Weekly School Wrap Up

First week back at school after a month long break and it went great!  We got to leave the US for awhile and we spent time talking about China, India, and Japan during the mid 1800's.  We discussed issues with the first Opium War, the Sepoy Rebellion, read the first parts of the books "Shipwrecked" and "Commodore Perry in the Land of the Shogun," read about Hudson Taylor and the creation of the China Inland Mission, and many more fun things!

We also had some "graduations" from some workbooks...that is what the kids call it when they finish one and get to move to the next one in the series. 

Sissi completed the "Go for the Code" series and started Book 1 of Explode the Code, she is successfully reading and writing all of the early rhyming words.

Krypto is on lesson 20 of his Math U See Epsilon book.  Since it's about fractions, he noted that he is 2/3 of the way done with this book (there are 30 lessons) but it is only 1/2 of the way through the school year :)

Gwangi, working his way through the end of Explode the Code Book 5.

He started Book 6 on Thursday...I think he'll finish the series this year, there are 8.  He is a wonderful reader!

We started a new Science book for the Spring, it's God's Design for the Physical World - Inventions and Technology.  We talked about the printing press, the telegraph, and the telephone this week.  Here the kids are transcribing some Morse Code messages for fun.  Then they wrote their own to each other.  Krypto is doing another book in the series on his own, Heat and Energy. It's just written at a high enough level that Gwangi and Sissi would be a bit lost, but Krypto is loving it.

One of our crafts was making Chinese lanterns.  We found a super easy way to do it on the internet.

You can see my "sample" in the foreground.

Gwangi, drawing and decorating his lantern before we tape it together.

Krypto, completed lantern with a squid design on it.  He did it in pencil so it's hard to see, but, he really liked how it turned out and it's hanging in his bedroom now.

Sissi's decorated lantern.

Our artist of the week, one of my absolute favorites, Renoir.

I picked the picture, "Girl with a Watering Can" for them to paint because it's in the National Gallery of Art in  Washington, DC...we're going there when we get back to the States this summer.  The kids love to recognize art and remember the artist.

Sissi taking a picture of me with her Lego camera.

Sissi, Krypto, and Gwangi's completed artwork.  They did great!  For this one, we didn't start from scratch, I found a coloring page online and printed it for them.

How did your first week/weeks of school back go?  Any new ideas or plans for this next semester?  I'm already making lists for next year, oh yes, I love curriculum and new ideas for school.  Have fun!