8 Down, 1 to Go!

This coming week is our last before our 2 week break! Wooo Hooo! Tapestry of Grace Year 3, Unit 2 is here, still wrapped in shrink wrap, dare I look and start planning early. Math on the Level starter set has been ordered as of today thanks to Camille's very supportive Dad, I will be able to take a good look at it and decide if it will be right for us during our break!

For our last week, we will be finishing up learning about South America and completing a special project. We're going to take each country's flags that Camille colored and hang them by yarn on the wall, underneath each flag with be the country's name, capital, and a list of items you can find in that country. We will start Monday and by Friday, we should have completed all of South America. We did not go to the pottery store on Friday so that is still up in the air, we might go just Camille and I while Danny is in preschool this week.

We will also finish reading Once on This Island by Gloria Whelan, we are currently behind, only on chapter 12 so we have 8 more chapters to read. If we don't finish, it's fine- we'll just keep reading during our break.

I am challenging Camille to memorize Windy Nights by Robert Louis Stevenson in one week.

Whenever the moon and the stars are set,
Whenever the wind is high,
All night long in the dark and wet,
A man goes riding by.
Late in the night when the fires are out,
Why does he gallop and gallop about?

Whenever the trees are crying aloud,
And ships are tossed at sea,
By, on the highway, low and loud,
By at the gallop goes he.
By at the gallop he goes, and then
By he comes back at the gallop again.

Can she do it? We'll see. I will end by reviewing Bed in Summer (she already memorized last year) and a biography of Robert Louis Stevenson.

We are 30 +/- lessons away from being done with Primary Language Lessons by Margot Davidson. I think we'll be done either by the end of December or in the first two weeks of January. Either way, since we're going to use Writing Tales 1 next, I'll need to prepare for that by making the necessary photocopies and cutting. I also need to reassess Writing Aids and what we'll be using from it.


We will have to do one more week of Head to Toe Science by Jim Wiese during our break, but I planned it that way. We will be using Magic School Bus- The World of Germs kit next and I will need to get familiar with it and plan our reading.

Let's see what else? Oh math! While I'm getting accustomed to Math on the Level, we will be doing Times Tales. We will start that this week and depending on how it goes, we may do it over the break as well but others have said that two 45 minute sessions is all that is needed. Hmm. We'll see. I'm skeptical.

I need to make sure our 2nd Quarter notebooks are ready to go, I hope to develop a plan for our nature studies for the Junior Park Ranger program and I want to further develop ideas for our science notebooking approach with what I've read from Science Notebooks: Writing About Inquiry.

I hope to do a lot of things with Camille during our time off, unplanned and spontaneous things since Danny will still be at preschool. I think depending on the weather, we'll be doing a lot of nature walks. I wish Christmas wasn't so close, that way we could go do something very girlie like go get our nails done. We'll just have to have a spa day at home, I might even curl her hair.