Homeschool Update: October 2022

Group Activities

After we finished listening to The Lion of St. Mark, we started reading aloud Those Miller Girls by Alberta Wilson Constant. On Halloween, we listened to The Best Halloween Ever by Barbara Robinson. The girls continued working on their poetry memorization. They are still learning "The Goat and the Three Red Shirts" (E.), "Barbara Frietchie" (C.), and "The Cremation of Sam McGee" (M.)

We read some more issues of The Catholic Treasure Box, and then took a break to begin learning the Nicene Creed in Latin. We use this video to practice pronunciation, and this video to learn to sing the chant. We didn't pray a Rosary every single day, but we continued using the videos from The Little Rose Shop when we did pray it. We also added in a Novena for a family we know who recently lost a baby. 

We continued reading aloud from A Child's History of Art. For music appreciation, my husband read aloud the second Metropolitan Opera Guild picture book adapted from the Ring of the Nibelung, and the girls listened to the accompanying music. For poetry, we read aloud all the poems (but not the prose excerpts) in Poetry for Young People: Edgar Allan Poe.

The three girls practiced piano and recorder daily and they practiced singing rounds like "Chairs to Mend" and songs we previously learned, including "Red River Valley" and "All Through the Night." 

History

E. quickly became bored with family history, so we moved onto Life Story by Virginia Lee Burton and First Days of the World by Gerald Ames, and near the end of the month we started The Giant Golden Book of Dinosaurs and Other Prehistoric Reptiles by Jane Werner Watson, illustrated by Rudolph F. Zallinger.

C. started the month with Charlemagne, then learned about monks and the medieval church, Vikings, and feudalism. She read Viking Adventure by Clyde Robert Bulla, and Castle: How it Works by David Macaulay and watched The Secret of Kells and looked at some pages from the Book of Kells. She wrote a narration about the Book of Kells as well. 

M. continued studying World War I. She read a lot of historical fiction: 

• The Singing Tree by Kate Seredy
• You Choose: At Battle in World War I by Allison Lassieur
  
• You Choose: The Sinking of the Lusitania by Stephen Otfinoski
  
• You Choose: World War I by Gwenyth Swain
  
• The White Nights of St. Petersburg by Geoffrey Trease
  
• The Wild Children by Felice Holman
  
• Small Acts of Amazing Courage by Gloria Whelan
  
• The Night Run by Bali Rai
  
• The Guns of Easter by Gerard Whelan
• The Great Migration: African Americans Move to the North, 1915-1930 by Monica Halpern
  
• Some of Us Survived: The Story of an Armenian Boy by Kerop Bedoukian

She also watched a variety of videos: 

• The Miracle of Our Lady of Fatima
• Shackleton
• Shackleton's Voyage of Endurance
• Harriet's Army 
• The Century (WWI episode)

Science

M. continued doing one lesson per week from Middle School Chemistry. Sometimes we do the demonstrations; other times, if the materials are something we don't typically buy and it doesn't seem worth buying them, we watch videos of the demos and complete the student worksheets accordingly. We are also reading one small section from Romance of Chemistry twice a week, and often the historical context we read about goes along with the MCS lesson. (M. claims to dislike Romance of Chemistry and complains that the scientists are boring). 

C. and E. learned about gravity this month, which included watching some videos from the International Space Station about how astronauts do things like make peanut butter sandwiches and wash their hair without gravity. We also talked about vertical and horizontal lines. They each completed a worksheet for each chapter. 

Math

C. worked on capacity and area in Singapore 2B. She is very close to completing the book. She did one chapter per week from Life of Fred: Dogs.

M. worked on Challenging Word Problems 3 and the review sections in Singapore 4A. She did one chapter per week from Life of Fred: Mineshaft. 

E. is still working on counting by two, threes, and fives on the soroban. She is beginning to learn the numbers that add up to 10 (" big friends"). 

Language Arts

C. is given a sentence from a McGuffey reader every morning, and she is asked to name the parts of speech. 

M. diagrams two sentences per week from Rex Barks. E. practices reading aloud from the McGuffey reader most mornings.

 

I read aloud Babe: The Gallant Pig to E., and then started reading her My Bookhouse: Through Fairy Halls. 

Physical Education

The girls rode bikes several times. 

Health

M. went to her own orthodontist visit and accompanied the twins to their check-up at the pediatrician.