Weekly Review February 14-17, 2010

Our week flew by. We seem to be back in the swing of things----history, art, AND science all got down!

History: This week I had a brilliant idea for utilizing our Perspective: Timeline Game. We've played this game many times to review timeline dates. It's a simple game. Everyone takes turns putting their cards in the correct place on the timeline in relationship to other cards. At anytime your cards can be challenged. The point of the game is to end up with all your cards on the board and none in your hand. In our competitive family the challenge part of the game became more important than actually knowing where the cards went! Also, with all of the cards from the beginning of time to present day in use we had a hard time remember the dates of what we put down. So, to my son's horror I made up my own rules! gasp! We got out our Timeline Books and several history encyclopedias. I picked out only Medieval and Ancient History cards. Surrounded by our Timeline Books and several history encyclopedias, we started the game. Points were earned if the event was in your timeline book and you could tell us about the event. In addition, you didn't have to tell anyone else the date and got to place the event on the board. It was up to everyone else to look in their timeline book to see if you were right. If the event was not in their timeline book, they were out of luck: you looked it up and told us about it, and we all added it to our books. It made for a nice break from what we usually do and we all learned much more from this method of playing the game. In addition to our game,  we read about learning, scholarship, the black plaque, the Peasant Revolts, and the growing power of the common man during the end of the medieval time period. Everyone wrote a paragraph about St. Thomas Aquinas and a summary of medieval literature.

Lit: E still hasn't found his Windows to the World book, but I have found lots for him to do in my TM that doesn't require him to have his book! He re-annotated A Jury of Her Peers specifically looking for how the settings reveled the development of Minnie Wright. Next week he's going to write an essay on this topic. E-R and I-E are reading The Family Under the Bridge. They did comprehension questions, vocabulary, and we had a really good discussion about sharing feelings and responsibilities of parents. They also completed a paragraph describing how they would feel if they didn't have a home during Christmas time.

E-R's paragraph

I'm glad to have a home, but if I had no home at that time it would be hard. I would try to not see stuff I would want for Christmas. I would touch everything I saw. I would taste sadness. I would smell everything I couldn't taste. I would feel tears coming to my eyes. It would feel colder than it really was at night. It would be sad not to have a house during Christmas time . I'm glad to have a house to live in.

English: We're still working on pronouns. E started levels 6 and 7 of Sequential spelling. He's the only natural speller in our family; he's flying through each lesson without much difficulty at all.

E's spelling test

 E-R and I-E continue to work through level 3 of Sequential Spelling. Telephone Etiquette was a much needed lesson for our family. We did find some of the rules a bit outdated for today's world filled with caller id, call-waiting, and cell phones. E-R and I-E are working on a persuasive essay to get ready for the writing test in a week and half. 

Math: I-E and E-R started learning about percentages. E continues working through the Aleks Algebra program.

Science: We read about Daniel Benoulli and his family, are working on memorizing his principal, and completed a few demonstrations of his principal. I'll have a post just for science with pictures and more details later today.

Art: We did it! Amazing I know। This week we learned about three dimensional art during the Renaissance.

I-E's art assignment

Memory Work: We continued with our states. Almost everyone has the states and abbreviations down. Next we're going to memorize those capitals. We are working on memorizing Tennyson's poem, The Eagle, and finishing up the facts of the sensory system.

I feel really good about our week.   Off to enjoy the four day weekend.  Hope everyone has a great weekend.  

Be sure to figure out check out everyone's week at the Weekly Wrap-Up Hop.