Weekly Wrap Up–Tennessee

I don’t know about anyone else, but I was really glad to get back to our normal routine.  Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed the holidays a great deal; but I’m a schedule kind of gal.

Our classroom is housed in our family room, which is in our finished basement.  The basement has heat, but for whatever reason it stays COLD down here!  So, I moved some of our necessities up to the sun porch so we can work by the cozy fire!

First lets look at the subjects we cover together.

History/geography:   This week we studied Tennessee.  (In case you haven’t noticed, we’re only doing 1 week per state now.  This is in hopes to get through the entire 50 states in 3 years as originally planned.)

Davy Crockett was our choice for famous person.  Although, we also touched briefly on Elvis (Lindsey LOVES Elvis).  We completed our state map, flag, coin and fact sheet early in the week.  Later in the week we did our biography work on Davy Crockett, completed our 2 page coloring layout and a collage as well.

Books we used:

Davy Crockett, Hero of the Wild Frontier; by Elizabeth R. Moseley
Davy Crockett, A Life on the Frontier; by Stephen Krensky
When Uncle Took the Fiddle; by Libba Moore Gray
Tennessee Facts and Symbols; by Kathy Feeney

Science:  We’re moving into animals and Olivia is thrilled.  We spent our time this week learning about the classifications (fish, bird, reptile and mammal) and characteristics that go along with each classification.

Latin:  Going right along with our animal theme (too bad I didn’t plan it that way), we learned the words for dog, cat, fish and horse and worked on declensions.

First Language Lessons:  We reviewed our memorized poems, worked on titles of respect and the corresponding abbreviations and address abbreviations.

Ballet/Tap:   Both girls were THRILLED to be back in the dance studio this week.   It’s so good to see them both enjoying something so much!

Olivia’s independent studies were as follows:

Reading and Writing:  All About Animals from Abeka.   Each day I assigned a portion of the book to read.  In addition, she had to copy the discussion questions onto notebook paper and then write her answers in complete sentences.  (Still got the animal theme going, but at least I DID plan this part.)

Spelling:  After taking a two month break we jumped back in on Lesson 17.   We reviewed words from the word bank and then completed all of lesson 17.

Math:  New concepts for the week were multiplication, borrowing from the 1000’s column and Roman numerals to 40.   I was really worried about the multiplication, but thankfully Olivia breezed right through the concept.  Now we’re on to memorizing the times tables.

Awana:  We reinforced the books of both the Old and New Testament for recitation, and finished a new verse.   Olivia received her 2nd green jewel this week. I figure we’ll be finished the book by March or so.

Piano:  Piano lessons are going great!  The winter recital is coming up January 18, and Olivia has 4 pieces to play.  She’s very excited about performing, which for her is amazing in itself!

Lindsey’s independent work:

Reading:  Introduced the special sounds of “y” as a vowel and “ay” together.  The concept seemed to stick so we’re moving on!

Math:  We’re working through our 6 addition family.  Lindsey is doing much better with her number recognition as well!

Writing:  Capital J and S were tackled this week.   The cursive really is helping her with her letter recognition as well (no b/d confusion).

Awana:  Received Red Jewel 2 this week and completed the requirement for Green Jewel 2.  Now we’re working on memorizing the New Testament books for her next jewel.

Friday afternoon we had our end of the week tea.  Overall, this was a GREAT week.  I feel like we all got a lot accomplished, no melt downs and no huge memory loss over the 2 week break!

Visit the Weekly Wrap Up to see how everyone else’s week progressed.