Week 5: Rome, Lego, Field Trip, & Baseball

Wow! I can't believe we're already finished with week 5. I think we're all finally settling into our new routine now. On good days, I've been able to get spelling, grammar or phonics, writing, and math with all three kids and do history or science together before lunch. That leaves the afternoon for art, fun projects, Five in a Row studies, extra books, activities, etc. The biggest obstacle to that is starting on time. I find that I get easily distracted by other things and then realize we're an hour behind before we even start.

History
I've already posted about the history we've worked on this week. We finished our study of Ancient Rome and made cookie dough Roman pillars for our fun project.

Spelling
I am so glad I decided not to rush Colin to finish Spell to Write and Read. Last year, he complained every time he started a new list of words. This year I told him he only has to do 10 new words a day instead of the whole list (20). He's stopped complaining and finishes so quickly now that's he's not spending all his time whining about it. We're not doing much of the extra stuff since this is his 5th year in the program and he's already doing separate grammar and writing programs so he's still moving along pretty quickly and has finished 6 lists so far.
Caleigh is doing so well with SWR and I can see so much improvement from last year when I attempted to start it and quit after only a few weeks. She understands the dictation and is doing a great job with the markings. She's only missed 2 words out of the 80 she's been tested on and she got them both correct on her next test.

Math
Colin- finding the area of parallelograms and triangles
Caleigh- reviewed minutes on clock and adding 2 digit number mentally; skip counting and adding with shortcuts
Molly- making patterns on geoboard, counting backwards, grouping to determine evenness and quantity

Writing
Caleigh is doing very well with cursive. We've been reviewing letters every day and she started learning o, g, qu, and e this week.
Molly is improving a lot. We're still working on capital letters.
Colin worked on the Julius Caesar chapter in Writing Tales. He's doing so much better retelling the stories and I'm so excited about how much neater his work looks. Before he was writing way too big and not paying any attention to spacing and lines.

Grammar
Caleigh- pronouns
Colin- adjectives and adverbs; diagramming sentences

Reading
Molly is still working on learning some of the phonograms. She's got most of them, but there are a few that she misses every day. She's doing better with blending. For some reason she keeps having trouble with words ending in at. She sounds it all out correctly, but when she blends it she tries to add a d sound along with the t. She kept reading fat as fad. After I corrected her a few times, she told me that she knows what the word is, but she doesn't think fat is a nice word to say so she's just going to call it fad. That girl has an answer for everything.

Science
We still haven't done much science except for Colin studying the eye. I finally resolved the issue of our missing caterpillars and they arrived today so we'll start studying them soon. I also have some science planned to go with our Five in a Row book next week.

Everything Else
Colin and his First Lego League team got all the pieces set up on their table this week. They built robots and started working on programming them.

We went on a field trip to the eye doctor. For part of the First Lego League competition, they have to do a project. They've chosen the eye. The doctor showed them all the equipment, took pictures of their eyes, and discussed the eye problem they've chosen. The kids all had a good time looking at everything and they did so well with the kids. They even emailed us pictures of the kids' retinas.

Colin also had his first baseball practice yesterday.

While he was doing that, the girls had a good time playing at the playground. I just hope it's a little cooler by the next practice.