Weekly Review 9/22-9/26 (Madeline)

We read, "Madeline" by Ludwig Bemelmans this week for our literature study. Madeline lives in her boarding school in France, so we began by locating France and coloring an outline of France. We placed our story disk on France on our large World Map.

Madeline has her appendix removed, so this lead to a discussion of some of our various organs. Of course, the appendix wasn't on this print out so we had to locate it ourselves. We referred to our children's anatomy book.

I am finding that my girls don't enjoy reading the same literature book five days in a row for our FIAR studies. So we have reduced it to three days. We eliminated Wednesday because we are at CC all day. Then we typically eliminate Thursday OR Friday. Three readings seems to be enough for them to get the basics of the story, the vocabulary, and to complete some activities together. This has worked MUCH better for us.

Phonics: We took a break from Ordinary Parent's Guide and Explode the Code to work on the MCP Plaid Phonics B program this week. We are going to complete Unit 1.

I really liked a little change for K. Explode the Code is GREAT and we are mid-way through book 2, but MCP's workbook is colorful and has a HUGE variety of activities. It's giving her a nice review with a little more variety!

History/Geography: The girls have to give a presentation each week at CC. This week they had to report on one of the US states. They each picked their favorite state to talk about.

T (age 4)'s favorite state is California because of the Giant Sequoia's and Redwood Trees. She shared that with the class and showed them her flag:



and her outline of the state:


K (age 5's) favorite state is Oregon because she'd like to go see a sunset there. (We have no clue where this came from). She dictated a report to me so that she could read it:



She also colored the flag...


and traced an outline...

T has decided she'd like to join in the Handwriting Practice, so I began printing her some sheets from Enchanted Learning.And she wants to participate in Reading/Phonics practice as well so she is working on letters and their sounds. While this is easy for her, she loves being part of the table time and is gaining confidence. I think it will help when it is time for her to learn to read!


After a day at CC, I am beat. On top of it this week, we went to the Science Center again! It was a blast, but I was so exhausted on Thursday that I fell asleep on the sofa for 1 hour.

The girls got their own snacks and drinks. Then K took care of doing a "project" with her little sister. When I woke up, the results were my favorite school activity of the week:



Thanks to my big girl for being so creative with her sister!