Friday, April 23, 2010

Weekly Report-Last one of second grade!

We did it! We've finished the work I wanted to finish for second grade and with a few days to spare before the baby comes. Which is good because his birthdate was moved up to April 29th. Here's a run down of the last little bit of second grade...

LA: Princess finished reading The Corn Grows Ripe which she really enjoyed. We finished up to lesson 16 in Spelling Workout, we'll pick this back up again next year. We also took the final test for Writing With Ease. I'm very pleased with all that she learned this year in Writing with Ease and we'll incorporate some of the principles when we use Classical Writing next year.

Math: Princess spent the first part of the week in review. I gave her the 3A placement test, which she passed with flying colors, so onto 3B next year. Over our break, I'll have her work through the Miquon green book just to keep up her skills.

Science: We doubled up a few days and finished our earth science unit this week. Princess declared that science was her favorite subject this year, hope she'll enjoy chemistry just as much :).

Our other subjects were already finished for the year, so it was a relatively simple week for us. All in all we had a great year! I feel like we've found curriculums and teaching styles that work for us. I'm really proud of how princess is doing in school and look forward to starting third grade at the end of June! If you want to see our line up for third grade, just click on the curriculum tab at the top. Be sure to check out more weekly reports at the weekly wrap-up.

Thursday, April 15, 2010

Types of Rock Lapbook

Two weeks ago princess and I made this simple lapbook to review the types of rock we had studied as part of our earth science unit. Here's a closer look at it...

We started by taping together two pieces of carstock (each was about the size of half a sheet of paper). Princess wrote on the front Types of Rock, but since it was red the picture didn't come out very well.

Then we began working on the inside of the book. First we cut out the poem we worked on memorizing during the rock unit and pasted in the center. Next we cut out 4 books, one for each type of rock we studied, igneous, sedimentary, metamorphic and rocks from space. Princess insisted that we include rocks from space :). We colored and glued on pictures for each type. (Both the pictures and the poem are part of Earth Science and Astronomy for the Grammar Stage) Here's what it looked like...
We then wrote on the inside of each book the different types of rock that fell into that type that we had studied. For instance on the inside of the igneous booklet we wrote granite, microgranite and basalt. Here's what that looked like...
Although this lapbook was very simple, it was an effective review of what we were learning. Princess had fun making this lapbook and has used it as a reference since the. I love when we can have fun and still learn! I hope that this post will give you an idea of how you can use lapbooks for review.

Friday, April 9, 2010

Weekly Report-Week 33

Truckin’ right along. We finished another week here and it went very well. It seems that princess works quite a bit harder when the end is in sight! Here’s what we accomplished…

Language Arts-Princess began reading The Corn Grows Ripe, this will be her last assigned book this year, so she’s trying to finish it ahead of schedule. We completed another week of Spelling Workout and Writing with Ease. I’m amazed at how much better princess is doing dictation. I’m thinking that next year we may blend Writing with Ease and Classical Writing Aesop.

Math-We finally finished the multiplication section with our x9 facts. We ended the unit with a game of Multiplication War, which princess really enjoyed! I’ll have to remember to suggest playing this later on. We only have one more unit left in 3A, so it looks like we will finish it before the baby comes.

Science-We spent the week studying fossils. Here’s a look at her narration sheet…


History-We finished Story of the World 2 this week! It was a good year, not as good as last year, but I think that’s partly due to the fact that I didn’t get the activity guide. Next week we’ll spend some time catching up on our timeline and looking back at what we learned this year.


Extras-We didn’t get to any of the extras this week.

That’s a look at our week, hope yours was good too!

Saturday, April 3, 2010

Weekly Report-Week 30 & 31

We have been keeping up with school, but I haven't been as good about keeping up with this blog :). I forgot how draining the last few weeks of pregnancy can be; there's nothing like feeling as if you are a beached whale! Princess has been a great helper and is continuing to work very hard on school so that we can finish before our little guy makes his appearance. Here's what we have accomplished over the last two weeks...

Language Arts: Princess read a biography on William Shakespeare and an abridged version of Romeo and Juliet. She loved learning more about The Bard of Avon! We've kept up with Writing with Ease and Spelling Workout. Princess has also been doing more of her copywork in cursive. Her cursive is looking great (much better than her mom's :))!

Math: We've been working through her x 6, 7 and 8 facts as well as continuing to drill her other facts. She's doing a great job and we are very close to finishing her 3A textbook. I wasn't sure we would be able to do this before the baby came, so I'm very proud of her efforts in math!

Science: We've continued to look at different types of rock. We also made a lapbook on the types of rock which I hope to post more about later this week.

History: We studied Queen Elizabeth, William Shakespeare, Sir Walter Raleigh and the Lost Colony. Princess is loving history once again, of course this happens when we only have two chapters left :).

Other: Princess has continued her clay class; she has 3 more before she completes the first level of study. Our other extras have fallen by the wayside, but I hope to pick them up again next year.

Hope you've had a great week, thanks for reading about ours!