Week 22: Warning: Shameless Boast!

A couple of weeks ago I posted that reading seems to have finally clicked for my girl. What used to be the most challenging part of our day is now fun and rewarding. Today she read the first part of a book called called Abe Lincoln's Hat out loud to me. (I took her copy work from the story.) I challenged her to finish reading the book to herself. If she did she could have ice cream for dessert (a huge treat at our house.) She rose to the challenge, finished the book and chose mint chocolate chip ice cream!

FYI, I love this series of books about historical characters and events. When my son was learning to read he thrived on these books. It looks like they are a hit with my girl, too! She loves to draw and sometimes turns out some really good work. I showed her on the board how to draw a cylindrical hat, and gave her some guidelines for making the hat have contour, and she produced this lovely drawing in her copy work journal.

This week we began the first of a three week study on the Civil War. The focus was on Lincoln and the challenges he faced when taking office. Matty read all his assignments with great interest, and Molly enjoyed the other selections on Lincoln that we read as well.

Matty did a review test, as we are nearing the end of the Math-U-See Epsilon (Fractions) book. He pretty much bombed the test because of careless mistakes and forgetting to reduce his fractions or who-knows-what. So we decided that we needed to spend this week reviewing and polishing his fractions before moving on to the last few lessons of the book, which involve finding the area and perimeter of circles and the like. I also have him working on some math puzzles to stretch his critical thinking skills a bit.

In all it was a short week for us. I got whacked with a bad cold over last weekend, and so I spent Sunday and Monday recovering. Dad had off on Monday and today as well. Tomorrow is piano festival for Matty, so we took today off from school and got the house cleaning done. I'm hoping his nerves don't get the better of him...He knows his song perfectly, but under pressure, we'll see how he does.