Weeks Eight & Nine

Falling behind yet again...we've been busy!

History: The Pilgrims have finally arrived in America! Of course they didn't find Plymouth Rock straight off the bat. They had actually intended to land further south and so were not prepared for the cold and it took them awhile to locate a place that provided all the things they needed. We have not yet covered them actually settling, that will come next week.

Hannah is reading through the book "Our America...The Pilgrim Adventure" for her history extension reading. She's enjoying it so far. It is a story of a twin boy and girl who have to travel through time to save their parents who are lost in time. And, of course, they wind up with the Pilgrims. 

 

Science: We covered the Amazon rainforest. Sloths an toucans were the focus. The next week we covered frogs and butterflies and their differing processes of metamorphosis.

Reading: Hannah began to read "Charlotte's Web". Her last two reading books have been Pilgrim-themed so she was ready for a change. It seems like she has been enjoying the book so far.


Grace moved back into her First Start Reading curriculm from last year. We had completed most of it last year but left the last book for later as she was struggling with it at the time. But she is breezing right through it now. She's still got a way to go before she's really reading on her own but she is so much closer. She really loves this curriculum as it allows her to draw a picture of the story she just read, illustrating her own story. She gets so excited and makes such detailed drawings.

The other subject under discussion lately has been spelling.  I believe we are going to make a switch soon. We are currently doing Christian Liberty Press's spelling program but we are finding that the words are difficult for Hannah and she is not retaining them very well. So I think we're going to try something else.

Field Trip: We got to go to a field trip to the Barlow Planetarium and Weis Earth Science Museum. Eric actually was able to accompany us so he took Hannah and Sean on the older child field trip while I took Grace and Elaina on the younger. Much of the material was lost on the younger girls but apparently Hannah loved it. That is not surprising since Hannah likes science. Grace leaned over half way and whispered that she was bored. Fortunately for her shortly after that they started to play "mind games" with the kids and put a roller coaster up on the screen and explained how our eyes can interpret movement even if we are not moving. The kids loved that--I closed my eyes! Elaina laughed and squealed--it was too precious! She kept saying "How are they moving me?!" It was a concept lost on her!