Weekly Report #7

Another week has passed and here I am on Tuesday, writing a report, which will surely be too brief and not have nearly as many pictures as I had planned. But at least I'll record what we accomplished, as I rely on this for much of my record keeping.

Our highlight this week was history (as usual.) We studied the Minoans as we prepare to start Ancient Greece next week. We learned about their shipbuilding, their love of arena sport (specifically bull jumping,) and about King Minos and the Minotaur. We built a labyrinth out of blocks, created our own mazes on paper, colored bull jumpers, wrote about Theseus conquering the Minotaur, and built a volcano. We had planned to paint it and make it erupt on Friday during science, but I had neglected to allow for the clay to dry, which has taken about 5 days. So we'll be working on the volcano this week (yes, I still have a half-finished Egyptian death mask in my closet. But this time will be different!)

We also did four lessons each of Saxon Math, four lessons of grammar, and Russian five days. We learned about King Solomon. The boys were fascinated by the story about cutting the baby in half. We also talked about the temple and the importance of the temple today, as Solomon built the temple in Jerusalem. For a read aloud, Jared is reading Gulliver's Travels to the boys right now. I also read aloud lots of library books and otherwise to the three youngest. I continue to see Henry's abilities improve, which is so exciting.

For science, since the volcano wasn't ready, Jared taught about acids and bases and they shot off a rocket that uses baking soda and vinegar reaction to blast off.

Our letter of the week was F. We read all of the Froggy books (by Jonathan London) we own, which is a lot. On Wednesday at the park after speech, we ran "fast", threw the "football" and leap-"frogged" before we had "free" play. Ian consistently picking out previous letters of the week, and although he doesn't always name them properly, he always knows the sounds they make, which is more important.

We participated in Cub Scouts, soccer, tae kwon do, and piano lessons. We rode bikes, took a walk, and read lots of books. We went to the dentist, twice, and Henry got to have what the dentist called a "baby root canal." (I guess he got my family's teeth. Or eating habits.)

It was a good week, and a busy one, and I'm not going to spend anymore time this week posting about it!:)