Bible:

• Joshua dies
• Deborah and Barak, Sisera and Jael
• The calling of Gideon
• The army of 300
• Samson is born

Memory:

• Ephesians 6:10 Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might.
• Added Zephaniah and Haggai to OT list, only two more books to go!
• Began memorizing the poem "The Tree on the Hill" from our A Beka reader

Phonics/reading: Nothing new to report. 

Spelling:  Cameron got a 100% on his spelling test this week!  We took the two words that he misspelled last week and added those on to this weeks word list.  I decided to go back to the first grade spelling list.  We had a "spelling bee" on Monday.  He spelled 98 words, 90 of those were correct, the other eight became his spelling list for the week.

• help, spell, an, has, mom, fix, of, grin, still, bake

Math:

• More practice with subtraction and borrowing
• Flip flopped our subtraction problems to show how you can check your work.
• Some simply multiplication
• Fractions: numerator and denominator
• Graphs and charts and reading them

Literature:

• Wind in the Willows - chapter 5. Mole and Rat make a visit to Moles home
• Pilgrim's Progress - "Faithful, Adam & Moses" Christian meets up with Faithful and hears his testimony.  In his testimony we hear how Adam, the first man tries to stop him and Moses (the law) tries to beat him down.

History:

• The Little Duke - first half chapter 9.  The Normans go off to fight the Franks to defend their Duke, who is too young to fight.
• An Island Story - chapter 38 Henry III of Winchester - The Story of Simon de Montfort.  Cameron was horrifically fascinated with the poor man that they put into prison and pulled a tooth a day until he gave the King what he wanted.
• Child's History of the World - chapter 55 Three Kingdoms in West Africa.  It is very interesting that gold was so plentiful here that it was traded in equal amounts.

Nature:

• Burgess Animal Book - chapter 31 about raccoon and civet; chapter 32 black bear; and chapter 33 grizzly bear, Alaska bear, and polar bear.  Not related to the animals that we studied this week but Cameron and I watched Fox and the Hound this week.  There is a part in the movie when the hound, Copper is chasing the fox, Tod.  Tod races back to his den and Cameron said, "That's not TRUE! The fox always leads his pursuer AWAY from his den."  Then he sighed in disgust.  ROFL

Poetry by Eugene Field

• The Sugar Plum Tree
• Krinken
• Pittypat and Tippytoe
• So So Rockabye So
• Teeny Weeny

Spanish:  We learned about telling time:  o'clock, 30, 40, it is a quarter past ___, it is a quarter to ____, it is half past ______, almost, yet, now, what time is it?, Is it ___ yet? It will be # in # minutes.

Mapwork: Philippines, Mexico, Ukraine, Lebanon,

Artist and Composer:

• We viewed Friedrich's Chalk Cliff on Rugen
• We listened to Liszt's Les Preludes

Handicraft:  Cameron built a gingerbread house with a hinged roof at Lowe's

Bible:

• Firery serpents attack the camp
• Balaam's donkey saves his life.  Balaam blesses Israel.
• Moses dies

Memory:

• II Timothy 2:3 Thou therefore endure hardness, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ.
• Added Obidiah, Jonah and Micah to our Old Testament book list.  We are almost to the end!

Phonics: We finished our second Christian Liberty reader, Pals and Pets.  He is so excited to be able to finish a book.  He has now finished three books and started on his forth.  We are also working on constant blends.

Math:

• Carrying in adding
• Introduced and practiced borrowing in subtraction.
• Learned about the cent sign and dollar sign and how to write cents using both.
• Worked on making $1.00 with different coins
• 1/2, 1/3, 1/4
• Temperatures in both Fahrenheit and Celsius

Literature:

• Wind in the Willows - chapter 3 "The Wild Wood" Mole gets it into his head to visit Badger.  But, as he has never been in the wild woods himself, gets lost and very scared and Rat has to come and rescue him.  They are caught in a snowstorm and end up staying with Badger anyway.
• Pilgrim's Progress - "Battle with Apollyon"  GREAT narration from Cameron.  On his own he made the connection that Apollyon was just like Satan.  Apollyon was bringing up all of Christian old faults and tries to get him to return to his old place.
• Lamb's Shakespeare - "All's Well that Ends Well"  Cameron actually followed the story fairly well.  He was more interested in Helena making the King well than the whole relationship. 

History Lit:

• An Island Story - chapter 36 "John Lackland - The Story of the Great Charter" We learned of all the evil things that King John did.  But, he is also known for signing the Magna Charta.
• The Little Duke - first half of chapter 8.  This is the first chapter that I have really wanted to keep going.  Richard and his vassal guardian are escaping from the King of France.  They made it outside the castle and that is where we stopped.  (Mama might have to read ahead because she can't wait. LOL)

Church History:

• Trial and Triumph - chapter 11 "Alfred the Great Christian King" We found it interesting that Alfred used the 10 Commandments, parts of the law from the Old Testament, and parts of the New Testament to write his laws.  Cameron liked the part where he fought with the Vikings.

Nature Lit:

• Burgess Animal Book - chapter 28 was about the coyote and timber wolf; chapter 29 was about the bob cat and lynx; chapter 30 was about the panther, jaguar, ocelot and eyra.

Poetry by Eugene Field:

• The Duel
• Good Children Street
• The Bottle Tree
• Lady Button Eyes
• The Ride to Bumpville

Copy Work:

• Memory Verse
• O Rock divine, O Refuge dear, / A shelter in the time of storm; / Be though our helper ever near, / A shelter in a time of storm. (A shelter in Time of Storm by Charlesworth and Sankey)
• With whoops and back slaps the order passed from man to man, "Tomorrow, we march on the invaders." (Trial and Triumph)
• Old Man Coyote believes absolutely in safety first, a very wise rule for everybody.  Because of this he is very hard to trap (Burgess Animal Book)
• All this is true, and much more which thou hast left out; but the Prince whom I serve and honor is merciful, and ready to forgive. (Pilgrim's Progress)

Spanish:  A very busy week in Spanish we learned many new words: to go, to come, I am going, he/she is going, they are going, we are going, to write, to buy, buying, to climb, climbing, to read, to eat, to listen to, listening to, to run, to travel, traveling, to play, to sit, to do, to fix, to sit, by, it, ladder, music, full/satisfied, tired, sick, newspaper

Map Work: Philippines, Mongolia, Spain, Belize, Scotland, England

Artist and Composer:

• "The Wanderer Above the Mists" by Friedrich.  I really like this print.  It has an almost lonely feeling.
• "Hungarian Rhapsodies" (we did number 2) by Liszt.  What a FUN piece!!

Nature Study:  This term we are studying trees.  This week we went over all the different parts of trees.  We used some printouts from Enchanted Learning.  We will be studying different trees this term.  We've already done some great study of leaves.  Cameron on his own figured out what one of the trees at the library was.  He took a leaf, found it in an identification book and now points out that it is a sweet gum tree, every time we pass it.  He is already pretty good at identifying oaks and maples too.

Handicraft:  Cameron has been doing some soap carving.  He hasn't made anything in particular as of yet but he has REALLY enjoyed just carving the pieces to death.  I figured that it was helping him to develop a feel for the knife and worked on different strokes.  He sits there and carves while he listens to some of the readings.

He also revived a pocket knife from one of the boys at church and it is his new best friend.  He is in LOVE with his pocket knife.  It has pliers, bottle opener, two screw drivers

Bible:

• The Lord leads Israel by a cloud and pillar of fire
• The Lord sends quail (did you know that an omer is equivalent to over 6 bushels and the person that gather the least amount of quails gather 10 omers!!  Isn't that a crazy amount of birds?)
• Twelve spies in Canaan
• Wandering the wilderness because of disobedience.
• Moses disobeys God and strikes the rock a second time.

Memory:

• Joshua 24:15 ...but as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.
• Reviewed books of the Old Testament that we've learned so far.

Phonics/Reading:  He quickly read through our first Christian Liberty reader It is Fun to Read.  This was great for confidence building!  He does seem to read better sentences rather than just groups of words. 

Math:

• Whole, one-half, one-third
• Problem solving which involved 4 numbers and figuring out which combination equaled a fifth number
• Introduced and practiced carrying in adding.

Literature:

• Wind in the Willows - chapter 2 "The Open Road"  Rat and Mole take a trip with Toad in a caravan.  The trip is upset by a motor car that spokes the horse and wrecks the cart, but Toad has found his new passion
• Pilgrim's Progress - "Peace in the Palace"  The women out fit Christian with armor to help him in his journey.  Christian also rests and refreshes himself

History Lit:

• The Little Duke - chapter 7 Life is not good for the Little Duke when he gets to the home of King Louis.  His oldest son is cruel and impossible to get along with and the Queen is not much better.
• And Island Story - chapter 34  "The Story of how Blondel Found the King" and 35 "John Lackland - the Story of Prince Arthur"  It was great that Cameron remembered reading about Blondel in CHOW and was actually excited that he knew what was going to happen.  Chapter 35 was very sad because we started reading more about the wicked King John.  He murdered his very own nephew, who should have been king.

Nature Lit:

• Burgess Animal Book: chapter 27.  We learned about different foxes: red fox, silver fox, black fox, gray fox, kit fox, desert fox and arctic fox.

Poetry by James Whitcombe Riley: Can I just say, "YUCK!"  I'm not enjoying Riley at ALL.  I think it is mostly because of the way it is written.  There are many misspelled words to add flavor I guess.  But it makes for incredibly hard reading.  I think we will do all we can with our other poet before we come back to Riley.  Here is portion of "Bumblebee"

An' ac' so slouchy an' all fagged out,
Danglin' their legs as they drone about
The hollyhawks 'at they can't climb in
'Ithout ist a-tumble-un out ag'in!
Wunst I watched one climb clean 'way

• When the Frost is on the Punkin
• Little Orphant Annie
• The Raggedy Man
• The Bumblebee
• Granny

Copy Work:

• Memory Verse
• A shade by day, defense by night, / A shelter in the time of storm; / No fears alarm, no foes affright, / A shelter in the time of storm (A Shelter in Time of Storm by Charlesworth and Sankey)
• After so much open air and excitement the Toad slept very soundly, and no amount of shaking could rouse him out of bed next morning. (Burgess Animal Book by Burgess)
• ...they had hardly set forth before three or four attendants came running after them with express orders from the Queen that they should return immediately... (The Little Duke by Yonge)

Spanish:  We learned about some clothing items and wearing them.  Shirt, jacket, coat, sweater, dress, skirt, blouse, T-shirt, socks, shoes, jeans, pants, wearing, what is he/she _____ing?, if, with, what

Mapwork:  We looked up each missionary that we prayed for this week.

Artist/Composer:

• Continued with week two of both Friedrich's The Cross in the Mountains and Liszt's Piano Concerto no 1.

I think I might have stumbled onto something that is really going to help with our journey of learning to read.

The other day, Cameron found a letter that his Dad wrote to him a few months ago.  He wanted me to read it to him again but I was busy at that moment so he tried to read it himself.  He worked out the entire first sentence!  I was very please!!

This started my wheels turning.  So I wrote Cameron a letter myself.  I mostly words that I knew he would know and threw in a few that he might not.

He was so pleased and thought that was a great idea.  Then I told him that I wanted him to write me back a letter.  I told him that I didn't care if he didn't know how to spell a word; just to do his best. I didn't care if he made all of his letters perfect because this wasn't copy work.  I just wanted him to form thoughts in his head and make the transfer from his brain to words.  I thought he would maybe balk but he thought that was great.  He did ask if he could use my letter to copy a few words.  That was fine.

So now, we have a special notebook that we will write back and forth to each other.  Last night, as he was waiting for me to finish up something before we left for church he wrote:

Mama,

I love yuo.  I am glad to go to charch. 

I love yuo, Cameron.

I'm so proud!  Not only did he do his best but it was such a sweet note.  I actually glad that he made those mistakes.  Sometimes he is so afraid to try things because he doesn't want to make mistakes.  He tried to figure out church himself.  That "r" is a really tricky letter.

He leaned over to me during the offertory last night and said, "Don't forget, it's your turn to write to me!"

We will see how this new idea goes.  Plus, I will have a wonderful keepsake to cherish. 

Our first term is finished.  It is so hard to believe that we already have 12 weeks under our belt and are 1/3 of the way finished with second grade.

Bible:

• The 10 commandments
• The golden calf
• Moses talks with God
• Building of the Tabernacle

Memory:

• Matthew 4:10 Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.
• Added Daniel and Hosea to our OT list

Phonics: We have worked through all the long vowels.  I think that we will go back and do another review, refresher.  The long vowels were a little harder on us.  He seems to let himself get frustrated easily.  I think that we will work on reading actual stories from the book instead of just words.  He does a little better with sentences than just groups of words.

Math:

• Number-fact families
• Adding 3 single digit numbers.  Also looked for combinations of 10)
• Adding double digit numbers, no carrying
• Subtracting double digit numbers
• Adding triple digit numbers, no carrying

Literature:

• Understood Betsy - ch 11 "Understood Aunt Frances" in which Betsy gets a letter from Aunt Frances saying that she is coming to get her.  Everyone at the farm is very sad.  But the end is very satisfactory to everyone.  We are now finished with this book.  We both enjoyed this book very much even though it was about a little girl.
• Pilgrim's Progress - "Timorous and Mistrust" Timorous means timid.  Two men, Timorous and Mistrust, heard that there were lions blocking the path and are running away.  "Porter and Discretion" Christian comes upon the lions that are guarding a door to a beautiful palace and is thinking of turning back like Timorous and Mistrust, but the Porter of the door tells Christian something that he can't see; the lions are chained.  They are there for testing of faith.  Even though Christian is still fearful, he carefully advances to the door.

History Lit:

• Little Duke - ch 6 The little Duke is taken by the King of France to the King's place were he meets the queen and their two boys.  It seems the little Dukes pride may very well get him into trouble.
• An Island Story - ch 32 "Henry Plantagenet - The Story of the Conquest of Ireland"
• Child's History of the World - ch 53 "A Great Adventure" We learned about the pilgrimages taken in the 10th and 11th centuries called Crusades. 

Geography Lit:

• Tree in the Trail - ch 21, 22, and 23.  (We are "upping" our reading because it is a library book and it has reached its renew limit.)  Chapter 21 "Return to the Hill" the yoke returns to its hill after wintering in Independence.  Chapter 22 "How the Wheels Rolled Westward" the wagons decide to note take the desert short-cut but to head to Bent's Fort.  Did you know that oxen only sweat on their muzzles?  I do now.  Chapter 23 "At Bent's Fort" Bent knew that Jed, and the yoke, were on their way and spread the word.  Many Indians came to see the "traveling piece of their old Medicine-Tree."

Nature Lit:

• Burgess Animal Book - ch 22, 23 and 24  In chapter 22 we read about the common skunk, hog-nosed skunk, and the little spotted skunk.  (They are carnivores which means stinky, LOL) Chapter 23 was about the badger and wolverine.  And in chapter 24 we read about the weasel.  There are many different weasels and close relatives of weasels: ermine, New York weasel, long-tailed weasel, short-tailed weasel, least weasel and black-footed ferret.

Copywork:

• Memory verse
• Oh, Jesus is a Rock in a weary land, / A weary land, a weary land, / Oh, Jesus is a Rock in a weary land, / A shelter in the time of storm. ~ A Shelter in the Time of Storm by Charlesworth and Sankey
• Now about the midway to the top of the hill was a pleasant Arbor, made by the Lord of the hill for the refreshment of weary travelers. ~ Pilgrim's Progress
• There they stood, face to face, looking at each other with honest and very happy eyes. ~ Understood Betsy by Fisher
• "My scouts have told me all about the yoke.  And I've invited a hundred braves to see that traveling piece of their old Medicine-Tree." ~ Tree in the Trail by Holling

Spanish:  This week, we are reviewing all of our previous lessons.  We are going back and re-doing the lessons that we missed a question.  I did all of the speaking exercises while I was at my mothers this week (we don't have a microphone in our computer) and though I thought I wasn't doing too bad, the natives think otherwise. LOL

Map work: Something new that I'm adding.  Before, we had been hit or miss locating the places that we were reading about on our big world wall map.  But no longer.  We will be looking up every time there is a country mentioned or a region and even when cities are mentioned.

• Togo, Africa (missionary)
• Alberta, Canada (missionary)
• Philippines, Asia (missionary)
• Mexico, NA (missionary)
• England: London and Canter berry
• Spain, England, France and Germany and their distance from Jerusalem (the Crusades)
• Sante Fe Trail in Kansas and Colorado

Artist/Composer:

• We viewed Calumny of Apelles by Botticelli
• We listened to Art of Fugue by Bach

Hymn/Folk:

• We began work on our new songs.  Our hymn is "A Shelter in the Time of Storm" by Vernon J. Charlesworth, music and adapted by Ira D. Sankey
• Our folk song is "De Camptown Races"

Nature Study:  We were house sitting for my Uncle, who happens to live on a few acres of land and was perfect for letting Cameron loose and telling him to find what he could.  He found quite a few interesting leaves and a bunch of different pinecones.  We may study those more in depth next week.