Week in Review - Winding Down the Ancient Greek Unit

We have been "busy at home" here over the past two weeks! We are slowly winding down our long study of Ancient Greece and Ancient Greek Mythology. We will finish our study next week, and then we will start a unit on Astronomy (a subject my daughter and middle son are NOT excited to study). We have all enjoyed our long study of Ancient Greece and have learned so very much.


We had a few hands-on highlights this week. My children all did an excellent job drawing examples of Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian columns. All three of them became engrossed in the assignment and concentrated on doing a careful drawing of the columns.


After reading about Ancient Greek plays, each of the children made their own mask. Again, this was a very simple assignment that the children all concentrated upon and tried to do a great job. For the assignment, they were given a cardboard cake circle and they were allowed to use whichever art supplies they would like.

I particularly liked my daughter's creative use of crepe paper to make roses for her mask's hair. Other hands-on fun over the past two weeks included a media exploration art project in which my children made their own handmade stamps.

We didn't have an art lesson today because I took my older two children on a field trip to see "The Lightning Thief." The movie fit in perfectly with our study of Ancient Greek Mythology! Even though the movie didn't follow the book closely, we all enjoyed it tremendously. The special effects were especially well-done.

We have started a few new things over the past two weeks. In preparation for the standardized tests my children will take at the end of April, each of them is working through a Spectrum Test Prep book for their grade level. Needless to say, nobody is thrilled about the addition to their workload but nobody is complaining about it either. We do find the practice useful to develop efficient test-taking strategies.

As well, I have added another Spanish curriculum to my oldest daughter's study of Spanish. We have been using Rosetta Stone Latin American Spanish Level 1. While we do think the program is excellent, we both reached a point where we found ourselves quite confused about the proper conjugation of the verbs we were learning. As well, neither one of us was happy with our level of retention. So, we've slowed down and are focusing on understanding less content better. We are using The Easy Spanish and spending two weeks on each lesson. Right now, I am unsure if we will start Rosetta Stone again from the beginning with a better understanding of basic verb conjugation or just continue to move forward slowly. If anybody has experience with using Rosetta Stone, I would love to hear about your experience.

With my children's swim team schedule, they often do not have much free time during the week. One day this week, we finished with time to spare before swim team. I am always amazed at how quickly my children find fun things to do to fill any spare time that they have. I was happy to see Duncan playing a Veggie Tales computer game that he hasn't played in a very long time.

With a bit of extra time before swim team, Amber immediately camped in front of the fireplace with her iPod and knitting. She was just finishing a new hat for herself. I wanted to snap a picture of her in her lovely new handmade hat but... she wasn't at all cooperative!
That was our past two weeks in review! If you would like to read about what other homeschoolers have been doing, check out the Weekly Wrap-Up at Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers. As well, if you are interested in entering my drawing for a free license to use SpellQuizzer, you have until midnight tonight to enter the drawing.