Weekly Wrap Up–The Hawaii Edition

 

We had another wild weather week here in Virginia.  No snow this week, but we did have heavy rains, thunderstorms and tornado watches spawned by the terrible storm systems that moved through from the midwest. Please continue to pray for the people and communities nationwide that were hit by this line of storms.

Geography:  This week we studied Hawaii.   We all enjoyed the DVD from the library and watched it several times.   The girls were especially impressed by the coverage of the volcanic eruptions.

We made our own little paper volcanoes from this free printable at the Crayola site.  (Yes, I know I should have made a paper mache volcano with a real soda/vinegar/food coloring eruption….)

Books and DVD’s we used:

Discoveries America, Hawaii (DVD
Hawaii Volcanoes National Park;By Stephen Feinstein
Hawaii; by Deborah Kent
Hawaii; by Martin Hintz
Children of Hawaii; by Frank Staub
Folk Dances of Hawaii; by Vivian L. Thompson
The Attack on Pearl Harbor; by Allison Lassieur
Air Raid – Pearl Harbor!; by Theodore Taylor

Science:   Our science curriculum has us revisiting the solar system, so we pulled our model back out and worked with it.  Imagine my joy when the girls actually remember the names of the planets in order!  

Math:   Lindsey is loving fractions!!  We used straws, cut into 1/2 – 1/4 and 1/3 to help her visualize the concept and she loved it.   Olivia is working on reducing fractions, and well to be honest she wasn’t as thrilled with it as her sister was!

Spelling:   Both girls are doing great with spelling.  Olivia is just about finished with her program for the year, so we’ll be doing some review work.

Reading:   Olivia plowed through Stuart Little this week.   Thankfully she thinks the book is much better than the movie.  I keep telling her that movies are usually a poor rendition, and I think she’s finally starting to believe me.  Lindsey started on Aesop’s Fables this week.

Latin: This week we worked on question words of who, what, where, and why?   We also reviewed counting to 10 and the names of the constellations.

Ballet:  This is the last week of winter lessons.  Next week is stage week and Performance Awards on Saturday.  Then we’ll be heading full throttle towards the Spring Recital.

Tennis:   Olivia’s 4 week snippet ended and she’s in LOVE with the game.  Thankfully there is a 6 week summer camp in our area that is very inexpensive so she’ll be waiting patiently for that to start.

Baseball:  Yes, its getting to be that time of year.   Baseball sign ups were this week.   The beloved coach from years past has decided he can’t handle the 5 year old set again this year, and apparently there is a big shortage of coaches in this age bracket.   So, yeah, I very well may end up being a baseball coach this year.   When will I learn to say no???

Awana:   Lindsey finished her book and Olivia has 2 more pages to go in hers.  Now we’ll begin the process or reviewing the book.  However, we’re also getting into the part of Awana where they are working on derby cars and year end things so it’ll be good to not have to push to get verses said during all that.

In other news, I’m looking at the idea of starting a weekly co-op.  I’ve put some feelers out to see what kind of response there is.   We have several good co-ops in the area, but they are all on the other side of our county, so I’m hoping the skyrocketing gas prices will make some folks want to do something on this side of the world.  I’ll keep you posted, but feel free to give me any pointers!!

Check out the Weekly Wrap Up as well!