The Pretty Life: ivey league academy: weeks in review!

Here's what we did for the past two weeks!
We took a fall break during the second week of October; we had completed nine weeks of school so I figured it was a good time to take a breath! The week after that, Grandma and Grandpa were in town so we did a lighter school week (Language Arts, Math, Science, and Countries).

Reading: We continued doing a Word Ladder every morning to start off our school day. Caleb is getting more comfortable with them and has even started attempting them on his own (though sometimes he still needs help reading a word). During the "light week," we didn't do additional reading, but the week after that, Caleb read Are You My Mother? by P.D. Eastman and completed several activities, including a maze and an opposites activity.

Language Arts: During this two-week period, we completed Lesson 5, which mostly focused on verbs. Caleb learned how to identify the verbs in sentences, how to write verbs that occur "now" versus "in the past," and about "special" verbs like tell, give, and sing that have different past forms. We also did a lesson about homophones which Caleb enjoyed the most. He took Test 5 at the end of the two weeks and did very well!

Spelling: We took a break from spelling during the light week but started on Week 10 during the second week. Caleb missed 2 out of 10 on his test.

Word of the Week/Journal: The word of the week for the light week was "colossal." The word of the week for the second week was "avoid."

Math: We continued in his math workbook.

Bible: We only did a few days of our Bible curriculum during the past two weeks. We're still learning about the Three Persons of the Trinity.

Zoology: The first day of our "light week" was the perfect time to release our butterflies! We got four healthy butterflies from our cup of caterpillars and it was time to let them go into the wild before it got too cold.

In our zoology curriculum, we completed Chapters 10 and 11. In the story, the twins gets separated due to a glitch in the program, so one sibling gets sent to a eucalyptus forest in Australia (Chapter 10) and the other gets sent to a bamboo forest in China (Chapter 11). The next two chapters will continue to switch back and forth between the two forests as the twins try to get their data so they can reunite at the next location. In Australia, we learned about koalas and rabbits. In China, we learned about giant pandas and golden eagles. Caleb continued to fill out his animal fact sheets and his food chart (which I expanded since we were running out of room!), and the day we learned about golden eagles Caleb did a "beak study" where he experimented with a variety of tools (which represent the different shapes and sizes of bird beaks and bills) to see which did better with a variety of small objects (which represent the different foods birds eat). We did something similar last year but Caleb loved it so it was fun for him to do it again.

Countries: During the "light week," we learned about Spain. We read a few library books, including The Story of Ferdinand, and Caleb made a bull out of a toilet paper roll. At the end of the week, I made a Spanish gazpacho. The boys didn't like it but I did, so I eat some of it and froze the rest.

During the second week, we learned about France. Caleb constructed an Eiffel Tower out of plastic straws and also helped me make crepes! We tried a recipe from a cute children's book called Crepes by Suzette, and I got some Nutella to spread inside.

Misc: The boys also painted pumpkins to put by the front door, and one evening before dinner we spotted a praying mantis on one of the tires of my car! Looks like it was laying eggs so we looked up how long praying mantis eggs take to hatch (given that they're on a tire, it's not looking good for them!). One site said several weeks, plus they do better in warm weather, so either way I don't think we'll see baby praying mantises any time soon!