Captivating Columbus!

Assalamu alaykum,
a full week of schooling is ahead of us! I am so exciting as this week we have started a whole new chapter with Calvert!
We reached lesson 62, that means test lesson 60 is now in the hands of Mrs Lears in Marylebone USA. We have been very slowly with the lessons and had lots of holidays and days off, but now we really need to SPEED UP!!! In fact we have to finish the whole academic course before April 2009. The fact is that we still have 100 lessons in front of us, can we make it??? ;)

Let's see what we have been up to.
A. is learning a new whole world at the moment. He started to learn about US dollars in Maths. So far so good. We played shopping game this morning and instead of using GBP we took out the US dollars and coins provided with the Calvert programme.
A. seems to grasp well the concept of US dollars and coins and the difference with the GBP.
We also started using what it's called a Royalroad device. It is used, mainly, to teach kids about phonics. It works very well and I can use it for my 5 years old too.
We used the Roayalroad device to make a composition about 'Winter' using a list of words related to the theme and mainly words containing the phonics we are learning at the moment with sounds -sh, -ch, -tch!
In science we made a little experiment about heat and weather changing. We used three cups and three ice cubes. We placed the ice cubes in each cup and placed each cup in different places. One in a warm place, one in a shady place and the last in the sunlight.
We then waited 5 minutes and checked the cups. We wrote down what happened to the ice cubes and the waited 5 more minutes before removing the ice cubes from each cup and noted down how much water was in each cup! Kids learnt that has temperatures raised, the ice cubes melts down. A and S enjoyed counting the time!
In History and Geography we are learning about the Great Explorers and went on to talk about Amerigo Vespucci and Columbus. We also watched one of the dvds from our collection of 'Horrible History' - 'Captivating Columbus'. I find that the dvds are a great tool and fix the history concepts in an enjoyable way.

On the other side , S is learning with the CGP books. He started reading a little in the last few days. We are also using the Oxford Learning Tree story books, level 1- Kipper and friends.
In Maths, S is having extra practice counting to 20, adding and substracting, more > or less <, and patterns.
In Science he assisted to the ice cubes experiment and we have also talked about where various animals live.

This week the kids have re-started evening madrassa, hamdulillah. I am happy they can go few hours out and see more of other kids specially in winter when all we do is stay indoors. I am also sad as I like to spend more time with them and it seems crazy to say so, but I miss our unschooling days when we could decide if to make a lapbook or visit the library or paint some posters or visit our homeschooling friends!
For now from me and the crew...

wa alaykum assalam