The Weekly Wrap-up: Poetry, Constellations and a Very Long Walk

It's been a great week of school here! I love when I can say that wholeheartedly!

Since it was the end of the month there were several things we wrapped up. I like that, too!

In Bible we finished our lessons on *Responsibility* with the Character Sketches books. The kids have responded so well to these books. I hope and pray that the character traits we are studying stick with them for life.

I don't think I've mentioned that we are also taking a passage of Scripture and memorizing it each month. This month our passage was Matthew 5: 13-16. We started off with me reading it to them each morning and then they just took off with the learning. They've had it memorized~and hopefully hidden in their hearts~ for a couple of weeks now. I 've very proud of them. I plan to increase the length of the passage each month that they will learn.

Handwriting is going well. The Princess is doing great learning cursive and Mr. B is doing very well also. I am, however, having some difficulty getting him to properly hold his pencil. He still is determined to use the fist grip. I am looking for a possible grip to put on his pencils that will encourage the proper hold.

Language Arts are also going great! We are still so pleased with Total Language Plus. The Princess is enjoying her unit study a lot. So far her favorite thing is the short stories she gets to write with each section.

Mr. B is really doing very well with the First Language Lessons. I love that the lessons are short and also reinforce the previous lessons well. He is also enjoying the poem memorization that is included. I videoed him this week saying his first poem from this book and just have to share that with you.

Mr. B is also doing GREAT with his reading! I'm so proud of him~he has finally made it to the point that he's enjoying sounding out the words and reading for himself. He's starting to read everything in sight now.

Math is going well. It's Mr. B's favorite subject:) And I'm happy to say that The Princess' attitude is much improved toward math. She's decided that she likes to tackle it first thing and "get it done for the day".

In Science we finally wrapped up Exploring God's Creation with Astronomy. It was such a good study! I also found these fun constellation lacing cards for our chapter on the stars this past week. The kids have had a lot of fun playing with them!

In History, our studies took us on a little trip over to the Americas to see what was going on in ancient times there. It was a nice change from reading about Europe.

In our Art and Music Appreciation studies we continued learning about Vivaldi using A Young Scholar's Guide to Composers. We are really enjoying this book, it's going to be a great resource throughout our year I can already tell.

We also read a little more about Pablo Picasso and studied A Girl Before a Mirror this week. We've been using online resources this time around because our library is closed for a remodel~I'm ready for them to open!

We didn't have any official field trips this week, but there was one "impromptu" one that I just have to tell you about. We got lost in our own neighborhood! haha It was so funny! On Thursday morning I thought it would be nice to start our day with a walk because the weather was so nice. So we took off. Now, please keep in mind we haven't lived here long~and apparently we live in a maze of streets. It's a good thing I had put my phone in my pocket because without the gps I don't know how long it would have taken us to find our way back home. It was quite a little adventure!

And that's a wrap for our week!

You can view more weekly wrap-ups at Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers.

P.S. My friend Nancy at Lessons Learned on the Farm is having a great giveaway right now: a free digital subscription to The Old Schoolhouse magazine and a free digital TOS school planner!! Head over to read her wonderful interview with Ruth Beechcik and enter to win!