The first two weeks - Part II

Thanks for bearing with me on the continued post.

History - We are using Homeschool in the Woods' Time Travelers Colonial Life unit study. The kids pick the activities that they want to do. We made some notebook pages and projects to go along with what we are learning. For one project, Peanut and I dyed cotton, wool, and linen samples using raspberries, blueberries, and red cabbage. She still wants to try mustard greens, so that is waiting for us this week. I am pretty sure the color will disappoint, though I haven't said anything. The other colors turned out pretty, however.

Language Arts - Right now, all we are doing is the copywork assignments from our unit study. They use Washington's Rules of Civility. For Junior (7), I just have him copy some of the words, as the assignments are a little heavy for a kid his age still working on mechanics. I try to have him do most of the punctuation, and write the words that I feel like he can learn to spell on his own soon.

Math - My kids use Singapore Math. This has been working well for us.

Read-Alouds: The first week, we read Pedro's Journal by Pam Conrad. This is a book about Columbus, but we missed this book last year when we studied Columbus, so this is a catch-up book. It was interesting to me, but the kids just tolerated it.

After that, we started The Warrior's Challenge by Dave and Neta Jackson. This started out slow, but it is picking up excitement. I am getting the feeling that it is going to be a sad book.

Reading: Junior read Hill of Fire, and started Nate the Great. He always reads them aloud to me. Peanut read Our Strange New Land from the My America series, and started on The Skippack School by Marguerite d'Angeli. Peanut enjoyed the My America book, it is similar to the American Girl books. The Skippack School is a higher-quality book. She did not like it at first, she said it was too hard. I don't think it is a difficult book, but it uses some dialect like German immigrants would use, and that may be what she was talking about. About three chapters in, she started liking it. I took turns reading outloud with her on this book, until she got more interested. She usually does her reading on her own.

We will start science in the coming week. We are delight-directed in science, so I let the kids pick their own topics.