Homeschool Update: Week of 8/9/21

The first week in August, we spent at the beach in the Southern Outer Banks. We had planned to do some reading aloud and some nature study, but we mostly ended up taking a very leisurely week. The girls enjoyed building sandcastles, collecting shells, and swimming in the pool, and they had a fun visit to the North Carolina Aquarium at Pine Knoll Shores. We arrived home on Saturday and used this week to slowly return to our normal routine.

Morning Read-Alouds 

From Sing a Song of Seasons: A Nature Poem for Each Day of the Year selected by Fiona Waters,  illustrated by Frann Preston-Gannon (Nosy Crow, 2018), we read "If All the Seas Were One Sea" by Anonymous, "Until I Saw the Sea" by Lilian Moore, "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" by William Butler Yeats, "Squishy Words (To Be Said When Wet)" by Alastair Reid, "At the Seaside" by Robert Louis Stevenson, "Sea Shell" by Amy Lowell, "The Shell" by John Foster, "Days" by Brian Moses, "August Heat" by Anonymous, "The Mockingbird's Song" Tigua song translated by John Comfort Fillmore, "I am the Rain" by Grace Nichols, "Little Fish" by D.H. Lawrence, and "There Was an Old Man in a Tree" by Edward Lear. 

From A Book of Americans by Rosemary and Stephen Vincent Benet (Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1933) we read poems entitled: "Daniel Drew" and "Jesse James." 

Our author/illustrator for this week was Wanda Gag. We read Wanda Gag: The Girl Who Lived to Draw by Deborah Kogan Ray, Millions of Cats, and Nothing-at-All. On Skype, Grandma read Gag's version of Snow White.

Music

We learned to sing "The Titanic (When That Great Ship Went Down)" as recorded by Pete Seeger.  

M. and C. practiced piano and recorder daily.

History 

Our readings for the week were "Old Whirlwind" from American Adventures by Elizabeth Coatsworth (Macmillan, 1968), and "Davy Crockett" and "Mike Fink" from Yankee Doodle's Cousins by Anne Malcolmson (Houghton Mifflin, 1941). 

Math 

M. worked on algebra basics and C. worked on addition with renaming using the soroban. They both did Khan Academy every day.

Reading and Writing

We read aloud Secret Sisters of the Salty Sea by Lynne Rae Perkins at lunch. In the evening, I started reading The Happy Hollisters at Pony Hill Farm with C. 

Physical Education

The girls went swimming twice this week.