy in our homeschooling. And the Pilgrims are finally boarding the Mayflower so woohoo, adventures to come!