Weeks 7-9

Weeks 7-9

Life in a Tropical Rainforest

My favorite thing about homeschooling is the ability to do our work when and where it best suits our family. We've done the last 3 weeks of school work mostly unconventionally. We did a week at the lake, then another week's worth in between visiting with my sister and her family for a few weeks, and the last week between Rob's days off (which meant lots of naptime/evening and weekend schooling this week) We can also do our work straight out of bed in our jammies (see Miriam below) or dressed in our favorite costume (see Rebekah below).

We started a new unit in Winterpromise Animals and their Worlds: Life in a Tropical Rainforest.
We are learning all about the climate and characteristics of a rainforest while learning about the many animals and insects that live in the rainforest. The kids really enjoyed reading about sloths this week. The new Animal Babies book is a huge hit. Even Michael comes running when I pull the book out to learn about animals and their babies. I am not loving The Tarantula in My Purse read aloud. It's so boring! There is no consistency from chapter to chapter; Rebekah doesn't even try to sit and listen anymore and Miriam isn't retaining much of what we are reading nor is she looking forward to read aloud time at all. Though I'm usually very much a "box checker" I've made the executive decision this week to drop the book all together, we've got 2.5 weeks until we start the next read aloud. We're either going to read Socks by Beverly Cleary or our Beatrix Potter collection until we get to the next scheduled read aloud.
Language Arts

Miriam:

Finished lessons 146-151 in The Ordinary Parents Guide to Teaching Reading. She finished Explode the Code book 4 and lessons 1 and 2 in Explode the Code book 5. She finished the section on sentences in Growing with Grammar, the sentence review and also started the section on nouns (through lesson 26). She also read aloud Nate the Great and What Makes Day and Night.

Rebekah:

Rebekah finished v, z and started q in her Explode the Code book. She also completed lesson 35 in The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading.

Math

Miriam completed lessons 20-23 in Rightstart Math. She also started using Singapore Primary Mathematics 1a completing through page 101 in the workbook.

Rebekah completed her Earlybird A book! She was so excited to see me write her name and date of completion on the cover. She also did lessons 17 -19 in Rightstart A.

Bible

We completed lessons 2 through 4 in our Bible study during this time. We are memorizing the Shema. So far Miriam can say Deut. 6:4 and 5. Rebekah can also say Deut 6:4 and is beginning to learn verse 5.