What we are using

09 April 2010

Week 26 - Chicks, Elizabeth, and Math

This is math. See the Fred book there? CC passed her bridge to chapter 16 on the first try. We had a wonderful week in math. We did Singapore CWPs and Fraction and Percent War on Monday, Saxon lesson 51 on Tuesday, Fred on Wednesday, then today.. Lets just say that the lesson ended with me closing the book on problem 8 of 9 and telling CC that she had to do a chapter of Saxon INSTEAD. Yep. 8 of 9 problems then a whole chapter of Saxon.

She does great in Fred on days when she has an open mind - she just leaps from idea to idea and loves the challenge of figuring out things she doesn't know. On days when she wakes up sour and declares that it is too early to be up, Fred isn't a good idea. It is voluntary, and I refuse to fight her over it. So instead of doing the last two problems in the Lowest Common Denominator chapter to complete the math lesson for the day, she did a chapter in Saxon learning how to subtract numbers with more than 4 digits and how to use multiplication to check division.

LB has done a few pages in Miquon, played a few math games with dice and a hundreds chart, measured lots of things and completed a lesson from the BJU K book. I'm trying to think happy thoughts and not remember that this one still needs to learn LCDs and long division.

This is LB with her new chick Sweetie. We went to a farm store Monday to look for ducklings and came home with chicks. They've had a good week being mother hens.

Life isn't all about math, fortunately for me. This chick is Mary. Named after Mary, Queen of Scots. This week we switched queens (from Mary) to Elizabeth in history. In the process, we had a terrific discussion about the different experiences Mary, Elizabeth, and Mary had growing up. What would have happened if Mary, daughter of Henry VIII, had married the dauphin since there was an alliance at one time. Would she still have inherited the throne of England as well as France? Would England and France had an alliance then instead of England joining Spain against France? If so, would that have changed the outcome of the Revolution (since France's participation on the side of the colonists was crucial). Would Mary have been as bitter if she had not stayed in court all those years? Would she have treated Elizabeth differently? Who would Mary, Queen of Scots, have married? Would Elizabeth still have felt as threatened by her cousin if her sister had not been such a threat to her? Would she still have had her cousin executed? And why didn't Henry VIII follow through with any of the marriages of his children? I am glad that we decided to stop here in history for a time. CC never liked princesses when she was smaller, but she adores queens.

Otherwise - we watched a lot (26 of 40) of Liberty's Kids on Netflix this week since they are OnDemand finally, and I had a migraine for much of the week. LB is really cute quoting Patrick Henry, Ethan Allen, and Ben Franklin. She likes the dramatic lines best. We read the Children's Bible sections for the crucifixion through the Pentecost - I was going to stop at the resurrection or the ascension, but the girls wanted to hear more.

We also spent a day at the zoo with CC's enrichment school. We enjoyed a zookeeper talk and training session with hornbills and white-cheeked gibbons then a nice walk through the zoo. CC's teacher told me that she knows a lot about animals and animal classification - so much that last week, she just let CC share information for the whole class period instead of following her own notes.




3 comments:

Erica said...

I'm so glad that you mentioned Liberty's Kids. I had forgotten about that show. I added it to our Netflix instant queue!

Daisy said...

LOL. I think you and I would have a nice long talk about math over a cup of tea.

Unknown said...

Love Life of Fred and Liberty Kids. Didn't know you could watch it live now, thanks for sharing.
Blessings
diane