Planning for the Last 5 Weeks

After our spring break is over we'll have five weeks of school left.  Crazy to think we're on spring break because when I look outside I see snow everywhere.  I'm hoping these next 5 weeks takes us straight to summer.  Heat, humidity, green, summer camp.....I'm anxiously awaiting you.  I typically rake the yard during our spring break but like I said it's covered in snow so I had to find something else to do.  Looking at the calendar I decided to plan out our last 5 weeks of school. 

Math
Emily and Nick have 10 lessons left.  We will move on to the next book, Saxon Algebra 1 and work on that for the last 3 weeks.
Amber also has 10 lessons left.  We will move on to the next book, Saxon Math 5/4.
Samuel is working through a giant stack of homemade math packets.  I have enough to keep him busy for a long time.
Joseph will continue breaking our bowls one by one, learning that one bowl broken = 2 minutes at the timeout spot.

Language
Emily finished Language of God 6 weeks ago and then took an online writing course.  She finished that today.  I'll share more on that in another post.
Nick has 5 lessons left in his Language of God.
Amber has 10-15 lessons left.
Samuel is journaling.  He writes a sentence or two and illustrates them each day.  He dictates what he wants to write, I write it in yellow highlighter leaving out a few of the easier words and then he traces and writes in the words.  For example:  I like trapping muskrats.  I would leave out the I like part and write the trapping muskrats part in yellow highlighter that way Sam could practice writing in I like by himself.  I have done this type of journaling with all the kids and it's very fun to look back at their journals to see what was of interest to them when very young.  We'll continue doing this daily until the last day of school.

Spelling
Emily, Nick and Amber all do My Catholic Speller workbooks.  For some reason they never complete all the lessons by the end of May and so they have to finish up in June.  This year is no different.  This is Emily's last year with these workbooks.
Sam does oral spelling with me.  After reading his Bob Book I ask him to spell 3 or 4 words.  I hold up the appropriate number of fingers as their are letters and then count down as he spells the word correctly.  We'll continue this until the end of May.

Reading
Emily, Nick and Amber will continue to read for fun as well as assigned books for history.
Sam will continue with reading Bob Books and other simple Dr. Seuss books.
Joseph will continue begging to have books read all day and we'll all take turns reading board books to him, usually two or three at a time.

History
Emily, Nick, Amber and Samuel will all do Story of the World together with me.  I have planned two more chapters:  The Rise of Prussia and A New World in Conflict.  We'll read, label maps, learn a few German words, color a flag, make wax seals, plant wheat berries and write a story about the Liberty Bell.  I'm hoping to complete this in two weeks.  Wish me luck!

Science
All together we'll study the 5 senses, making paper models and conducting other simple experiments related to taste, smell, hearing, etc. Again I plan on this taking about 2 weeks.  Nature Club starts up next week as well.  And lots of gardening preparation, too.

Music lessons will start up next week so between these plans and the unexpected we'll have a full 5 weeks before summer vacation.