Year 1: Week 28

This week, we...

• Read Hannibal's Vow and The Adventures of Hannibal in  On the Shores of the Great Sea 
• Located Spain, France, Pyrenees, Alps, Apennines, Rhone, Italy, Africa, Gibraltar, and other locations related to Hannibal in our National Geographic Kids World Atlas, and (in The World by the Fireside) we read about South American ants and anteaters
• Drew a horse (well, actually a pegacorn) using 1-2-3 Draw Pets and Farm Animals
• Read about peanuts 🥜 and how cooked seeds can't grow in Seed Babies, and about the squid 🦑 in The Burgess Seashore Book
• Read winter poems in Nature in Verse
• Read 3 pages of "A Comedy of Errors" in Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare
• Read "The Wonderful Sheep" in The Blue Fairy Book. This story does not have a happy ending. Spoiler alert: The sheep dies. And it's all the main character's fault. The story ends with this: So you see that even a princess is not always happy— especially if she forgets to keep her word; and the greatest misfortunes often happen to people just as they think they have obtained their heart's desires!
• Read fable "The Dog and the Wolf." (We have this leatherbound Aesop's Fables from Easton Press.) In this fable, the wolf decides he would rather have his freedom than a chain around his neck and a full belly. Reading this fable, I can't help but think how wonderful it is to be free of a car payment. I drive a car that is comfortable and runs well, but it isn't new and it doesn't have all of the bells and whistles and cup holders new cars have. But I'm so happy with it. While "The Wonderful Sheep" is not a must-read, "The Dog and the Wolf" most definitely is.
• Continued our bedtime book: The Silver Chair
• Worked on numbers in Spanish (hundreds, thousands, millions)
• Bought a new French app: Fun French by StudyCat. Gemma enjoyed the two free lessons (colors and animals) so much that I went ahead and paid to unlock 10 additional lessons. A lot of language learning apps for children just teach vocabulary (for example: dog = chien), but with StudyCat's Fun French, the user gets to hear French spoken in complete sentences. C'est tres cool.
• Completed 2 chapters of Life of Fred: Mineshaft (in addition to several multiplication riddles)
• Started our Mommy & Gemma Nature Journal 📓 
• Listened to Mozart's Symphony 40
• Re-viewed Monet's water lilies, and read a little bit about them in What Makes a Monet a Monet?
• Read Mark 11:1-11
• Went to see a musical production of The Velveteen Rabbit. (I love Gemma's outfit in this photo. A T-Rex t-shirt with a floral skort. How's that for balance?)
• Gemma made this crown. That's handicraftish, right?
• Cursive copywork and P.E. - check! Gemma earned another life skills stripe by writing 5 sentences about cooperation. She dictated what she wanted to say, I wrote them in cursive, and then she copied the sentences I had written.
• We have 12 weeks left to finish the final 8 "weeks" of 1st grade. I'm happy that we've got that kind of wiggle room, especially since I know we'll be taking a few days off next month during Spring Break.