Half-baked Homeschool

A new year, an new opportunity to stay on track with this blog. I've managed to stick with my flossing resolution for 6 days now, so maybe I'm ready to add something else.

I've been told that I might just want to start here, in January, and not get bogged down with playing catch up from the last 3 months. That's wise advice, I believe, but I just can't do it. As the girl who always knew the first 3 measures of every piano piece by heart due to a return there with each missed note, I must try to make it all connect with no gaps.

Still, I can't possibly do 18 Weekly Wrap-Ups today so I'll just cover the semester highlights. (I didn't even know we were on semesters.)

BIBLE
We've memorized plenty of Bible verses, and the monthly character traits have included orderliness, thankfulness and generosity. Long Story Short is still serving us well for evening devotions, but we took a break over Advent to use Ann VosKamp's Jesse Tree Advent Celebration.

HISTORY
Bearclaw has made it almost to WWI in history. We've left the 19th century behind and entered into what seems like a much less romantic period. I guess it's the proximity of the 20th century that makes it's horrors seem so much more horrible. It does give me reason to pause, though. I mean, we just loved waving our cardboard battle axes around when we studied the Celts, but I can't see us making faux mustard gas and snapping a few pics of a make-believe exposure. Not so fun.

Shortbread has finished what I refer to as the "really ancient" ancients and has just started looking at Greece. Below are some of his projects from the last couple of months.




LITERATURE
After the Abraham Lincoln biography, Bearclaw read two historical fiction books he enjoyed more: Turn Homeward, Hannalee and Sarah, Plain and Tall. Although he enjoys adventure books geared toward boys, he seems fine with these books based on fictional females (and who can blame him?- they're great reads!).

During the study of the Hannalee book, we were able to take a walking tour of the town in which Hannalee lived (and worked in a textile mill) at the beginning of the book. Although the book is a work of fiction, it is based on actual events that occurred in the mill town of Roswell, Georgia.

In Roswell, we were able to tour the area where the founders, owners, and well-to-do lived as well as the ruins of the old mill (where Hannalee would have worked) and mill housing.

This is the home of Roswell King, the city's founder and owner of the mill:


Though the mill itself was destroyed by Union forces (who then deported the workers, including women and children like our fictional Hannalee, to the north), the creek and a dam that fed it open for exploration:

After reading Sarah, Plain and Tall, Bearclaw made a diorama of the scene in which Sarah slides down a "hay dune". It didn't spark quite the enthusiasm from him that the field trip did, but it turned out to be a fun activity.




Together with mom, Shortbread read Anansi and the Magic Stick and made his own model of the stick. (He loves projects, so I just get the materials he needs, and he disappeears. I have almost no input into them, so I love to see his final product - it's always a surprise!)


Later in the semester, we read Temple Cat, which is quite a short picture book, but it's message is vitally imporant and well-expressed. It's definitely a favorite of mine now.


LANGUAGE ARTS

Bearclaw continues with Spelling Workout E, Wordly Wise, Shurley English and Easy Grammar.

The writing instruction at the humanities hybrid school he attends continues to focus on various types of writing, but they keep the length of each paper to one paragraph, which keeps Bearclaw from feeling overwhelmed. I really enjoy working with him on this as he struggles to best convey his ideas on paper.

Shortbread's reading has picked up, and he says he will no longer read any books without chapters, so that sent me scrambling to find more books for beginning readers that are longer than most of what we have in our home library. I have always wondered if Shortbread will be interested in reading the way Bearclaw is. I suppose it remains to be seen, but he's off to a great start!


MATH
This has been an emotional struggle for quite a while, and I was about ready to throw in the towel and sign Bearclaw up for an outside class or switch to a different curriculum.

Our combination of me fussing over his lack of focus and care in his math work and his frutration over mistakes and self-defeating attitude was exhausting both of us.

A change in approach has helped tremendously. I've really worked to convince him that he should not know how to do the lesson before we've gone over it, and I've allowed him to lean on me for those topics that he's struggling with. Scooting him off to "try it" was only upsetting him and getting us nowhere. At this point, he would even say, perhaps, that he is "good at math."

Shortbread and math get along wonderfully, so he's moved on to the "B" level for first grade.

SCIENCE
We've continued our nature walks, and although the boys don't journal as I'd like, we have enjoyed spending time with our friends and exploring some local park gems.



So that's it...our whole semester squished into one post. We started back to school this week, so I'll have material for more wrap-ups soon. Too soon, maybe.

Yeah! We all lived through our first week of school. There were a few scrapes, bumps and bruises, but nothing permanent.

The boys had a great first day at their one-day-a-week program (the dog didn't go):




As for the school work - it went something like this:

BIBLE:
We finally have a plan that I hope will work. We will continue to memorize the verses that our hybrid program sends home, as well as study the Christian character trait they assign each month, but we're moving our daily devotion/study to dinner time. Dh has agreed to lead; he's doing a fabulous job (he's much funnier than I am). We're using a new book called Long Story Short, and it goes through the Old Testament in very short, manageable pieces, while showing how each weekly topic points to Jesus. I was skeptical of it's claim that it only takes 10 minutes a day, but it's true. All of us are loving it!

HISTORY:
The year I've dreaded has arrived: the boys are studying completely different time periods for history. It IS more work for me, as I predicted, but it's also proving to be easier in some respects, because the discussions are a little smoother one-on-one. I guess it's like many things, and much of the outcome will depend upon my attitude.

4th grade - Bearclaw is starting the "modern" time period, from 1850 to the present. This week we looked at the huge British Empire during Queen Victoria's reign and also discussed the increasing tension over slavery in the U.S.

I began reading Courage to Run as a family read-aloud, which is based on Harriet Tubman's early years. We also listened to the beginning of Oliver Twist on audio, read by Dick Cavet. Unfortunately, he read so fast, even I had trouble following it, so we never finished it. We'll try again in a few years.

Finally, we discussed the work of George Mueller in England on behalf of poor orphans. We listened to and audio recording about him from Your Story Hour, which the children enjoyed.

1st grade - This is Shortbread's first year of narrating for history. In the past, he has followed along with our history using coloring pages, maps, and projects, but now he has his own history narration book and he'll be doing the same things he saw his brother doing over the last few years.

LITERATURE:
Bearclaw is reading a biography of Abraham Lincoln. He made the classic "milk carton log cabin" by attaching pretzels to a sawed-off half-n-half container (no school cafeteria to provide the 8-ounce milk carton) with royal icing:



1st grade -
Shortbread's first literature book is The Real Story of Creation. I do most of the reading to him, and then he narrates to me and works on the literature assignments.

LANGUAGE ARTS:
4th grade - Bearclaw is feeling pretty comfortable with language arts this year, as his spelling, vocabulary, grammar and writing curricula haven't changed since last year. He's humming right along with much less dawdling. Halleluhia!

1st grade - Shortbread has not yet started spelling, but for handwriting and phonics, his class is using Saxon Phonics. The jury is still out, I guess, but the work seems rather dry to me. Conversely, I'm a big fan of the grammar curriculum, First Language Lessons. Bearclaw and I used this in first grade, and we both enjoyed most of the lessons.

MATH:
4th grade -
Yeah! Bearclaw has moved on to Primary Mathematics 3B, which is from Singapore Math. So far, so good. Of course, it 's mostly review now. He did manage to figure out one of their methods for mental calculation that I just couldn't get. You know, old dog and all.

1st grade -
Shortbread is zipping along in Primary Mathematics 1A. He is definitely a math guy.

SCIENCE:
With Bearclaw in 4th grade and Shortbread in 1st, I'm beginning to see this year as the last year I'll have "young" children. Because of this neurosis, I have decided to chuck formal, classical science and cling to what's left of their childhoods with nature study.

We're using the "Handbook of Nature Study" blog, by Barb, who is also the Harmony Arts gal, I found out. We purchase her "getting started" packet, with the first 10 lessons and some sketch
pages. I'll try to post pics of our adventures.

Here's our first nature "walk" with some local friends:




It evolved into a sand/dirt castle building session, but we did see a black rat snake slither down the opposite bank of this creek, and then two frogs jumped into the water from the area where the snake was. Later, another snake swam down the creek a little ways from us.

We fear slightly that the next trek might be a bit of a let down. At least for them.

That's it for this week one! Only 35 left...

This is the first time I've logged onto blogger in over 3 months. When I know I'm behind on something, I tend to avoid it, which is not very helpful in terms of getting un-behind.

When I last posted, I was already doing a poor job of posting timely wrap-ups, but since my main goal in maintaining this blog was to log our homeschooling progress, I wanted to keep going...and then May hit.

I don't know if it's a good thing or not, but I've pretty much forgotten everything from the last six weeks of school about which I intended to post an update. Still, in order to avoid huge loose ends flapping wildly in the wind, I will provide a brief synopsis of (what I can remember from) those last weeks of school. :

BIBLE:
In May we focused on encouragement. Sort of. Looking back, something tells me I was probably less than really focused on it, since I'm sure I spent most of May rushing us from one event to another. I tend to "encouarage" cooperation in those times with the volume of my voice. See who needs a morning Bible revamp?

HISTORY
We finished up SOTW Volume 3, minus a few chapters. We covered such topics Mexico and the movement west in America, which includes discussions of the Alamo, the Oregon Trail and the California Gold Rush. Bearclaw enjoyed the novel, Moccasin Trail, which he finished just recently. As a family, we read The Boy in the Alamo, which we would all recommend, especially for boys. Perhaps the title makes that obvious.

LITERATURE
Bearclaw finished reading Seaman's Journal: On the Trail with Lewis and Clark as well as completing his final project for the book. The project entailed constructing a fictional dialogue between an interviewer and both Lewis and Clark. It made for a fun and relatively easy assignment, since the students were permitted to dictate their imagined dialogue to an adult, who would then type it. Any guesses as to who did most of the work on this one?

Shortbread and I really slacked off with our reading in May, which makes me sad, because it makes for such wonderful memories. I hope the busier first-grade schedule won't exclude time for reading aloud non-curriculum related books.

LANGUAGE ARTS
Bearclaw finished up his final essay. He wrote a persuasive essay about reading as "the best pasttime". I was certainly persuaded.

Shortbread covered the rest of the "Letterbooks" for Kindergarten. I think I'm even happier than he is about that.

MATH
We did not finish Primary Mathematics 3A by the end of the year. (In fact, as of today, we're only about 3/4ths of the way through.) The remainder of the book covers those multiplication facts we have yet to learn.

Shortbread is almost finished with his kindergarten math book...time to order Primary Mathematics 1A

SCIENCE
We finished our science curriculum around week 27, so we're done with "official" science until fall. Of course, we're always involved with random nature study.

So that's it. No photos. No link to other Wrap-ups. Just a few final notes to tie up those ends before we move on.

BIBLE:
We still focusing on forgiveness, and also reading from our Jesus Storybook Bible. In the evenings, we read Amon's Adventure, which ties in with Lent, Holy Week and Easter.

HISTORY
We've conitnue our study of the U.S. in the early 19th century with a look at our country's interactions with Native Americans in this period. This includes the study of Tecumseh and the tragic "Trail of Tears". Since we are in Georgia, the study of the Cherokee and their removal is all the more interesting for us. In a couple of weeks, we'll travel to the actual New Echota Historical Site for a field trip.

LITERATURE
Bearclaw is reading Seamon's Journal: On the Trail with Lewis and Clark for literature right now and enjoying it.

Shortbread studied the letter "J" this past week; we read Jesse Bear, What Will You Wear? and If Jesus Came to My House. (Which you should try to find in the original 1956 version, if you can, because of the wonderful sweet and simple illustrations.)

LANGUAGE ARTS
Bearclaw's humanities class continues to work on their final essay of the year. It's his first multi-paragraph paper. He's writing a persuasive paper about "why reading is the best pastime". This week, we have to edit his rough draft, but we have two weeks to complete that, so we probably won't look at it for awhile.

I'm so very ready to move on from what the hybrid school is doing for kindergarten with Shortbread. They had us purchase Explode the Code, but we've hardly used it, so I think I'll start working on that with him this summer.

MATH
Primary Mathematics 3A is still focusing on reviewing addition and subtraction. Next week we pick up where we left off on the multiplication tables.

Shortbread is also working on addition and subtraction. At least I can handle both boys' math lessons for now.

SCIENCE
Since our chemistry lessons wrapped-up last week, we took a field-trip this week to a farm. We saw milking and egg collecting and got to pet some of the young animals.

Here are the boys this year (at 9 and 6 years-old) and below at the same farm three years ago (at 6 and 3). Why did I look at this!?

You all can go check out some more Weekly Wrap-Ups. I'm going to get my tissues.

BIBLE:
We started a new "Christian character trait" for April - Forgiveness. While focusing on Scripture related to forgiveness, we've also been reading The Jesus Storybook Bible. I've been struggling with offering something more structured for awhile, but for now, this will suffice. Bible is one area where something is always much better than nothing.

HISTORY
We've kicked-off our study of westward expansion in the U.S with a unit on Lewis and Clark. This is where my own history studies must have gone from poor to nonexistent. My misconceptions about Lewis and Clark are too embarrassing to mention here, but lets just say that the work "Louisiana" in "Louisiana purchase" led my images of their expedition astray. There are so many great options for reading and listening on this topic that we couldn't begin to cover them all.

Since the events took place during Thomas Jefferson's presidency, we read A Picture Book of Thomas Jefferson. How We Crossed the West was a fun summary of the Lewis and Clark journey with lots of interesting details and fun, cartoon-like illustrations. Although we haven't gotten to them yet, we plan to pick up Bold Journey and The Cabin Faced West for family read-alouds as we continue to look at the movement west.

During lunchtime, we've enjoyed listening to Jim Weiss's "Gone West" CD and "Sacagewea: Her Story" by Your Story Hour. I'd love to see the Ken Burns documentary, as well, but it might be a little slow for the kids. Maybe hubby and I will rent it ourselves...

LITERATURE
Bearclaw has a break from literature right now, but he is slowly reading his way through Stowaway, based on my "suggestion". He's also enjoying the second set of books from the Sugarcreek Gang series.

Shortbread studied the letter "Q" this past week, and I never really found a great picture book to go along with it. I think he was happy to just pick his own favorites!

LANGUAGE ARTS
Bearclaw's humanities class continues to work on their final essay of the year. It's his first multi-paragraph paper, and this week he had to finish his rough draft. Let's just say that "rough" fits for the process as well as the end result.

I've really fallen off with Shortbread's kindergarten work. We're just doing enough to get by and turn in what's due for his class. I'm bored and so is he, so I need to find something a little more challenging for summer.

MATH
Primary Mathematics 3A is still focusing on reviewing addition and subtraction, which has provided some much-needed practice for Bearclaw. I think some of his skills had gotten a little rusty, but he's humming along now.

Shortbread and I had a knock-down, drag-out, teary, screamy math lesson this week. It all started when I pulled out the unit cubes and used them to count out subtraction problems. He protested that that was what babies do and he would have none of it. So much for "hands on"; I guess he's been watching big brother focus on written math for awhile and associates that with more difficult math. We'll be going ahead to first grade math this summer.

SCIENCE
We wrapped up our Real Science 4 Kids Chemistry book this week by making bread. Our experiment involved a comparison of dough allowed to rise in a warm place and dough put in the refrigerator to rise. Although there was a marked difference between the two loaves, both were deemed edible and then fully consumed.


That's all for this week, and I'm so late publishing, I missed the Weekly Wrap-Up link. Oh well...

I've jumped from week 23 to 26 in my wrap-ups, mostly due to working on a very long wrap-up of our "mega feild trip" during week 24. It's still not done, so I'll have to table it for now and move on.

In the meantime, the weeks roll by and we're trudging along. Spring break is upon us, and no one needs it as much as I.

BIBLE
I havent' written a thing about our Bible time in months. It's not that we're totally neglecting it, it's just that it's very scattered and lacks direction. I've been praying for guidance on this, and would welcome the prayers of others.

HISTORY
Our need for a break was illustrated when, despite JUST finishing our chapter on Napoleon, Bearclaw had no idea when, where, or what the Battle of Waterloo was when it came up in another book. Perhaps I rushed us through this chapter just a bit too much.

LITERATURE
Bearclaw finished up his project on Paul Revere (In Their Own Words). He had the option to recite the first to stanzas of "Midnight Ride" while in costume, which I thought would we be a wonderful choice. He, on the other hand, wanted to build a model of Paul Revere's house. Why must this non-crafty, non-project loving mom's kids ALWAYS choose to build something? We actually used a paper model from an history website, but it was so plain I suggested the Bearclaw jazz things up a bit. He said, "What about adding the roads around the house?", so we found an 18th century map of Boston (I love Google Images) and marked the location of Paul Revere's house and the Old North Church, for good measure (ok, so that part was my idea).

It turned out to be a pretty cool project:



Shortbread studied the letter "K", so we read Katy No-Pocket . Going by letters has really allowed us to get through a lot of the books that I really wanted to fit in this year. Our family reading tends to be dictated by the reading level and studies of the eldest, so I thought these wonderful picture books might be something Shortbread would never be able to appreciate. So glad I included them in his curriculum!

LANGUAGE ARTS
Bearclaw's humanities class is working on their final essay of the year. It's his first multi-paragraph paper, and thankfully, the teacher is taking it slowly. He is writing a persuasive paper on "why reading is the best pastime." This week he organized his brainstorming ideas into a web outline.

Only a few more weeks of letter studies for Shortbread. I think we're both ready to move on to some meatier phonics.

MATH
Primary Mathematics 3A is still in review mode, so no math trauma about it yet. Bearclaw is reviewing subtraction now. We are still struggling with some mistakes that come more from lack of focus than lack of understanding. I need to be more consistent about implementing some possible techniques to address that.

Soon Shortbread will finish his kindergarten math book and be ready for Primary Mathematics 1A. I'm trying to decide if we should go ahead and move on now (we'll do some sort of math this summer no matter what) or if we should wait and start 1A when we start first grade. Of course, then I have to come up with something for him to do this summer...

SCIENCE
I think I've frequently been neglecting science in my wrap-ups. How did that happen? I'm a former science teacher. Well, maybe it just goes to show that I'm not all that concerned about science for 3rd grade and kindergarten. Still, I love our curriculum, and working through the experiments with another homeschool family has been really enjoyable. This week, we talked about polymers and made "goop" out of glue and borax.


Visit Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers to catch up on more Wrap-ups.

As images of quiet waiting drift through my head, frequently accompanied by flashes of silent snow falling, I realize (once again) that my image will not match my reality. The snow part should be my first clue - we're in Georgia. The boys apparently do not entertain thoughts of stillness, and neither do the coordinators of their various activities. So we will wait with somewhat noisy excitement instead.

Part of that excitement is fed by the presence of my husband's parents, who arrive every year on during the first week of December to spend Christmas with us. They live in upstate New York, so we only see them a couple of times a year - I don't blame the children for being excited about that. We just love having them here.

I finally broke down and bought a new advent wreath this year. In years past, I've thrown together a homemade version using a window wreath, a plate, and some candles. I am not crafty and the wreath was evidence. Mercifully, it caught on fire during last year's Christmas Eve party. I'll be using long-burning candles with the new one. The children love to eat by it's light each night while we read an advent book that I've seen on homeschool recommendation lists for years: Jotham's Journey.

The book offers a reading for each night of Advent, and then a Scripture reading and summary that tie the chapter into some greater spiritual truth. It's quite an exciting story and might even be too intense for some little ones, but the boys are loving it and begging for one more chapter each night. (But then we'd be off schedule, we explain...)

In between the visiting, Advent observing, decorating, baking, birthday partying, choir practicing, etc., we have had to make time for school. This may be a greater struggle for me than for the boys, but we're managing.

The past week's unit in Biblioplan covered Persia and the Ottoman Turks. Because we're studying the "early modern" period this year, which covers early American history, Biblioplan includes the study of important individuals in American history in the units focusing on the history of other countries. This week we talked about Daniel Boone, and Bearclaw is enjoying Daniel Boone, Boy Hunter.

He also completed the novel A Lion To Guard Us by Clyde Robert Bulla for his literature class. As a follow-up assignment, the student's were to make a time capsule representing one of the main characters in the book. Bearclaw chose Jemmy and turned in his project on Wednesday.

Speaking of reading, Shortbread read his first early-reader book!! He was so happy with himself, and I'm really looking forward to all of the wonderful books he's going to be able to enjoy reading soon.

In his kindergarten class, they focus mainly on language skills, and he's doing very well. If anything he's a little bored (or maybe I am), because some of the activities we're asked to do at home seem unessesary. Still, because he's picking up reading without any tears or arguments, I'm keeping an open mind about the effectiveness of some of the lessons.

Bearclaw's language skills are improving, and he's mastered quite a number of grammar concepts. His spelling grade is excellent, but I'm working to get him to be more careful when doing his work, so that the progress he's made in spelling will be reflected in his writing. As for vocabulary - he's doing well, but the jury is still out on Wordly Wise for me.

With all of the focus we're putting on humanities, in order to complete the assignments from our hybrid school, I've neglected math somewhat. Bearclaw is actually moving along in his Sinapore workbook (he's working on fractions), but he's forgotten some of his mutiplication tables, so I need to do a better job with daily drills. I'm hardly working on math at all with Shortbread. It's not him; it's me - I think I'm tired of the curriculum and how it's structured. It may be time to move from Shiller to Singapore for him.

Our two-family science co-op hasn't met lately, becasue of all of the holiday activities, but we plan to finish up the physics book from Real Science 4 Kids soon, and then after Christmas it's chemsitry! (All four boys in the group have images of explosions, I just know it...)

As I've been typing this over several days, we've gotten quite few snow flurries. Maybe my images of Advent were'nt so far-fetched after all...

Did you ever start something, fall behind, and then resist picking it up again because you were so far behind that the thought of catching up overwhelmed you? So it is with the blog for me. I also had this ridiculous idea that I would blog after all of my other work was finished. You know, instead of sitting around twiddling my thumbs as I usually do.

One of the purposes of this blog is to log our homeschooling activities and accomplishments. In the six weeks since I last posted we've been working our way through the humanities curricula for third grade and kindergarten provided by the hybrid school we're using this year, while continuing with our own math and science programs. The boys, especially Bearclaw, have been challenged by the amount of work required for the humanities program.

Shortbread's kindergarten class at the hybrid program is focusing on early phonics and handwriting as they go through a set of "letterbooks". As you can imagine, there is one book for each letter. They are cute, but on the first day of use, Shortbread exclaimed, "That looks like a baby book!" He had a point. However, he's warmed to using them and loves going to class, taking part in "sharing time", and playing with his friends.

Bearclaw's class puts a heavy emphasis on grammar, using both Shurley English and some exercises from Easy Grammar. The best thing to come from this is their recent work in writing, which has helped Bearclaw learn to outline and write a 3-point expository paragraph. This is not something I expected him to be able to do this year, and I'm happy to have had the help of his teacher in working on it.

The third grade curriculum also includes spelling, vocabulary, and critical thinking, but history consumes the bulk of time not spent on grammar. Using Biblioplan and SOTW, we've been using Bearclaw's history work as our family history study. Currently we are studying the early colonial period of America, beginning with Jamestown and moving on to Plymouth Plantation. Our studies have included investigating the Native American populations that the colonists were in contact with, and the growth of the slave trade in North America. We've also looked at what was happening in Europe during this time, including the government of England and Scotland and the Thirty Years' War. Throughout it all, we've seen the overarching impact of the divide between Protestantism and Roman Catholocism.

Here are some of the highlights:

The first day of classes-

Making Native American pinchpots and colonial hand-dipped candles-

Making hasty pudding as the Indians taught the colonists-

And making homemade shortbread when we studied Scotland-

So now I think it's time I joined Kris's Weekly Wrap-Ups. Six weeks of review forces me to drag around too many photos!

I have composed this post once already, but I erased it after I read it. Reading an end-of-year assessment in prose is a real snoozer. I'll try a more visually organized format, which may still be boring, but at least it's easier to scan with your eye.

I'm not really sure what I'm supposed to include in my state-required assessment. Oh, I could look it up, but that would mean dedicating more time to this. And I've already spent way too long fighting with Blogger as I tried to single-space my Reading list.

So these are the highlights of what Bearclaw accomplished in 2nd grade language arts over the past school year:

Curricula:

Writing - Writing With Ease: Level 2
Grammar - First Language Lessons
Spelling - Spelling Power
Handwriting - homemade worksheets
Literature/Reading - see book list


Skills and Knowledge (acquired this year):

Writing

• narrates both short and longer (avg. 800 words) of read-aloud material unaided
• copies up to three sentences from dictation, with correct use of captalization and punctuation
• composes brief book reports with a beginning, middle, and end
• writes legibly; beginning to write with greater speed

Grammar and Spelling

• identifies and gives examples of: nouns, verbs, adjectives, conjunctions, articles, contractions, and preposition
• spells words containing spelling patterns typical for second grade
• uses and spells some common contractions and abbreviations correctly

Reading/Literature

• reads assigned books at an average Lexile level of 800-1000
• reads voluntarily at least 30 min./day

Reading List

The Knight at Dawn - Osborne

"Beowulf" from Favorite Medieval Tales - Osborne

The Sword in the Tree - Bulla

The Viking Adventure - Bulla

The Making of a Knight - O'Brien

The Minstrel in the Tower -Skurzynski

Castle Diary -Platt

Robinhood of Sherwood Forest - McGovern

Raisel's Riddle - Silverman

Baboushka and the Three Kings - Robbins

The Apple and the Arrow - Buff

Pedro's Journal- Conrad

Fine Print - Burch

The Whipping Boy - Fleischman

I'm glad that's out of the way. On to history tomorrow.