Homeschool Progress Report: December 2019

December was a bit less productive than the previous three months school-wise because we did take some days off around Christmas and we were not in our regular routine for much of the month. Still, we are mostly on track for where I thought we'd be heading into 2020, and we have time to check a few things more off of our list before the twins arrive in March.

First Grade with M., age 6

Math

We are getting close to finishing Singapore 2B. We finished learning about money and making change and moved on to the section about time. M. had some difficulty sorting out hours from minutes, but with an adult on hand to talk her through it, she does fine. We will continue to review this section even as we move through the rest of the workbook.

M. also continued to practice addition and subtraction and multiplication on Xtra Math, and she started memorizing the perfect squares, which she typically recites in the car on the way to church. We're still reading Life of Fred: Dogs on Fridays, but I think we'll finish it by the end of January.

History

We had such a great time studying the Hebrews, but figuring out how to tackle Ancient Greece has been harder. We did a week on the Phoenicians, which was mostly just about the alphabet, and then an additional week on Crete and Mycenae, to kind of set the stage, but it seems like every book we own handles Greece in a different way, and in a different order. There just isn't the logical progression there was with moving through the Old Testament, and it's made it difficult to know where to start.

In any case, to cover Crete, we read They Lived Like This in Ancient Crete and some excerpts from the Picturesque Tale of Progress, including the story of Theseus and the Minotaur. We also read what little there was about Crete and Mycenae in Builders of the Old World by Gertrude Hartman, and the relevant sections in The Lost Worlds and Epic of Man. As we started studying Greece, we read about the Olympics also from Builders of the Old World and then started reading aloud Jane Werner Watson's children's edition of The Iliad and The Odyssey. As the year ended, we had just finished the Iliad portion.

Additionally, we took a field trip in December to the Natural History museum in D.C. to have M. look at the mummies. She was fascinated by them (and called the child mummy "cute") and she went from glass case to glass case pointing out all the things she remembered learning about Ancient Egypt. I also took her to see the Hope Diamond but she could not have been less impressed.

Science (and Health) 

As the new year began, we were still reading The Human Body: What It Is and How It Works, but we have since finished.  In December, we covered vitamins and the foods in which each one can be found (which doubled as a health lesson), the circulatory system, including blood typing and how blood clots, and lymph. M. watched the relevant videos to these topics from Kids Health. At the start of the month, all we had left were the endocrine and reproductive systems and a brief section on fever and fighting germs. 

Additionally, M. used her microscope to look at the wing and leg of a housefly, both of which were slides included in a set she received for Christmas. This was a precursor our next unit of study, plants, where we will use the microscope to get a closer look at some flowers, ferns, etc.

Reading

M. heard a variety of read-alouds during the weeks leading up to Christmas: The Family Under the Bridge by Natalie Savage Carlson, The Best Christmas Pageant Ever by Barbara Robinson, Starlight in Tourrone by Suzanne Butler, The Story of Holly and Ivy by Rumer Godden, and The Good Shepherd by Gunnar Gunnarsson. Independently, she read The Dutch Twins by Lucy Fitch Perkins, The Cave Twins by Lucy Fitch Perkins, When Molly Was Six by Eliza Orne White, A Certain Small Shepherd by Rebecca Caudill, and Now We Are Six by A.A. Milne. She also made a video book report on The Dutch Twins.

Memory Work

M. finally perfected and recorded her video recitation of "The Pirate Don Durk of Dowdee." I have to say it was worth the wait, because she did a great job. She also finished memorizing all the countries of Europe, and she is now concentrating on multiplication tables, Latin prayers, and bodies of water.

Music

Because of Christmas, this was a heavily musical month. We sang "O Come O Come Emmanuel" and "O Come All Ye Faithful" in English and Latin almost every single day. We also learned to chant the Ave Maria, and reviewed Alma Redemptoris Mater, which we learned last Advent.

On Classics for Kids, we listened to episodes about Tchaikovsky and Ralph Vaughan Williams, and then we focused on listening to The Nutcracker before Christmas and Amahl and the Night Visitors immediately after. We also had a few sing-alongs of Christmas carols from Take Joy! by Tasha Tudor.

Additionally, M. continued to practice recorder and piano for 15 minutes each morning.

Art

In December, M. made some Christmas-themed drawings following step-by-step video instructions from Catholic Icing. My husband also challenged her to draw as many different facial features as she could and to combine them in different ways. Gel pens also became the art supplies of choice, along with Christmas-themed coloring books and foam Christmas stickers.

We took a field trip to the National Gallery of Art as well, where we compared different artists' versions of the Madonna and Child, visited an exhibit of paintings made using oil pastels, looked at a statue of David, and studied a pair of stained glass windows depicting The Annunciation.

Physical Education

As it has been unseasonably warm here, and I have had a bunch of OB appointments, M. has been to the playground a bunch of times recently where she has done a lot of informal exercise (running, climbing, swinging, etc.) We also fell somewhat out of the habit, but she did do her Ten Thousand Method exercise video a few times.

Catechism

Our religion lessons were all centered on the seasons of Advent and Christmas. From December 1st through Christmas Eve, we watched the daily Brother Francis Advent videos on Formed.org and added ornaments to our Jesse tree. We also said the Christmas Anticipation prayer 15 times per day, and practiced reciting Ave Maria and then learned to sing the chant. As is our tradition, we also went to the Living Nativity at the Shrine of St. Anthony.


Pre-K with C., age 4

Reading

C.'s reading really took off in December, as she finished the last few books in our Hooked on Phonics set and recorded her video readings of them. To help get her ready for some more substantial books, we spent some time going over a set of sight word flash cards (illustrated by Alain Gree), and she worked through a bunch of lessons on words containing long vowel sounds and silent E.

Math

As her big sister did before her, C. is learning to use the soroban to help her understand place value and to lay the foundation for strong mental math skills. We used number flash cards (again, illustrated by Alain Gree) as prompts for putting numbers on the soroban, and I also put numbers onto the soroban for her to identify. In December, she started working on learning the "little friends" (number bonds adding up to five) and "big friends" (number bonds adding up to ten), which she will need to know to do addition and subtraction on the soroban.

Memory Work 

Because she is typically with us when M. recites the various items she has memorized, C. has picked up a lot of them just through exposure, so now we are working on fine-tuning some of those, including the planets, the four directions, the continents, and the countries of Europe. She also memorized and recited a poem, "Signs of Christmas," which she performed for her grandmothers via Skype on Christmas Day.