Friday update

From Elizabeth

The weeks keep going by, and grade two is half done. How did this happen? Here's our progress so far:

We are 1/3 of the way through our math book, but she's doing great at it. she regularly gets 100% on her tests, and only occasionaly misses one question. I love math-u-see. This week we finished lesson 10 on dollars, counting money and writing with decimals.

In reading she is really taking off. Yesterday she read an entire magic treehouse book in one day. wow!! Ten chapters. She still reads to me each afternoon for 20 min or so. Her expression is wonderful and comprehension is spot on.

Spelling is also moving along well. We finished lesson 17/36 this week and she has an amazing memory for words. Phonics has also paid off, as she is getting good at applying rules to spelling. (sometimes not the right rules, but english is so complicated that she's doing great). Her cursive (which she uses in spelling) is becoming very neat and well-formed.

Religion: We did another week of our first confession preparation and she is internalizing everything deeply. She is a very thoughtful child and has a strong sense of justice (knowing right from wrong).

Grammar: We are learning about different types of sentences: Statements, commands and questions. We are just about done the grade one grammar course and will quickly move onto the grade 2 course in a week or so. We are using First Language for the Well Trained Mind. This is a lovely course as it includes poetry memorization, grammar, copywork, narration, dictation... and most of it is oral and only takes about 10 min per lesson. Here is a sweet story that she wrote for me this week:

History: We have been working hard on finishing lapbooks for egypt and are just about done. Pictures forthcoming. E is at the point where she can start to write things herself, and has composed and written all of the information for her lapbook by herself. Her writing skills are really taking off.

Art and music: both choirs are still going strong, and she was excited this week because her teacher Ms. Lee told everyone to watch how E held her mouth when she sang. Apparently she shapes her mouth just right for different vowels like 'o' and 'e' etc...

She has also been drawing up a storm this week with pictures ranging from the characters of the movie 'Cars', 'Mr. Incredible, 'veggie tales' and 'Angelina Ballerina'. She also just completed a beautiful painting of a princess and a prince dancing. She informed me the other day that she just draws what she sees in her head, and if she's drawing something from a movie, then she just watches the movie in her head and pauses it when she gets to the part she wants to draw... and apparently she can fastforward and rewind too. Hmm, I want some of that brain power over here! I can't even remember the ending to the second Pirates of the Carribean Movie, which I only just recently watched. urgh!!

From Elizabeth

Science is on hold until egypt is done, and we didn't really get to south america this week, but next week we will try to finish up and move on to africa.