Weekly Report-Week 20-22

We've been busy here with friends visiting from the states and conferences to attend. Then we got back to find out that my Nana had passed away. We have managed to keep up with school, but I haven't been so good about keeping up with the blog :). Here's a look at what we've been up to...

Language Arts: Princess is doing great with reading so I have been steadily increasing her requirements. There's been a few times where she has balked, but on the whole she has risen to the challenge. We have continued to work on Writing with Ease and that is going well. We've also added back in First Language Lessons, which is much easy for me to keep up with. Good English was taking too much preparation on my part, so even though I think that it's a great foundation, it had to go in favor of what I know will get done. We've also switched to using Spelling Workout instead of Dictation Day by Day. Again my reason for this is purely because I don't have the time to prepare it properly and it wasn't getting done. We also read Kildee House together. Frankly I thought this book was boring to read aloud, but princess loved it.

Math: We wrapped up our review of addition and subtraction and entered the world of multiplication and division. We also spent some time working on making bar graph models of our word problems. It was alittle rough going for a few days, but princess seems to have gotten a handle on the models, she just doesn't want to write them out :).

Science: We've talked about storms and earthquakes and several other things that escape me at the movement. Mostly we are looking forward to next week when we'll make our own volcano!

History: We've continued to work through Story of the World and we are enjoying it. I really wish that I had ordered the activity guide this year, but alas I didn't. Next year though, I've already got it waiting.

Other: We've kept up with our artist composer studies and we've started to look at the abridged version of Hamlet.

Education of Me: I'm mostly finished with The Chaucer Storybook and so far I have enjoyed it. It should be a perfect choice for us in the logic stage.

Well, that's what we've been up to the last several weeks. Now if I could just get the baby off my sciatic nerve, things would be alot better :). Hope you've had a great January!

Story of the World Notebook

Recently I have received several questions about the history notebook I make for princess. So I thought that I would explain it in a post here as I hope that it will help many of you.


I prefer to make up our notebook ahead of time. I usually print out half a year at a time and bind it together because the whole year at once gets pretty thick :). Princess always makes her own cover as she likes to do that.
This year we bound our notebook at the top by punching two holes and inserting brad fastners, which I recommend that you tape in the back or they will pull out.


As for what's inside, I start with the notebook pages that I create.
I print one template for each chapter. Then as we read a section we add to our chapter notebook page. Sometimes princess will draw a picutre, sometimes not. Somedays I will have her copy her narration onto the page herself, sometimes I will write it for her depending on how much writing she has already done that day.



Next I add the coloring pages and the maps from the activity guide. I purchased the activity sheets as a pdf from Peace Hill Press halfway through the year, so it's been really easy to print them up and add them to the notebook. Next year, I will just copy them from the activity guide.


Then I add her copywork sheets.
I absolutely love Zane-Blouser website because you can make customized copywork sheets for free (just click on the get started button). So I take the list of copywork sentences I have, enter them in and print them out. I then put these sheets in her notebook.


Finally I add the project pages that I have created.
I count up the number of projects we have planned and print out that number of pages. Then put them in the back of her notebook.


For me I find it easier to have sections for each catagory (ie. notebook pages, maps and so on), but you could certainly arrange your notebook by SOTW chapter. It take quite a bit of effort on my part, but it makes our days go so much smoother. Princess really loves looking back at what we have studied and I'm grateful that I don't have to constantly keep track of papers to hole punch and put in her notebook. So there you have it, our SOTW notebooks.


ETA: All the pages (with the exception of the AG pages) and my plans are available for free here and at my yahoo group (link in the side bar).

Weekly Report-Week 19

Back to the grind again! We are keeping at school so that we can finish second grade by the time the baby comes. So here’s what our week looked like…

Language Arts: Princess read about Marco Polo, which she absolutely loved! I was surprised how much she got into reading a biography, good thing I’ve planned some more for this year and next. We completed another week of Writing with Ease. We also add First Language Lessons back in. So far it has been far more successful this time around. We also started a verb lapbook as princess has been asking to do more lapbooks. Math: We continued working on subtraction within 10,000. We also began work on two step word problems and how to draw a basic bar diagram to solve them. It went well, but we’ll see for sure when she has her test on Monday :).

Science: We completed our first week of Earth Science, most of which was review from our Astronomy unit. Here’s a look at her notebook page… We also attempted to make a paper mache globe, but I don’t think it’s going to turn out, as our balloon started to shrink before our paper was dry.

History: We talked about Marco Polo and his exploration of China. Princess found it all very fascinated, so now I’m really looking forward to studying Columbus with her!

Others: We started studying Leonardo DaVinci’s paintings this week and we started listening to Scarlatti as our composer. Princess also started a Clay art class which she is really enjoying. I’ll try to get a picture of what she’s doing for next week.

Education of Me: I began reading The Chaucer Storybook and so far I like it, but I haven’t got very far. Hopefully I’ll be able to read more next week!

Hope you had a great week, thanks for reading about ours.