We finished week 18 (the halfway mark) two weeks ago, but the last two weeks have been pretty hectic with birthday parties and campouts, so I’m just getting to reviewing the unit.
We are getting very close to being done with Hannah’s required reading of the full New Testament for Girl’s Ministries. She also has some assigned passages and we work through an interesting workbook called Remembering God’s Awesome Acts. She has been memorizing some passages but recently we started on a poem that will keep us occupied for a few more weeks.
In history/social studies we continued our tour of countries in Journey to the Eastern Hemisphere. We worked through a unit on New Zealand, Antartica, Mongolia, and Russia. (I took a side trip and read a book I had about Shakleton’s voyage when we did Antartica, it was interesting.) While we were doing Mongolia, we also studied the Khan Empire by reading Ghengis Khan and the Mongol Horde. We have a book called 100 Gateway Cities that helps us study countries in the 10/40 window. We do two or three a week.
Hannah started to have current event assignments this year and I purchased a subscription to World Kids that we have been pretty happy with. After her birthday, I upgraded to World Teen. They put out a magazine every two months and a daily story on their app. They also supply teacher guides and quizzes, which help me gauge comprehension. I’m thinking about adding in a similar assignment to Ben’s work as I’ve enjoyed having age appropriate news articles about current happenings in the world.
Hannah’s Read Alouds are getting longer, but that seems to mean we love the characters more and don’t want the books to end. We enjoyed Young Fu of the Upper Yangtze, The Terrible Wave, Mother West Wind Stories, and The Wolves of Willoughby Chase. We also have a few selections from All the Small Poems each week.
We are in a pretty good groove with Language Arts now. We finished Sequential Spelling 2 and moved into the 3rd book as we should have started that in the fall anyway. She has weekly cursive, grammar, vocabulary, dictation, and creative writing assignments.
Hannah’s enjoyed her readers this unit as well. She completed God’s Adventurer: Hudson Taylor, Just So Stories, and Around the World in 80 Days.
Science this year is human anatomy. Our books are Blood and Guts, Food and Nutrition for Every Kid, Usborne Complete Book of the Human Body. We read through a puberty book called Almost 12. She also watched a movie called Unlocking the Mystery of Life. Toward the end of the unit, we moved further into the body with Usborne Introduction to Genes and DNA.
Math is going ok. We are still in Horizons 4. On Fridays, we play a math adventure app called Prodigy.
Extras are always fun. We still keep our piano skills (considering getting some more lessons if we can fit them in). Weekly Park Day, Girl’s Ministries, and a play date. We do daily Go Noodle for our PE and Hannah is just about finished with her first basketball season. It has been really fun to watch. We had a week long trip to CA when daddy needed to go back for work. We saw old homeschool buddies and got to go to LegoLand, Knott’s Berry Farm, the beach, and play in the pool. We’ve also had our Feb birthday parties as well as ones we’ve been invited to. Lots of fun!