It's the End of the School Year as We Know It

It's with a tear in my eye, and a song in my heart that I hereby declare this school year closed. Henry finished his math book yesterday. I mean finished it. All 400-some pages. We finished the history book last week. The timeline will be an ongoing project.

What did we learn this year? Well...
1. PEMDAS
2. prefixes can tell you a lot about what a word means
3. Ancient Greece was really cool
4. A Wrinkle in Time was a good book; The Amber Spyglass and Peter Pan, not so much
5. Magnets are fun to play with

I'm sure there is so much more that I can't remember right now. I can say that we had a really awesome year of learning, and I can't wait to do it again in a few weeks. I dropped the bomb of telling Henry that if it's unbearably hot this summer, we will be doing schoolwork, mostly because playing computer games and watching YouTube all day isn't going to happen.

Henry has recently been shedding teeth.

With that, I thank you for reading along. Watch this space. We'll do it again for 5th grade.

Just One Quarter to Go!

I am as bad as the students are at this time of the year. I am really ready to be D-O-N-E.  That being said, we did some interesting things this week. 

The best thing we did all week was finish reading Wonder and we watched the movie. It was so sweet. Of course, the movie was not faithful to the book, but it was still worth watching.  It spawned many deep discussions about being kind to people and helping people out.  I would highly recommend the book and the movie to everyone.

We're cruising along in math and science. That's about all there is to say about that.

We read a little bit about the Vikings. I'm not going to spend a lot of time with them. They will come up a little more when we start the Middle Ages next year.  We will move on to Ancient Rome next week.

We finished The Subtle Knife a couple of weeks ago. It was incredibly strange. We started The Amber Spyglass last week, and I have to say I am enjoying it more. Henry is looking forward to the remake of the movie.

We are really hoping that the weather will take a turn toward being more springlike. This March has been incredibly cold and unpleasant. Warmer weather, and being able to get outside will do us all a world of good. Perhaps it will bring back my enthusiasm.

When in Doubt, Craft

I am seriously at my wit's end with this winter weather. I swear it is never going to be nice again. In order to break up the monotony of our ever-growing case of cabin fever, we have been crafting. Henry told me this week that he would like to learn to knit. You know that is music to my ears!  I dug out some needles that a neighbor gave me and a skein of cheap-o yarn. I cast on 15 stitches for him and showed him how to make each stitch. He thinks it's pretty cool...except for when he makes a mistake and I rip it out and start him again. I am not being too pedantic about it, I'm just letting him do his thing. Learning isn't perfect, nor is it linear.  I'm just glad he's willing to keep going.  This is the fruit of his labor.

I have been keeping my hands busy with learning how to crochet. This has been a years-long endeavor that has heretofore been unsuccessful. This time, it's actually working out. I will always love knitting, but crocheting is a very rhythmic, flowing sort of movement. I can really zone out when I'm working on it.

Finally, I have been working on Log Cabin Afghan squares since December or January. I hope to have twelve made, the borders knitted on and have it all sewn together to enter in the county fair at the end of July.  I have four blocks done. This is the latest.

We did do schoolwork this week, too. We had more fun crafting, though.

A Week of Words (and Never Ending Winter)

This week, the highlight was Henry deciding that spelling is his definite favorite subject (it was history last week). He did almost two complete lessons! I didn't say a word. One lesson had the root word trac, with the prefixes a-, sub, and dis, and the suffixes - tion and or. One of the sentences he wrote, all on his own, was:  I grab a stick when I lose my traction. I was tickled pink.

Later that day, while out for a walk with Papa Bear, the sky got very dark. He said, "Those clouds look ominous."  When he was in the pasture with me, he threw a stick, and it stuck at an odd angle in some brush. He said, "That stick is perched precariously." He also thinks the word "awkward" is a good word. Holy smokes. His vocabulary thrills me no end.

We continued with Ancient Greece this week by reading about the Classical Period of Greece (800 BC- 323 BC).Now, whenever he hears 800 BC and Greece, the only thing to say is, "Homer!" A lot of the writing from that period is attributed to Homer, even though he did just a fraction of it. At least it sticks in his head that way. I hope to finish Greece next week with some more mythology and the rest of the history in our workbook.

The weather in our neck of the woods has been off-the-hook crazy. We had a couple of really nice, warm, lovely days earlier this week.  Today, we woke up to this. Ah, life in Northwestern Pennsylvania in March.

Only 11 more weeks of school!
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The Birthday Week Edition

We've had another couple of weeks of the Lather, Rinse, Repeat curriculum. Nothing is new, but everything is going well.  The highlight was the spelling review that went swimmingly. I don't know that I've ever had one go so well.  We read Greek mythology this week. I said, "It's like a soap opera!" Henry immediately asked, "What's a soap opera?"  I did laugh out loud.

The very best thing about this week was Mr. Henry's birthday.  What an amazing thing that he is 10!  I don't really remember a lot of the last ten years, but at the same time, it seems like he was just born.  He's a truly amazing little boy.

Is Winter Over Yet?

We have had another couple of busy and productive weeks.  The best thing, by far, has been Greek history.  Henry tells me almost every day how much he likes it.  This week, we read The Twelve Labors of Hercules. We also read about the Spartans. For our activity today, he made a Hoplite shield.  Just remember folks, you never want to be the guy on the right side.

Math was a mixed bag of order of operations, multiplication, mean and mode and simple geometry. There's really not a whole lot to say about this. He just did it and we moved on. I like a lack of drama when it comes to school work.

As far as spelling goes, it's just kind of there. However, a veritable miracle happened last week when Henry, of his own volition, wrote his sentences with very little help from me. He has been dictating them to me, then copying what I write. They aren't works of great literature by any means, but he's doing it himself, which tickles me no end.

We finished The Golden Compass. It was interesting. I found the end very strange. That weird left turn into original sin was odd.  We got the movie and hope to watch it this weekend. We started the second book in the series, The Subtle Knife.

We talked about a few current events in science for science. Wow in the World is on hiatus, so we needed some new material. The Falcon Heavy rocket was pretty cool, as was the Super Blue Moon.

If I seem blah, it's because I'm blah. I am beyond being over winter. It's so incredibly cold. We were waxing nostalgic about warm days when we can do school outside. Ahh, I can't wait.

In the Mama's Corner, I've been working on my temperature afghan.  I took a picture last weekend.

I finished a cowl today, which I have not taken a picture of. I still have a hat and a pair of mitts on the needles. I am also working on a log cabin afghan. I like having lots of things to work on to avoid boredom.  I haven't been doing much personal reading. I hope to remedy that soon.

I Lost Track of Time

Goodness, time just got away from me again. I was so excited for Christmas break that I lost the thread of just about everything. We did have a lovely Christmas, even though it was grotesquely cold. The new year started well.  I wanted to ease back into school with just math and spelling, as well as reading the book that Henry got for Christmas - Predator vs. Prey. That was fine, but then, on January 11, I came down with the flu and was out of commission for over a week. That leads us up to this week. Finally, we were back to normal, which felt really good.

We did math out of Critical Thinking, doing three or four pages per day. It covered some algebraic reasoning, geometry, following a grid and adding long columns of numbers. Pretty easy, but a some good thinking was involved.

Spelling involved -port words: import, export, transport, support. Again, it was easy, but worthwhile.

I will fully admit that I quit on Ancient India. I just wasn't feeling it. We moved on to Ancient Greece (cue the Oprah holler)! This is so totally my jam. I love the history, the mythology, the art...all of it. The funniest thing that happened this week is Agamemnon. Henry thought that was the funniest thing he had ever heard. We just keep looking at each other and saying, "Agamemnon," and cracking up laughing. He now knows that Agamemnon was involved in the Trojan war. We're not reading The Iliad. We are going to read the child-friendly version of Odysseus, though. It's less gory and not as boring.

For science, we listened to the latest episode of Wow in the World, which was about the benefits of recess. Spoiler, we need more breaks of exercise in our days.  All of us. Then, we did a short unit from Mystery Science about why snow is white.  We made a snowflake with bits of waxed paper and glue. Then, we smeared glue on our hands and peeled it off.  That was better than the snowflake.

We are currently reading The Golden Compass.  I had not read it before, and Henry is really interested in it. We plan on watching the movie when we finish the book.

In the Mama's Corner, I've been knitting a bit, here and there, but nothing big. I am working on a temperature afghan, a hat and a pair of mitts.  I finished Scott Kelly's book about his year in space on the ISS.  It was so interesting.  I can guarantee that I would never want to be an astronaut.  I am reading a book about blood now, called Five Quarts. Mostly, I'm just trying to get through winter without losing my ever-loving mind. This is certainly not my favorite season, especially when it's horribly bitter cold. Unfortunately, the forecast for February doesn't look too promising.  *deep sigh*