Still plugging away!

Even though the kids are all excited about all the different Christmas activities and such going on, we are still trying to do school as usual. We are actually doing pretty well and are going to do school next week also.
So this is what we did.

History - I knew our Story of the World Chapter this week was about King Richard, Robin hood, Prince John and the Magna Carta but instead of listening to the chapter first we read through a number of chapter of Our Island Story. This book did such a good job explaining and describing King Richard and what was going on in England before, during and after his reign. We also read a number of books about the adventures of Robin Hood this week and watched a few movie versions of Robin Hood. The disney version of course was a hit and the kids enjoyed the Wishbone version as well. This was our first Wishbone movie and the kids seemed to like it. But they have been running around through the house shooting their pretend bows and arrows all week. We finally got around to reading the SOTW chapter on Thursday and it was a nice review of all the other books we had read.

Science - Our biome for this week and next is the Grasslands. So we have been reading books about the prairie and the savanna. I can't say this is the most interesting biome except for the variety of animals that inhabit them. As I stated a few days ago, Sophie has had fun making zoos with exhibits for these animals.

Music - Handel is our musician for the month. We listened to the Classics for Kids episodes on Handel this week. They are always fun to listen to. We also listened to Hallalujah Handel and Handel for the holidays and a few of the arias from the Messiah. We also read Handel, who know what he liked. This was a good biography of Handel. I think we have covered him pretty well this month.

Math - Sophie is multiplying she is up to the 5x tables. Ian is moving slowly through his new workbook. He can do the math but just lacks the ability to write the numbers well. He is bored if he isn't actually adding or subtracting but he just doesn't have the motor skills yet to write well. This is something we are working on.

Language Arts - Sophie did some dictation this week. And had to answer a series of questions, writing in complete sentences. She is getting better about forming a complete sentence. She almost never needs to be reminded to capitalize the first letter or end with a period. She also did some more of her Beyond the code book. This is really easy for her but it is good practice at writing complete sentences and some reading comprehension.
Ian will finish the Get Set for the Code book next week. He is on the last letter in this primer. He is excited to move onto the next book. He is doing well at some easy sight words too.

Art - We didn't do our drawing lesson again this week. Sophie isn't asking for them so they aren't happening. We haven't done a whole lot of structured art or craft projects recently. There is a lot of coloring and drawing going on though. Sophie made each of them masks today. She got a Maid Marian mask. Henry got a Robin Hood Mask and Ian wanted to be a pirate. She almost convinced him to be the Sheriff but he really wanted to be a pirate.
We don't have an artist we are studying this month. I just didn't or couldn't think of one I really wanted to do.

Next week will be a bit lighter on the school front. We will attempt to do another chapter of SOTW. Next week's chapter is about the Diaspora so we will be reading all sorts of things about Jewish people, their holidays and such. I have a bunch of books I got from the library about Hanakkah and I am sure will have to try some potato latkas this next week. We will also continue with our Story a Day until Christmas as well as our studies on the prairies.

I am sure we will have another great week. At least I hope so!