Germany - weeks 16-17

Guten Tag!

We spread the study of Germany over 3 weeks, with a trip to Disney sandwiched in the middle of it.  Honestly, it feels like it was 3 months ago that we started the study and I'm not remembering much of the details right now!  I will share a few pictures and what I do remember (guess I should ask one of the kiddos.  I bet they remember more than I do.)

Bookgirl was fascinated with books and videos on castles.  For the art project, they each made a castle out of modeling clay.   

Bookgirl's was a girly castle with a pretty princess outside

Mathboy created a whole scenario for his castle.  The bad knight is holding the princess captive inside (you can see the top of her hat in the picture).  He threw her shoes and purse in the water outside.  The good knight (blue) is fighting the bad knight (yellow) to rescue the princess!  I love his creativeness.

I did enjoy practicing my German during the weeks. I must admit, the old "use or lose it" seemed to apply.  I didn't remember as much as I'd like.

My Father's World includes a great Geography game for learning where the countries are.  Germany concluded our time in Europe and I am really impressed with how well both kids can do identifying the countries.  Mathboy is only 6, and so under their recommended age for doing this and even he can tell you where more than 1/2 the countries in Europe are.  Bookgirl can probably name about 90%.    Its a simple game, but the repitition of it really works.  Now we're playing with North & South America, Europe, and we just added Africa today.   I'll have to remember to take pictures to show you soon.

Bookgirl started Singapore Math 4A and math has suddenly gotten alot harder for her.   We are going slower and just working through it, but it's a big difference.

Bookgirl also finished her Language Smarts book, so from now until they end of the year, she will do poem memorization.  She will memorize one poem each week (she and I picked them out over the summer) and then on Friday's she will recite all of the poems up to that point.

Mathboy has started doing summary and dictation with Bible.  He comes up with a one sentence summary of the story verbally, and then I dictate it to him to write down.   He does his best with the spelling and then I help him edit before putting it in his Bible Notebook.   Can I tell you how amazed I am that he can do this already??  I never did dictation with Bookgirl until 2nd grade, and Mathboy is a K'er.  Granted they are simple sentences, but I am so thrilled he can do this.  Yesterday, there were not even any errors to fix.    Here's the final draft of the first one he did:

 

Mathboy and I play math games.  This one is just simple move ahead a number of squares game board.  This day we were playing roll the dice, and add the numbers to see how many squares you go.  He picked the veggie queen for me and an astronaut for himself! 

I think that's about it from our weeks in Germany.   We are now in Africa studying Kenya and the grassland animals.   I have tons of pictures from Little Sponge's 3rd birthday and from our Disney trip.  I'm going to wait to get pictures from my mom and Grandpa's cameras before I compile them all though.