Weekly update for the week of 10/4/2010

It was a good week this week. We had a fun time with school and I noticed some improvements in some areas. In History N. continued to study Egypt and biblical history that ties in with Egypt. Noah amazed me with some of his insight. Usually he reads and doesn't say much after he reads, but this week he was really starting to makes some connections which is huge for him. He read about Moses and the golden calf and he says "Mom don't you find it kind of amazing that while Moses was up receiving the 10 commandments, the people were down already breaking the first 2 of them." I also have seen growth in this area when we do the Friday activity during storytime where we both find verses from Proverbs that connects to the story we are reading. At first this was hard for him, but now he is really doing a great job with it. He also showed increased independance with his written narration this week. He did it 95 % on his own and I saw him taking things he is using in his writing curriculum and carrying these over. He was careful about his wording and he made sure that everything flowed and stuck to the topic.

His history project this week was Aaron's Breastplate and the 12 stones that symbolized the 12 tribes of Israel. It was pretty cool because S. helped him figure out how to mix the colors of paint to most accurately resemble the stones in his notebook. He worked very hard on his Hebrew writing.


For Science he was learning about various animals in the Rodentia family. His Science experiment was about Anteaters. He and his sister tried to pick up Chocolate Chips with their tongues. S. was actually very good at it and N. and I decided she would make a good Anteater.


He started a new book for DITHOR reading this week. It is for the non-fiction genre and it is called Dragons from the Deep. He is enjoying, but needs to work a little bit on remembering what he read.

Both kids once again really enjoyed doing the watercolor paintings. In fact S. is very upset that for the next 2 weeks there isn't a painting since N. will be memorizing a Robert Frost poem.



We finished reading "The Boy of the Pyramids" for storytime. Noah really enjoyed that book and again I saw him making predictions and connections that he doesn't usually make.
He continues to enjoy his Bible Quiet time and is working on memorizing Philippians 2.

In Grammar we continued our trial of Rod and Staff 5 and it is going very well. I want to see how he handles a writing lesson in there before I decide to completely switch over, but so far I am impressed with his retention and how much he seems to enjoy it.