Fighting like Gladiators!

Oh, we've been having lots of fun this afternoon! This is the Roman Gladiator treasure chest thingy-ma-gig.

Forget Tadpoles, We're Raising Snails

We started with 5-6 tadpoles, now we have one and about 25 snails. See the egg sacs? Those are from the snails. In the top picture, those are all snails! The tadpole is on the other end- will someone tell him to sprout some legs!!! What do I do about the snails? A snail race might be fun...

In other Trivium Academy news: Camille is starting her piano lessons Monday!
Woo-hoo, we're so excited!
1/2 hour lessons, $10 each, one lesson a week- PRAISE God, he is so good!

Week in Review

HISTORY: Still reading about the Greeks, the Persian War, the Peloponnesian War
and next week will be Alexander the Great. We've been reading a lot of library books!

MATH: Breezing right along, Camille did 100% on her test today!
She's so proud of herself and I am too.

A nature journal entry, cardinals. Camille did this, isn't it great?

POETRY COPYWORK: Mr. Nobody by Anonymous, we learned about stanzas this week.

CLASSICALLY CURSIVE: I think she's doing very well,
she's excited but gets frustrated because she wants it to be perfect.

GRAMMAR: Introducing Pronouns

ARTISTIC PURSUITS: 1st- Project from earlier in the year. 2nd-Minoan Fresco, project this week.

SCIENCE: We studied butterflies this week, when the weather is consistent we'll order caterpillars.
We received 5 tadpoles from Carolina Biological, here's the remaining one and it's tank mates- six snails.
Somehow when we read about snails, I didn't catch on that they can reproduce by themselves. : )

CHARLOTTE MASON AFTERNOONS: I wish this happened every day but weather has not be ideal this week.
Here's Chase and Camille and Danny in the background.

Look What's Missing!

My baby girl's FIRST TOOTH! She's only 6 years and 7 months old and we've been waiting patiently for her to have a loose tooth! I guess I can't call her my baby girl anymore...she's growing up. She's so proud that she will have "grown-up" teeth.

Another update: Our one and only tadpole is doing well, we had received five tadpoles in our shipment from Carolina Biological and after four died, we were worried. The new news is that the snail that came with the tadpoles has had babies! We now have one tadpole, one adult snail and 5 baby snails! Dh said we'd have to get more tadpoles in order to feed the snails. Lol.

The Weekly Report

Okay, so I missed a week or two in doing the weekly report. We got a puppy and I've been dealing with this face as well! Yes, this is my son in the middle of a temper tantrum. He wanted something that I told him no about. Poor baby.


This, ladies and gentleman will detour your homeschooling efforts faster than you can imagine. Try reading aloud with a screaming toddler. If he's about to be 3, is he still a toddler? Hmm. Anyways, on with the weekly report.

BIBLE & READING
Bible is going well, nothing new there other than I have her read out of Proverbs every morning. Here's the books we're currently reading, we just finished Charlotte's Web and we're starting Wind in the Willows tonight. I'm aiming for a chapter a night, we'll see how long it takes. Charlotte's Web took almost three weeks because of bedtime distractions. Camille also read Madeline this week with an audiobook version of it. She did this 6x! She's currently reading aloud from the Doorways to Adventure (old school reader).

GRAMMAR
Here's a picture of her FLL work, I can barely see it but it might be better once it's on the blog, who knows. If not, I'm sorry. It says- I feel love for you. My mother feels love for me. It was intended to be copywork for her but I used it as dictation. We're on lesson 46 out of the 100 for first grade, time to step it up a notch.

MATH
I've been a bad teacher when it comes to math, she gets her workbook pages done sometimes when I'm wrangling her little brother and like today, she did perfect on it. I haven't taught her anything in a week, she's just cruising along. We've got to get back in the habit of talking about it, even if she thinks she knows it.


HISTORY
Evidence of her history notebook, lol. We talked about Greek myths today and I think we'll tackle another chapter this week in order to move on. We've read a lot of library books so I'm very comfortable just speeding up Greece. Here's a picture of the books we're reading or have read this week. These are only library books, we've actually read more from our home library.

ART
The top picture is a ladybug that Camille wanted to create and the bottom picture is her version of cave art, an activity from Artistic Pursuits. I've slowed down on Artistic Pursuits so that I don't run out of art lessons, she looks forward to them.

SPELLING
Camille finished Spelling Workout B today. She surprised me when she said, this is the last lesson Mom. What? The dictionary in the back of the workbook is quite large so I thought we had more to go. Spelling is done for first grade, the B workbook is for second grade anyways.

MEMORY
Poem: Mr. Nobody by Anonymous and Hymn: Praise Him from All Blessings Flow. Scriptures as well.

Guess Who?

This is Camille's drawing of Curious George. Didn't she do a great job?
We did so little school this week, I'm not doing a weekly report. We are doing lessons today however.

The Weekly Report

This week has been interesting. The digital piano has gotten a lot of attention as Camille and I have been looking at the Piano Basics book we bought for beginning our lessons. I need to call the piano teachers in our area, get prices and arrange trial lessons. I don't know why I haven't done this. She's really excited to start piano lessons but not in the way that it seems that it has been hyped up.


ISSUES ABOUT READ-ALOUDS
I realized this week that I have been probably reading books that are too above her head, we were trying to finish up The Seven Voyages of Sinbad the Sailor and Camille had lost all interest. I have persevered in the past and just kept reading to her, just to expose her but I realized this isn't what I want. I want my children to love reading and at least like the books I'm reading to them. So I'm dropping all long chapter books that pertain to history unless Camille asks for them. If we can't read the books during our history time during the day, we're not reading them. I understand now that we should be reading children's literature, picture books and stories that she requests.

I'm still going to read fables, fairy tales and nature stories but other than that there will be no more longer historical fiction books until she can read them on her own and enjoy them. She has asked to read Charlotte's Web next so that is our new read-aloud. It is a chapter book but it's at her request. On a frustrating note this week, Camille has misplaced her Reading-Literature Primer that I had pictured in last week's review. I haven't torn the house apart looking for it yet because our Christian Liberty Nature Readers came in and I've had her read from Book One but I want the primer FOUND! Lol.

DANNY'S ESCAPADES
Oh, Danny (2yo) emptied a gallon of milk out on the kitchen floor this week. There is now a lock on the refrigerator door whenever I am not in view of the refridgerator. I just have to remember that the lock is on there, I've broken one already. So far in the last two weeks Danny has emptied a canister of flour and a gallon of milk- we're guessing eggs next. : )

BIBLE
We've started reading Egermeier's Bible Storybook alongside our Explorer's Bible Study and I like it better. We'll see how it goes. She also drew a picture for some of her memory verses this week and here's one about God resting. Yes, that is God laying down taking a nap.

POETRY
Working on The Whole Duty of Children by Robert Louis Stevenson.

SPELLING
Camille is doing very well with adding -ing, -ed, -es, -ed, -er, -est to her words. She's doing a lesson a day in Spelling Workout B. This could become an independent thing she can do on her own and I can quiz the words with her. I'm not sure if I want to do that just yet.

MATH
Going very well, I feel as if we've stepped up to the plate with math. We're getting into new territory and it's exciting and interesting to see how Camille will process the new information. We're counting from 100-200, so far so good.

READING
Camille read-aloud from the McGuffey's Eclectic First Reader this week and the Nature Reader book 1. We are still trying to locate our copy of the Reading Literature Primer that she was reading last week. Camille has decided she wants me to read-aloud Charlotte's Web.

GRAMMAR
Solidifying address information and working on The Days of the Week poem.

HISTORY
We studied the Olympic Games this week and had a version of our own in the backyard. Camille noticed that the men were unclothed in the Olympic Games, I was careful not to choose any books that showed detail but it is noticeable that they don't have any clothes on. She thought this was funny and decided to add it to her narration picture, much to my dismay. I did a poor job of writing down her narration, she talked so fast! I tried to get her to slow down but she lost her train of thought so I did what I could. (Sidenote: if she was in public school, I'd have no idea when or how she was exposed to these types of things, so I think this was pretty mild.)

SCIENCE
We studied ants and termites. We read all about them and even a few poems. We're having a lot of fun with our Animal study. Camille tried to draw the three parts of an insect, I think she did a good job- the head, thorax and the abdomen.

The Week in Review

I'm fulfilling my New Year's resolution to document Camille's work each week. We finally got back into the groove this week and there was no tv during the day until the lessons were done. I've been touch and go with this but I've maintained this week. It's made a huge difference in Camille attention and Danny's demeanor.

Bible
We're just following along in Beginnings I, we did Week 16 and talked about 1 Samuel, including Hannah, Samuel and Saul. We've had some wonderful discussions about what God wants from us and how we can joyfully serve Him.
I'm creating a notebook for her from History Scribes' biographies so that she can document what she's learned about each person in the Bible. I also typed out all the scriptures she will be memorizing from now until we're finished and this makes it simpler for her and me to have in one place. We're still reading Leading Little Ones to God because we took a break from it for a while.

Poetry
This week I've started using The Harp and Laurel Wreath with Camille, the first couple of poems she already has memorized but I'm having her redo them anyway. I created a copybook for her where the first page is the poem and a place to draw a picture about the poem. After that she focuses on doing copywork of two lines of the poem for a week. Although she memorizes wonderfully, I think taking a little more time will help with retention. The picture below that Camille drew is supposed to be a little girl bringing something to her grandmother, I don't know why she chose to draw this but she did.



Spelling
In Spelling Workout this week we talked about contractions, this took some time for her to understand and I don't think she has it down yet but the work she did was good. We're already on Lesson 20 and there's 36 total. I'm more than confident that she will be using the C workbook for 2nd grade.

Grammar
We love FLL, we're memorizing the poem Days of the Week, we've discussed the calendar and Camille did wonderful on a narration for The Hen and the Golden Eggs. The moral portion is still a little hard for her to understand but she's 6. We're doing a lesson a day and this has helped us tremendously.



Reading
Camille is doing well with OPG, we're strengthening her decoding skills with lots of reading, including The Primer by Free and Treadwell that I got from Yesterday's Classics. She's really enjoying reading the folktales. She is also reading Math Madness, Nora Gaydos' independent readers. As our current read-aloud, we're enjoying The Seven Voyages of Sinbad the Sailor. This is a history read-aloud.

History
We've had to play catch up this week since we've been hit/miss with history. We studied the Myceaneans, barbarians and early Greeks. We need to finish our narration pages today. We combined chapters 18-20 in SOTW and just read, narrated and did our coloring pages. We have 22 more weeks to go and I want to be finished before 22 weeks so I need to figure out where we can combine and/or skip. We've been light on the projects but we're going to do one every other week.


Science
Our tadpole is on its' way to our home so we can raise it to be frog, Camille is very excited! She's counting down the days, meanwhile we've studied worms this week. She watched videos online at United Streaming about soil and worms, did her worksheet about the characteristics of a worm (that I created) and we read a poem about Worm Puree. Green Thumbs had supplementary information about worms. We placed it in all the habitats it would live, and determined what type of eater it is- omnivore, herbivore, carnivore.


Math
Camille has finished her first workbook in Horizons! There's another one to do but she is so excited that she finished one! She's a whiz at subtraction but still has a little trouble with addition, especially taking a horizontal addition problem to a vertical one. Other than that she's doing great with the calendar work we've been doing. I love how Horizons and FLL line up with concepts at times!

Our First Grade Lessons

Here is a recap of our First Grade using The Well-Trained Mind among other resources.

Bible (in order of how we used them)
Leading Little Ones to God by Marian Schooland
Big Thoughts for Little People by Kenneth Taylor
Right Choices by Kenneth Taylor
Explorer's Bible Study Beginnings I: Old Testament

also learned/memorized
The Lord's Prayer
The Apostles' Creed
Our House Rules (scripturally based)
Hymns from Explorer's Bible Study that are on the cd "My First Hymnal"

Handwriting
D'Nealian Handwriting Practice by MCP until we switched to copywork with scripture, then switched to poetry. Started Classically Cursive by Veritas Press (also D'Nealian)

Poetry Memorization
First Language Lessons and Poem Copybook of "A Child's Garden of Verses" by R.L. Stevenson. We also read poems that pertain to anything we're studying, any subject or just to have a good laugh.

Math
Horizons 1 box set, I like the Teacher's Manual, also bought RightStart Math Games but haven't used it but 3x. We will probably use it more as the concepts get more complicated in our math studies.

Science
Life science studies based on WTM rev. ed.'s suggestions. See the right hand sidebar for the Life Science download. We've raised a frog but won't do butterflies this year, we did catch caterpillars but they died b/c we couldn't find their food source.

History
SOTW Vol 1. with Activity Guide reading Egermeier's Bible Storybook alongside with schedule from www.paulasarchives.com. We've added the VP History cards/CDs for memorization purposes and we love them!

Will also read Peace & Peril by Mindy & Brandon Winthrow at the end of SOTW 1 to start church history. We've done about 10 projects throughout the year for history.

Reading
Ordinary Parents' Guide to Teaching Reading with Dick and Jane, Bob Books, Nora Gaydos readers (Now I'm Reading) series. We tried the McGuffey Readers but we just didn't stick with it.
Books we've read:
Click here to see the list
It needs to be updated but I took pretty good record. I also started dd on a reading log, she's to read 10 books on her level or just about and write in a log:
Date:
Title:
Author:
Favorite character:

this will increase as her reading skills do.


Grammar
First Language Lessons with the audio cd and Ruth Heller's books about grammar as well as poems I've found about grammar.

Spelling
Spelling Workout A (finished in 4 months)
Spelling Workout B (finished in 4 months)
We're done a little dictation throughout the year, really just about spelling words. We've increased from being able to say 1 letter at a time to saying 4 or 5 letters.

Language
We've decided to learn French, in fact- becoming a bilingual family. DD6, DS3 and myself are working towards being able to speak French all day and read/write in French. We're using a bunch of different resources, The Easy French is the curriculum I chose. We're putting off Latin until 3rd or 4th grade.

Art
We decided to focus on Art this year so we used Artistic Pursuits, K-3 Book 1. This went very well, dd's favorite subject! I'm combining Artistic Pursuits into history next year so we can study music as a separate subject. We also used Harmony Fine Arts (www.harmonyfinearts.com) which combines art and music á la Charlotte Mason in chronological order.

Other activities:
-DD started piano lessons (1x a week)
-We tried Recorder but she couldn't finger the holes correctly (used Recorder Fun!)