Our Week of Learning

Another pretty good week of learning! More outside learning than inside learning this week due to the wonderful weather we've been having. It's so nice that we're getting that extended summer that we did not get last year. Labor Day came last year and WHAM summer was over. This has been really nice and I can't bear not to go out on a big adventure as long as the weather holds.

Here's what we did this week:

TEFILLAH (prayer)
This week we added mah tovu to our morning prayer routine. It's a nice melody and they've enjoyed that. I only sang hamalach hagoel at night a couple of times, so this week I'm hoping to make it nightly.

KRIYAH (Hebrew reading)
We just blew through the rest of the alef bet, since she basically knows all the letters. This week we started on our new Kindergarten Hebrew book, Shaah shel menuchah. Basically, we're working to build up her vocabulary for each letter of the alef bet - ab0ut 20 words per letter (some review, some new; some from the book, some not from the book). It has writing parts, but we're postponing that for now. Writing English is enough for her to work on right now. This week we did pages 1–15.

IVRIT (Hebrew - oral)
We completed Unit 8 of Shalom Ivrit. We focused on the days of creation - naming them, learning the names in Hebrew of each of the creations, and singing some songs. We also continued to review male and female verb endings and prepositions. We also started to work on colors. I think Eli will know his colors in Hebrew before he knows them in English. :)

PARSHA (torah reading of the week)
We always start with the summary of the parsha in My First Parsha Reader. In The Little Midrash Says we focused on: bikurim (the offerings of first fruits that went to the temple), the seven species special to Israel (wheat, barley, olives, dates, grapes, figs, pomegranates), the splitting of the Jordan river and comparing it to the splitting of the yam suf (Red Sea), the blessings and the curses that will fall on the Jews if they do or do not keep torah, and "midda keneged midda" - good deeds lead to good things happening, bad deeds lead to bad things happening.

CHAGIM (holidays)
We read a couple of Rosh Hashanah story books. We sang four Rosh Hashanah songs. The coming week will have a special focus on Rosh Hashanah, which starts the night of September 29.

TORAH STUDY - Bereishit (Genesis)
We are now through the fifth day of creation in our snail-pace journey through Bereishit. I understand the nuance of every word (hooray!!), and Amirah gets a lot of it. We acted out many of the words and scenes - the seeds in the earth, but not yet sprouting; the birds in the air and the fish of the sea; dissected some words like "hashamayim," translated as "heaven" but literally for eish-mayim, meaning "fire-water," so Hashem separated the water from the fire-water. Lots of interesting things!!!!

READING (English, that is!)
We finished lesson 36 of Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons.

We are half-way through Little House on the Prairie. We made johnnycake for dinner one night. We also made owls out of paper bags. We acted out the story (from Little House in the Big Woods) that pa told of when he was a child. He went out a little late to bring the cows home from the woods. He got scared by an owl, didn't find the cows, and ran all the way home to find the cows waiting for him. Amirah was the owl, I was pa, and Eli and Raizel were the cows. Pretty funny!

WRITING
We only did a couple of pages in Handwriting Without Tears this week. She copied a couple of short sentences. Pretty soon she could write a short letter to grandma or something. We'll see! 100 Easy Lessons also has some writing exercises where you write down sounds you hear (as opposed to see). I'd like to do a little of that too. And add in some oral spelling. That way, we can be increasing those skills even without pushing the writing too much.

MATH
We're up to lesson 101 of 112 now. We mostly worked with nickels, counting by 5s, figuring out many nickels it takes to make 15, 25, 30, etc cents. She played with tangrams just for fun. One day we did our penny, dime, and nickel dances again.

MEMORIZATION
We're still reciting "The Swing" by Robert Louis Stevenson.

SCIENCE
This was science week, for sure! We had a great time at Rood Bridge Park and Daybreak Park exploring a pond and creek (more details on previous posts). We re-read the section on crayfish in the Handbook of Nature Study. This week it might be fun to try drawing a crayfish. I've ordered a couple of books from the library about crayfish to read in the coming week. Why are we studying crayfish? Because they live in Oregon. Because Amirah thought they were interesting. And because they're a great example of a non-kosher animal! :)

ART PROJECTS
Paper bag owls
Leaf bugs - we glued a leaf to a piece of paper, turned it into a picture of a bug, then told a story about our bug - what it was called, what it ate, where it lived, what made it special

FIELD TRIPS
A park in Sherwood to play in the water
Rood Bridge Park in Hillsboro
DayBreak Park and RF's wonderful homestead in Battle Ground

That's it! It was a lovely week, if exhausting. This week I'm focusing on getting the house in good shape and preparing for Rosh Hashanah.