Weekly Report - November 5-9

Science

We studied sea turtles this week. We learned that the leatherback turtle can get as big as 9 feet long. That just astounds me. For an activity, we drew a life-size model of this mammoth turtle on our driveway. Both of my kids fit inside it! (You may need to click on the picture to see the turtle. I had a hard time getting it to show up in a photo.)

Math

I had gotten behind in grading math papers. I caught up this week and discovered that Ruthie is really having problems with multiplication facts. So, she spent this week correcting math papers and drilling multiplication. She hates drill, so this was not a good math week for her.

Art

We did another project from our fall art pack that I bought. I (again) want to highly recommend this if you're craft challenged like me. She has sold out of fall packs, but is currently working on a winter one that will be available in January. Hmmm... I guess that means I'm on my own for Christmas crafts. Bummer.

Ruthie painted fall trees using warm watercolors. Robert was not interested in this, but he did make the origami dog.

Language Arts

We are not continuing our use of Bravewriter's Arrow. I discovered that it's just too unstructured for me. Grammar and writing do not come to me instinctively. I have to work at making sure my children get enough of this and are learning it correctly. The Arrow is just not enough for me to feel confident in this area.

So, we are back to BJU for writing. I did decide to try CLE for grammar (still trying to simplify this subject). I gave them the placement test and ordered the first couple of light units to try it out. Hopefully those will come this week.

Geography

I wanted to share a new notebook I made. This one is for our U.S. geography study. I had to divide it into separate notebooks because my comb binding machine doesn't allow for more than 60 or so pages in a notebook. (I want to upgrade to a better one before next school year.)

There are dividers for the different sections of states. Each state has a map (Uncle Josh's Outline maps) and a coloring page with state bird and flower (links for those found in this post).

I love our notebooks. They keep everything organized and help tame the paper monster.