Weekly Wrap-Up: VERB! That's What's Happening

Remember Schoolhouse Rock?  I do and very well, it seems.  We own four VHS tapes (yes, tapes), which comprise Grammar Rock, Multiplication Rock, America Rock, and Science Rock.  So I pulled out the grammar one just for fun.  The girls have watched these once or twice when they were younger; but they are really at ages to get a kick out of them now.

Since we've been reviewing nouns and verbs and studying subjects and predicates, we spent one grammar lesson this week watching TV.  We enjoyed "A Noun Is a Person Place or Thing," "Verb: That's What's Happening," and "The Tale of Mr. Morton" (subjects/predicates) so much that the girls begged for more (who wouldn't??).  So we then watched "Unpack Your Adjectives," "Lolly, Lolly, Lolly, Get Your Adverbs Here," "Conjunction Junction," and "Interjections!"  I knew most of the words to all the songs, which the girls thought was a hoot.

We plugged along in all our subjects.  Here are some highlights:

We started a new spelling program, Spelling Power.  Since we only just began, I haven't formed a complete opinion.  But my early impression is that it will work well for us.

In science, we learned more about our skin.  We performed an easy experiment from How the Body Works that showed us a bit about how the sebum on our skin helps to keep our skin supple and protect us from too much water soaking into our bodies.  Sadly, I neglected to photojournal our activities.  I was too busy conducting the experiment!  Also, Tiny Girl needed to bring in photos of the sun for her astronomy class.  We found some great ones on the National Geographic website.  My favorite is the one taken by the SOHO spacecraft, which orbits the sun, and depicts a developing sun storm.  Frankly, I had no idea!  Sometimes it shocks me how little I actually know. . . .

The girls are loving the logic puzzles in the Mind Benders book and have asked to be allowed to do more of them each day.  I'm sort of suspicious.  If they love it, it can't really be educational, can it?  (That's a joke, by the way.)  Being that I'm a newbie to the field of formal logic study, and read up on it this week and wrote a post about my discoveries.  You can read it here, if you are so inclined.

We are laying the groundwork for the colonial American period in our history studies.  Thus far, the settlements have not been wildly successful, except for the summer fishing colonies in Newfoundland.  The folks there were wise enough to pack it in and go home for the winter.  I'm looking forward to the weeks ahead because we have some neat books scheduled to read and some fun activities, too.

I'm happy to report that Miss Priss decided, on her very own, to do some of our readings independently.  Prior to this, she wanted me to read everything except her free reads.  We're at an awkward point in our journey in that she should be doing more reading on her own (she is fully able to do so with several selections), but Tiny Girl still prefers for me to read aloud.  So this week, Miss Priss read history and Heidi on her own, and then I read them to Tiny Girl on the same days.  And that's okay.  I'm encouraging the elder to take on more independent work, so it may be that some book sharing will be necessary in the days ahead.

That's our week!  How was yours?

Since I didn't get my camera issues resolved until after we came back home, I'll be  periodically posting some photos of our summer in Maine:

The girls atop Cadillac Mountain, in Acadia National Park, Mt. Desert Island, Maine