Week-in-Review Dec. 4-8

Heart of Dakota
Week-in-Review Dec. 4-8

In USII, Wyatt learned about the Bismarck, Operation Barbarossa, Lend-Lease, and Pearl Harbor this week.  He gave a summary oral narration about Hitler occupying Europe, FDR winning Congress's approval for his Lend-Lease idea, and tensions escalating for America to enter the war.  His summary narration included the visual aid of the photograph noted in his USII Student Notebook.

We also met to discuss the critical thinking questions he answered about FDR's speech "The Four Freedoms", which were really his overall goals for world order.z  Wyatt copied and cut out his critical thinking questions, glued them in his USII Student Notebook, wrote his answers, and then shared them orally with me.  I always have him read his answers, and usually we end up discussing informally more along the way.

For his written narration, Wyatt wrote a summary of about 10 detailed sentences.  The topic was the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the declaration of war by the U.S., and Hitler declaring war 4 days later.  What a turbulent time in our history!  He also used his Mystery of History book to make a chart of the Axis and of the Allies opposing sides.  One of the boys' favorite board games to play is Axis and Allies, so this whole history theme is something Wyatt's very familiar!

This week was also Wyatt's 18th birthday!!!  We are having his
birthday party next weekend, as that's the weekend my husband is home.  But, we took Friday off and had a wonderful time birthday and Christmas gift shopping!  We ate our annual lunch at Old Chicago, shopped together, drank our annual hot cocoa and ate our cookies or muffins at Barnes and Noble, watched Wyatt's favorite basketball team (Golden State Warriors) play, and then I made him his favorite pie - pecan - what an awesome day!!!  I also made the boys a little batch of Christmas 'pretzel' gifts during the week - I LOVE this time of the year!!!

For World Geography, Riley learned about The Great Zimbabwe, the Taj Mahal, and de Gama's Trip Around Africa to India.  He gave a topic oral narration using key words from his readings.  The key words are listed in the WG guide, so I always just encourage him to look through those after he reads, right before orally narrating, just to mentally plan for using them in his oral narration.  He is using 75% of the words in his narrations now!  And there are a lot of words!  Riley also drew several maps and added them to his growing collection.

 Riley began listening to the audio of "The Captive."  He completed a page of his one-sentence summaries.  Writing a one-sentence summary is actually pretty tough - given the guidelines noted in the guide - but he is doing so well with it now!  Each sentence could be a slogan summation for a movie advertisement!  In IPC, Riley experimented with closed and open circuits - which of course he loved!  His red light lit up - which he had to show me multiple times, of course!

In Creation to Christ, Emmett learned about the Assyrian conquests.  He read about Shalmanaser, the death of Elisha, and the defeat of Judah by Israel.  He also made a neat mosaic of a horse and a chariot - I'll have to share a picture of that next week!  In science he researched spiders - NOT a favorite of mine.  He made a cool web for his science lab!

The spider webs he learned about in science connected nicely to the spider web he painted in poetry appreciation!  He also worked on writing long/short varied sentences in R & S English, and he and the boys had a blast doing a DITHOR kickoff for historical fiction!  What a wonderful week!