Category: School News

We are back from our long weekend and we are all sick or not feeling well. We don’t want to be sick!!!

It started with Gino having a sour throat yesterday and this morning Isabel and I had one. Mine wasn’t all that bad but Isabel said her throat was really hurting. She sounds really thick when she talks, so we are soothing it with honey. If it still persists and doesn’t seem to be getting any better I’ll take her to the doctor. Gino says his sore throat comes and goes. So him and I will bump up our herbal intake and see how it goes.

Since Isabel wasn’t feeling well. I did all the reading, while she listened.

The Bible verse for this week is…

“Through him all things are made, without him nothing was made that has been made.”
– John 1:3

Isabel’s written copy from the Bible.

We are also going over the last 2 weeks verses as well, to tie them all together.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”
– John 1:1
“He was with God in the beginning.” – John 1:2

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The dictation passage for the week is several pithy proverbs for Ben Franklin…

“A stitch in time saves nine.”

“Fish and visitors stink after three day.”

“God helps them that help themselves.”

After reading through them, we discussed what Isabel thought their meaning was. She said she didn’t quite understand them and thought they were a bit strange. Our discussion lead to the real meaning of each one and how or if they still apply to our world today. Great talk!

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Our new books for this week are:

“And Then What Happened, Paul Revere?” by J. Fritz and “Phoebe the Spy” by J.B. Griffin

Both books are easy readers and we should have them completed by Friday.

Spelling test(s) for today were…
(only 2 more days of double testing and than we’ll be caught up!)

Looks like we might need to go over a few of the words again.

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Today Isabel got to make a 4-stage butterfly mobile after school!

Supplies are out and the creative juices are flowing in the classroom.

Assembling her branch, leaves and caterpillar eggs.

Completed branch and cocoon.

Making her butterfly.

All the pieces are complete except her butterfly.
We’ll let all this dry and tomorrow we’ll put all the pieces together!

I just made a butterfly not the rest of the stages.

No school today due to Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

It’s the beginning of the weekend and it’s a 3 day weekend at that! We have plans for tonight but the rest of the weekend is wide open.

Since the holiday falls on Monday, I have spread out our Monday assignments between today (Friday) and Tuesday of next week. With Monday being a lighter day spreading out the work wasn’t that hard to do.

We started our day with our usual Bible reading/study. We moved into her Bible verse test and the dictation passage for the week.

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Isabel’s dictation passage for the week.

She needs to listen to me recite it to her and write it out, focusing on punctuation, capitalization and grammar. This week’s dictation was long and took me several rounds of reading it aloud before she completed writing. Looks great!

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We are continuing are reading in the “Light and Glory” and the “Secret of the Sealed Room“. Today we finished the book we started on Monday about George Washington, “Meet George Washington“.

Our 3 longer books that we continue to read. No “Tremain” today.
The “Light” and “Secret Room“, we only read on Fridays.

Since Thanksgiving, we have been behind in our spelling tests and so for the next 6 days, Isabel will be taking 2 spelling tests a day to get caught up with where we should be. She took 2 yesterday and she took 2 today.

Her 2 spelling tests from today.
She missed one word on her first test and got them all right on her second test. AWESOME JOB!

Enjoy your weekend and we’ll see you on Tuesday next week.

Today, was another great day in class. We covered several subjects including math, Bible, vocabulary building, spelling and poetry.

Isabel had to write out a character sketch.

Master Christopher from the, “Skippack School“, that we finished last week.

Character sketch.

We flew through our lessons this morning!

We both looked up and realized that it was time for lunch and we had covered so much ground before lunch. Isabel’s on a roll!

I complemented her tonight at dinner for picking up the pace in class for the past 3 days. She’s not complaining she’s getting her work completed in a timely manner and she’s been finished with school around 3 p.m. and finished with piano practice around 3:30. I’ve been very proud of her and I’ve let her know it.

During one of her lessons today, she was working with prefixes, suffixes and root words.

She was given some words and she had to find the prefixes, suffixes and root words. Then she had to use one of those words to write and sentence and draw a picture.

I had a good little chuckle when I spotted this picture she had drawn today for her lesson.
She told me, she thinks she looks like she has dog ears. I told her no, those are pigtails. It’s great!

Tuesday is piano and I’m thinking our new library day!

This morning we worked on Bible, daily spelling test, science and math before leaving for piano lessons with Ms. G.

Isabel’s lesson today went really well. She is doing so well at learning new songs on her own, Ms. G says. The latest song she will be learning is by our favorite Contemporary Christian artist the “Newsboys“!

After lesson’s we made a few errand stops before stopping at the local library to drop off books and pick up a few new ones.

“Dangerous Waters” by G. Mone

I’ve begun reading this one and so far I’ve been enjoying it.

“The Stinky Cheese Vacation” by G. Stilton/E.Dami

After arriving at home, she finished her assignments and she had the rest of the afternoon to do whatever. She read (and finished) her book and we played a few games of “4 in a row”. It was a great day!

We had a great weekend. Went to the “Jam”, watched the local football team play and just hung out while the rain came down outside.

On Saturday Isabel worked hard on getting her animal report completed. She did a fantastic job but like all things it needs some work and practice. It was a BIG assignment and hopefully she’s learning not to drag her feet for these bigger assignments so she can get out and do more in the day. I guess we’ll see how she does with the next one…

I purchased this awesome writing prompt book at the local thrift store a few weeks ago and each week/day I’m going to add a small writing assignment. Not as big as this animal report but something to get her more into writing and the whole writing process. The ideas in the book are more creative in nature with topics ranging from silly holidays, interviewing animals/people, to expanding on a dream you had last night. Sounds like good stuff to get her more into writing.

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This weeks Bible verse is…

“He was with God in the beginning.” – John 1:2

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We worked hard this morning to get all of the written work completed before lunch and we did it!

I wanted to get some extra work completed for tomorrow since Tuesdays are always such long school days for us. We still have classwork to do but with going to piano practice it’s not going to take us all afternoon to complete it!

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The dictation passage for the week is…

“Lord, your love is as high as the heavens. Your faithful love reaches up to the skies. You are as holy as the mountains are high. You are as honest as the oceans are deep. Lord, you keep people and animals safe. How priceless your faithful love is!” – can’t remember where it’s found…

In our dictation passage we talked about similes and metaphors.

Can you point out the similes in the passage?

• as high as the heavens
• as holy as the mountains are high
• as honest as the oceans are deep

We have gone over similes before back in week 3 of our schooling (she also worked with them in second grade as well). However we have never talked about a metaphor and these were tough. I had to get my thinking cap out and get lots and lots and lots of examples for her to understand because trying to explain it with words wasn’t working!

Metaphors are like similes except that metaphors actually say that something is or does something else.

Examples of Metaphors:

• The world is a stage.
• He is a night owl.
• My kid’s room is a disaster area.
• The peaceful lake was a mirror.
• You are my sunshine.
• It’s raining cats and dogs.

After a few examples, she finally began to understand it and was able to complete her assignment.

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We also went over active-voice and passive-voice.

Active-voice sentences tell you who did the action.

Example:

• She ate the cookies
• That boy wrote on my paper.

Passive-voice sentences, the subject is acted upon but doesn’t act.

Example:

• The cookies were eaten by that girl.
• My paper was written on by that boy.

This a tough assignment as well but we worked through it together and it finally clicked.

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We started a new book this week and it’s so small we’ll finish it Thursday.

“Meet George Washington” by  J.Heilbroner.

We had a busy day in class today.

In the a.m. we did all the written work and then spent the afternoon reading. We finished 2 books and continued through 3 more.

We took our daily spelling test, did the dictation passage, the Bible verse and science. In science, we watched several videos about spiders and beetles.

 

Bible verse for this week; John 1:1
We started doing in cursive to get some practice in. She does beautiful work!

 

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Spelling test.

Dictation passage.
Also done in cursive.

This afternoon we finished…

“The Skippack School” by M.d.A.

After we finished the book. We learned that the school master in the book was a real person, who had a deep compassion for his students and was known to prayer for each student. The town where the book takes place, in Skippack Pennsylvania, has a high school named after him.

“What’s the big idea, Ben Franklin?” by J. F.
This small book was packed full of great information about Mr. Franklin and we all enjoyed it.

In history, we talked about the Boston Massacre in 1770, the Great Awakening (1736-1770) and George Whitefield (1714-1770). Good talks and lots of great questions! I am really enjoying the curriculum, great stuff!!