Wrapping Up Week 31 (2015-16)

Posted on April 2, 2016 by Deanna

It’s all downhill from here! I told Ian that as soon as he finishes up everything scheduled for history, science, and math (about four weeks’ worth of work), we’ll lighten up school for the summer. (We never really stop completely, and I do have a few things planned, but they won’t be quite as intense as our regular school year.) He was really motivated at the beginning of the week, flying through his entire week of lessons for the Veritas Press self-paced history course in one day, but then he never got back to it, so he didn’t really get ahead at all.

20160329_103951x I’m definitely ready for the break myself. After posting my review of Essentials earlier this week, we’re taking a break from the intensity of its daily lessons. I also dropped handwriting and read alouds this week. We spent a day at the Natural History Museum (and was tempted to give in when Ian begged to go back the next day). The weather has been beautiful and I loved that the kids wanted to spend hours and hours outside. So I feel like I’m already kicking into summer mode.

Science

One thing we did accomplish was getting caught up in Our Planet Earth, our final book for the year in God’s Design for Heaven and Earth. We read/discussed the moon and half of the planets in our solar system. That inspired the boys to pull out Solarquest: The Space-Age Real Estate Game, (somewhat similar to Monopoly), a fun way to learn more about the planets and their moons.

We also watched a few videos:

Wonders of God’s Creation: The Milky Way and our Solar System (With two separate parts so it was easy to split over two days)
Bill Nye the Science Guy: The Planets
The Solar System: The Sun & Inner Rock Planets (a bit dated as far as video quality, but at 14 minutes, a nice concise way to cover the material)

Math

I wish I had enjoyed math as much as Elijah does!

Math is the one subject I just can’t let go of during the summer, at least not completely. We’re still in the thick of things as we try to finish up our curriculum for the year. (Ian’s doing really well working independently with Teaching Textbooks Math 3 and Elijah’s still loving the challenge of MEP). They’re both working through subtraction fact drills on xtramath.org (though Ian has almost mastered them and will be moving on to multiplication in the next week or so).

Actually, because the boys are also going through mini-courses from A+Interactive Math (Ian’s getting extra practice on Time, and Elijah’s doing Money), they both did a LOT of math this week.

Extras

We’re having fun working on our first lapbook ever! I’ve known about lapbooks since we first started homeschooling, but they’re not really my style (just seem really wasteful). However, it’s part of our Beethoven unit in the review we’re doing on Zeezok Publishing’s Music Appreciation Book 1 Collection. I’m curious to see how the boys like it when we have the whole thing finished. Maybe I’ll have to overcome my reluctance.