Productive Week

   Our week has been hectic, but productive. We have used a variety of curriculum this week to make accomplishments in several areas. Before this year is up I want to see my children writing without having to be pushed along. Therefore, we are currently using four different books to make this happen. We rotate the books to add spice in our English/Creative Writing. The books we are using are: Simply Grammar, Writing Strands, Spectrum Writing Grade 6, and Proof Reading and Editing Grade 7. This variety is teaching them to focus on diferent aspects as they are doing their narrations. Their writing has come along tremendously since August. I'm proud of them.
    
We have also been easing in to book reports, learning about plot, setting, characters, etc. I had gotten a book called Tall Tales that has some really neat, but basic, exercises using things like The Three Little Pigs, Goldie Locks, and some other short stories showing you how to detect the plot, setting... It has proven to be helpful as I used some of the sheets out of it for them to play around with on the book Pygmalion that we read for Literature last 9 weeks. They disected the book very well. So well, I would say they digested that book. We also watched and did a comparison of the two movies, Pygmalion and My Fair Lady, which was like a musical to Pygmalion. (Had I known how much profanity was in My Fair Lady, we would not have watched it.)     When we started back last week with our schooling, we added some variety to our math. We have used A Beka for years, but I decided I wanted more hands on so we added Math in the Community 4th grade by Frank Schaffer. I like this book and my children are enjoying the few lessons we have done out of it. The book is laid out to where you can jump around in the book to pick and choose what you want to cover. I had been wanting to teach my children Area & Perimeter so we just eased over to that section and have started learning the basics to it. Next week we are going to be using dad's measuring tape to find the Area & Perimeter of our living room, bath room, garage, etc. There are so many hands on activities in this book. It's really going to make math more practical for my children. I will be checking in to the higher levels to Frank Schaffer's math books. The lessons are also short, Charlotte Mason style.
     We had other subjects we worked on this week, but this post is growing by the word so I'll put another post in later on some of them. Hope you all are having a blessed homeschooling, Traci

Weekly Wrap Up

     Our week finished out pretty well. Our schedule was changed up a bit, but we are ok with that. I just pushed our lesson plans to the side and we studied/fun stuff on Johnny Appleseed. We didn't finish our lesson in Simply Grammar & Writing Strands this week. I'm not worried about that though. We are just taking our time letting God lead us as fast as we should go. We'll pick back up on them this coming week. I can already see a difference in my son's writing skills since we started using Writing Strands. I think Writing Strands is going to be a hit for him. My daughter already writes stories so I think Writing Strands is going to just be a booster for her. I'm excited to see the result at the end of this year with my son's writing.
     I think we will start the morning tomorrow off by baking a homemade apple pie to wrap up Johnny Appleseed. I can't think of a better way to wrap up one of our studies than with a taste test. It is also my husband's birthday so we can substitute the apple pie for a birthday cake. I know my husband will love that because he love's apple pie.
     It's getting late soI had better go for now. Hope everyone has a blessed and happy home school week, Traci