Weekly-Wrap-Up and Collage Friday

We are still doing school at the Umandap's homeschool. Given that we were away for almost 4 weeks right in the middle of this first semester, I have a lot I want to have done before Christmas comes along. We are still running on a 4-day week schedule, but making progress. The plan is to do school until the 14th of December.

So what have we been doing:

• History of course: We have tackled a 3-week study of South America with Tapestry of Grace. Zach also enjoys doing his president card activity very much and adding to his state map as we go along.

• Math: we have continued mastering long divisions. I think he's got it now since he can do a 3 digit divisor and 5 digits dividend almost without any problem. I started long divisions with Joho and it seems to be going well.

• English: We are finishing up Grammar Town, but since I find that the abrupt introduction of verbal phrases was too much, I am taking a break to teach Zach about the 3 verbal phrases (infinitive, gerund and participial) using online resources such as  Education.com. Once I am confident he can identify those we will resume our practice with Grammar Town sentences. With Johann I have been working with him on verbs, predicate and sentences.

• Spelling, I have borrowed All About Spelling from a friend and I am really liking it. I have known about this program and knew that it was a good one, but I have to say, it works really well with my boys, who hate spelling.

• Handwriting has going well too. Zach is such a better writer in cursive.

In other areas:

• The christmas tree has been up for almost 2 weeks, thanks to Joho who did most of the work of putting it up. 

• I took Joho skating this week. It has been a while. It took him a bit of time to remember how to stand and skate, but eventually it all came back. He enjoyed himself.

• Zach turned 9 this week, and we are thankful for him and his progress.

• We also had the boys participate in our church's donation to The Samaritan Purse Project.

That's about it for the past couple of weeks, beside being busy preparing for Christmas cantatas at our church. The boys are singing in the children's one and I am singing in the adult/youth one. I am putting into good practice what I am learning from Vocal Coach ;-).

You can read more Weekly Wrap-Up here and more collage Friday here.