Week 1

This post is the first of what I hope will be weekly recaps of what happens in Seven Pillars Academy. Overall, our first week was great! I will organize this summary by subjects.

BIBLE

This week in Bible, we practiced memorizing our anchor verse for our homeschool: James 3:17.

We said it aloud three times each day, and by Wednesday Emily Anne had it memorized. Will was able to say it by himself on Friday, and was reciting it in the kitchen on Friday afternoon. We are trying to allow these qualities of wisdom to guide our interactions in school, and there were several instances during the week when I was able to compliment the kids on being peace-loving, considerate, or submissive.

HANDWRITING/COPYWORK

Emily Anne worked on her cursive handwriting by copying James 3:17. Will worked in his Handwriting book. By the end of the week, I had moved him along a few lessons because the book started out with practicing various strokes. He had already done handwriting in 4K, so we skipped ahead to the lessons with letters and words. He was happier with that.

LANGUAGE ARTS

Language Arts this week was mostly oral although it did incorporate a small bit of workbook activity. It focused mainly on forming the plurals of words and also reviewed the definition of a noun. I really like First Language Lessons because of its emphasis on auditory learning, which is definitely where EA's strengths lie. While Emily Anne is doing Language Arts, Will would work on some typical kindergarten workbook pages to underscore his Phonics and Math.

WRITING

Emily Anne worked on narration and dictation in Writing with Ease. The selections this week were from Grimm's fairy tales, and a difference this year is that she reads the selections aloud herself. I like this, as it gives her practice in fluency. During Emily Anne's writing time, Will is listening to Easy Readers on CD and following along in his book. This week he listened to Little Bear Finds a Friend (twice), Biscuit Finds a Friend (He didn't like this one as well because it didn't have page-turning cues), Danny and the Dinosaur Go to Camp, and A Bargain for Frances.

SCIENCE

The beginning of the week focused on Nutrition, and the kids colored in the Food Pyramid and learned about food groups, as well as kept a fruit and vegetable diary through the week. By mid-week, I had gotten Emily Anne's syllabus for her co-op Physics course, and we began to study Energy. When I read them the chapter on Energy in the textbook, both Emily Anne and Will said that they had learned about potential and kinetic energy from Fetch with Ruff Ruffman, one of their favorite shows on PBS! On Friday Emily Anne read Will a picture book on Energy from the library, and they watched a very brief clip on potential and kinetic energy from Bill Nye, the Science Guy that I found on Youtube.

PE

I am trying to get more physical education in the children's curriculum. This week we focused on sprinting, which consisted of my timing them while they ran from the walk to the wall of the backyard. They loved this and asked to do it every day.

MATH

I am so glad that I decided to use Saxon Math 1 with Will instead of Saxon K. He is certainly up to the lessons and declares them to be "Easy!" after each lesson.

Emily Anne's Saxon 5/4 is also going well, although by Thursday she was dawdling excessively over her Math Facts Drill. I bribed her on Friday with the promise of a Math-Facts-Free day on Monday if she did a good job on her addition drill, improved her time, and did it with a good attitude. It worked! I do like how 5/4 emphasizes math vocabulary in the worksheets.

Emily Anne asked to bring Britney to school and created a desk for her on the steps. Will then created a G. I. Joe school. Do you see the pencil in Duke's hand? There is obviously not a dress code for G. I. Joe school. Both made math worksheets for their doll/action figures.

SPELLING/PHONICS

Emily Anne is in Lessons 26 & 27 in Spelling Workout C. Her tips this week dealt with vowel pairs that make a long-vowel sound and the different sounds of oo. She can do Spelling on her own, so Will and I usually use this time for Phonics. He has blown us all away with his reading this week!

We knew that he was reading more, but it was only with structured reading practice time that I have seen how much he knows. We began with Lesson 27 in The Ordinary Parents Guide to Reading with short-vowel words. We go through the brief lesson and then usually follow up with his spelling the lesson words on a small whiteboard with magnetic letters, which he usually enjoys. He asks to read the Bob books, and he read all twelve of Set 1 by Thursday of this week! I am going to have to get the other sets much quicker than I thought. I really like Bob books because they follow along with the phonics lessons in OPGTR. He also read another phonics reader on Friday that I happened to have, as well as a book that Emily Anne wrote for him.

HISTORY

History was a blast this week! On Monday I read through the information on "The Holy Roman Empire" while the kids colored the picture of Charles V. Tuesday's information was on "The Riches of Spain," and they colored a picture of a conquistador, which was right up Will's alley. On Wednesday they did map work, which consisted of coloring in the countries that Charles V ruled, the countries that Frederick and Philip II ruled, and the route from Spain to South America. 

To explain the idea of the $500 billion dollars in gold and silver that conquistadores took from South America, they did a measurement activity on Thursday. They found things around the house that were 1 mm (grains of salt), 16 cm (a toy tank), 4' 2" (Emily Anne-approximately), and 8'5" (approximate measurement from floor to ceiling) and then filled in a key to see the distance covered if you had 500 billion of that object. This activity made the abstract concept of 500 billion more concrete for them. 

On Friday, we made Spanish doubloons by tracing circles on cardboard and covering them in gold foil wrapping paper. They then used pencils to trace designs on them. The designs on the "coins" didn't show up in the picture, but they were varied--horses, roses, WWII soldiers, Civil War Soldiers. I guess they didn't think to put Philip II on them!

 Then then played the game outlined in the Story of the World activity guide: "Steal the Spanish Treasure." It was a combination of checkers and Battleship, and the kids really liked it. They played it twice so that each child had the opportunity of being the Pirate, and then they played again that afternoon.

Here Will the pirate has just stolen the gold off of one of Emily Anne's consquistador's ships!

As I have been writing this post this morning, Joel has played a game with each of the kids, and they are playing each other now!

LITERATURE
This week I was reading aloud Stories from Don Quixote by James Baldwin. Emily Anne and Will have loved hearing how silly Don Quixote has been! We should finish it next week.