assignments for 3/11/08

Dear Families,

We had a great day of learning. As always, we dealt with the frustration of having too much to do and not enough time. I've promised the children that we'll take a catch up period next week. We'll play Noah's history game, we'll play Emily's science game from her lap book, we'll play Jeopardy with our explorer knowledge, etc. etc. etc. We even ran out of time to share all our lap books, so we'll finish presenting those as well.

Mrs. Owens was our volunteer and is a great addition to our class time. Many thanks!!! Here are the books we read during class as enrichment for SOTW. Be sure to count these on your Medieval Times reading list: Koi and the Kola Nuts, Mufaro's Beautiful Daughters, and The Spirit of the Maasai Man.

We discussed slavery--always a difficult subject. I found it very tough to gauge how deep to go with our young students. They were very focused and interactive about this terrible "wound" to humankind and dark period of history. We discussed the facts and how we knew it hurt God. We moved into discussing how our great God can take even something as loathsome as slavery and cause some good to come from it. Ask your student about that discussion. We even touched on the good that came from the plague. I shared with them one of my favorite stories with this theme-- the story of Corrie Ten Boom and the fleas that kept guards away from her secret Bible studies. I recommended the movie "The Hiding Place" to my students if it can be found. We discussed the movie "Amazing Grace". Since its subject is slavery which is such a mature theme, I told them the movie should only be viewed if parents have pre-viewed it. On a lighter note, there is a Disney movie called "El Dorado" that is not educational at all and is a bit silly. However, it is exactly about the topic of this chapter in SOTW--Cortes conquering the Indian tribes in the new world in search of gold. Just a thought.

Report cards will be out soon. I'm not sure of the exact date--possibly after Spring Break. If you have work that needs to be turned in, I will still accept it. Points will be deducted for it being late.

A couple of items are a bit different with this week's homework. Instead of a narration in science, you have a review guide for chapter 10. Please be sure your student reads the chapter thoroughly with the guide beside them. The questions come sequentially through the chapter.

In literature, you each received a large packet. Don't let it scare you. You each have a couple of questions to answer and three "thought" questions at the end. (Luke, as the oldest, won the right to answer the longest question! :) We'll come together next week to pool our answers and discuss the selection. These questions are over the reading that was to be done for this week. After you've answered them, you can go on to read the portion for next week. I've done this because I love these Progeny Press study guides and for those who want a deeper "dig" into our literature selection, you can feel free to do as much as you want.

Grammar was intense as we began ch. 17 having to decide which pattern sentences we were classifying. We then got started learning about the quotation rules. These were confusing as first presented. We plugged away at them and, as usual, these bright children seem to get it. They also faithfully promised me to work diligently at home with you on this chapter.

HISTORY:
--produce a narration on ch. 33 using information from class as well as the chapter
--color page and map work
--read ch. 34

GRAMMAR:
--administer test on ch. 16
--complete ch. 17 from text
--complete ch. 17 vocab definitions and sentences
--(ask your student about the metaphors we found and discussed from Scripture!)

SCIENCE:
--read Lesson 10 and answer questions
--after discussing these next week, I plan to have a test over the information from the review guide and the questions at the end of the chapter

LITERATURE:
--complete your assigned questions from the study guide. (Don't miss the last three that everyone should answer)
--read pages 26--41 in The Door in the Wall

BIBLE:
--read ch. 88 and 89
--What do you learn that you will apply to your life from this passage?

Enjoy learning with your children!

Mrs. Tkach