Year 1: Week 17

This "week" has lasted two weeks.  

The reason? Report cards. My school district adopted a new report card system this year, a very complicated system, which required me to spend 16 hours inputting data. It also meant that Gemma spent a lot of time reading independently, and that I spent a lot of time feeling guilty for ignoring my child.

It also meant that our "handicrafts" were pumpkin carving, pumpkin decorating, and cooking.

I know that pumpkin carving and decorating are not sloyd or knitting, but being able to use a knife and a hammer help develop fine motor skills (like other handicrafts), and are both important life skills. I know, I know. Handicrafts and life skills are not synonymous. The purpose of handicrafts is to produce something that is not just useful, but both useful and beautiful. Carved pumpkins aren't useful, but I have seen pumpkins which elevated pumpkin carving to an art form.

Gemma graduated from Fish to Barracuda, which means that, in the spring, she will be in the "big" pool. 

She drew Eleanor of Aquitaine...

In history, my husband read her Some Greek Colonies, which included the story of the Philaeni (fil-ee-nee). I had never heard the legend of how Carthage and Cyrene determined where their border would be, and how the Carthaginian brothers involved were buried alive at the border. 

Gemma didn't want to include the Philaeni being buried alive in her timeline book. She chose to include 1)Polyclitus' Discus Thrower (from our Art History reading), 2)Van Gogh, and 3)Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata. It was fun to see Gemma realize, by looking at her timeline book, that Van Gogh and Beethoven were alive during the same century. 

In math, we completed Life of Fred: Liver chapter 2. This was one of our recent problems:

If Fred's pulse had been 160 beats/minute and had slowed to 90, how much was the decrease?

When I'm teaching her how to approach word problems, I always ask her what numbers are in the problem. Then I ask her what we need to do with those numbers; what process do we need to use? This problem used the word "decrease," so I asked her what, seeing that Fred's pulse had "slowed" down, and seeing that his pulse went from 160 to 90, did she think "decrease" meant we should do with those numbers. She answered "subtract." She completed the problem.

Additionally (math pun - get it?), I am assigning her pages in Mathematical Reasoning Level E, which is the 4th grade book. If we were doing Fred more often than once per week, I wouldn't do this. I'm doing it because it gives her practice with skills she knows (like the steps in long division, or the steps in the multiplication of two 2-digit numbers), and she enjoys the way math problems are like puzzles. 

Gemma went to CC, jiujitsu, and dance. We also started Christmas pageant rehearsal, which means learning lots of new songs. Coincidentally, our Bible passage this week was Luke 2:1-20.

She read several Aesop's Fables independently (because I put the book in her bookshelf) and narrated them just because I asked her what she read about.

She read her Old Testament passage, psalm, and parable. (We have yet to commit to a poem for recitation this term, though we've read lots of poems from Nature in Verse.)

We listened to our hymn of the term - All Creatures of Our God and King.

Hymn Study... The way I understand Charlotte Mason believed it should be done was that children should learn to recite the verses, one hymn per term. The way AO is scheduled, a different hymn is learned every month, but families can study them the way they choose. Some people do one hymn per month, but choose hymns they sing in church. I chose to learn one hymn we sing in church per term. One hymn per term seemed doable, while a hymn per month seemed ambitious and daunting. The way things actually work out, we do learn more than one hymn per term. For example, Gemma has been practicing playing two hymns on the piano - Jesus Lover of My Soul and A Mighty Fortress is Our God - to play at an upcoming social after church.

For picture study, she chose Van Gogh's The Bedroom.

There were other readings. She sang her foreign language songs, and she practiced cursive. As always, there are several other things we did, things I'm forgetting at the moment, but I'm going to let Week 17 be, and move forward into Week 18...