Beginning of third 9 weeks

We are the beginning of our third 9 weeks -- our halfway mark. Our "Changing Seasons" project is going fantastic. The kids have enjoyed looking at the monthly photos from around the world and learning about other cultures along with seeing the wide range in temperatures. It has been great to have Perth, Australia as part of our project since it has been a visual tool to teach that the weather on the southern hemisphere is the opposite of the weather here on the northern hemisphere. It's been fun to even see our own photos changing; a lot is missed if one doesn't take the time to look. Some of our participants fell out at the beginning of the project, but right now we have the cities as follows:

U. S. Cities

• Fort Worth, TX
• Plano, TX
• Evanston, IL
• Sterling Heights, MI
• St. Louis, MO
• Columbia, MO
• Oakdale, PA
• Palmyra, VA

International Cities

• Perth, Australia
• Waterloo, Canada
• Bucharest, Romania
• Espoo, Finland
• Isfara, Tajikistan

We still have to do our field trip for this project, and I have a few ideas. Fort Worth Botanic Gardens will be having a butterfly exhibit in March; this would be a great field trip to celebrate spring's arrival. I was also thinking about a field trip to Turner Falls in OK where we could go hiking and exploring. They both sound fun so maybe we'll do both. :-)

We are just finishing up the last part of our space exploration in 2nd grade science. When we are finished, we will take a field trip to the planetarium -- probably some time around the end of February. Katherine is required to write her first research paper on Venus. It is to be one page in length and use at least 2 or 3 sources. I showed her how to take notes on note cards, and we'll work on bibliographies this week. The deadline for it is next week, and I reminded her that most of the work on it needs to be done outside of our classroom.

In history, we continue to explore the middle ages and are now just finishing the Battle of Hastings. History is Katherine's favorite class, and she will tell you that the old days are the best days. :-) We study geography while we study history so she can get a grasp on where the places are we are studying and how they relate to other locations. Sometime near the end of the school year, we will do a biographical research paper over someone we studied this year.

In Saxon 3, we are currently learning our times tables in math and basic division. We have gone over telling time by 5 minute intervals, fractions, perimeters, identifying perfect squares and using comparison symbols. We are daily working on pattern recognition, telling time, telling the date and adding money.

PreK4 is going well. Mary is enthusiastic about learning and excited at every classroom lesson. She is through the consonant letter Q in the alphabet. She can site almost all of the capital letters but still struggles with some of the lowercase letters and sounds. I'm hoping to finish the alphabet in the next month and start her on her first books -- Bob Books. We are using Saxon Math K for her math, and she loves math. She is quite good at counting, easily seeing the patterns in the numbers as they go up. She seems to enjoy the repetition of the daily calendar and patterns.

So far this year has been pretty good for the group. We still have not gotten into a routine for our Latin classes (although have still manged to learn some Latin words and prayers). Katherine is doing good on the piano, but since my knowledge only goes so far, it would be nice to find her another teacher to continue these lessons. We are going over the Ten Commandments in Religion class. PreK4 is required to memorize the commandment and 2nd grade is required to memorize the commandment and its meaning. In Art class, we have learned all the line families and their characteristics and have worked on some sight copying. Katherine is really enjoying Art class; Mary likes to do her own thing. But that's fine with me.