Friday, September 2, 2011

Making adjustments, part 2

We moved up to a full schedule this week adding in music, Violet's new Latin curriculum, and Jessie's vocab and Greek. We're still adjusting to the new schedule and relearning to stay focused amidst the noise around us.

MATH

Jessie finished up the regular lessons in chapter 1 of NEM this week and completed the corresponding workbook page.  She covered least common multiple, number patterns, variables, and basic number laws.  Completing one workbook page proved to be a bit too much and has made Friday very long.  She did finally finish her work.  We'll see how her workbook pages go next week.  The topics are zipping by, and I may need to find a way to add in additional practice.

Violet continues to progress in Singapore 5A. I'm seriously considering moving her math lesson to a slightly later time in the morning. She's been making a ton of mistakes, but then can easily correct them an hour or so later when I ask her to fix them.  Anyway, her main topic for the week was order of operation.


LANGUAGE ARTS


Jessie finished up The Hobbit by Tolkien this week as part of her Omnibus Secondary assignments.  We still need to have our literary analysis discussion, but I've pushed that back to Saturday.  We're continuing through The Church History by Eusebius for Omnibus primary.  Some of the testimonies of the courage of the martyrs was amazing.  I can't say our discussions are deep or profound, but we're starting to get the hang of it.  In CW, we learned the headings for the classical style of developing a maxim and practiced paraphrasing maxims.  Grammar included lots of diagramming with direct and indirect objects as well as nouns of address and appositives.

Violet finished reading The Sign of the Beaver by Speare and continues to work her way through The Swiss Family Robinson by Wyss.  She completed her daily dictation and rewrote the fable,  "Belling the Cat", for CW Homer.  Her grammar included types of sentences, subjects, predicates, and beginner diagramming review.  She only missed one of her spelling words from lesson 2 of SWO G!

GEOGRAPHY

This week, I had the girls review the states using the level 1 game from Sheppard's software.  Violet identified the states by region while Jessie did the whole country at once.  Both enjoyed themselves and played multiple times.

HISTORY
This week in history, we briefly covered Don Quixote using the Truthquest guide.  Then we started topic 4 with the Spanish friars in Central and southwest America, the missions they founded, and their love for the Indians and the land where they served.  Each of the girls outlined a short section from The Light and the Glory by Marshall.  We did have a brief discussion of bias since the book has a view of providential history, but it was the only resource that I felt really addressed the topic.  Then we moved on to Canada where Jessie read and wrote a one paragraph summary from Champlain: A Life of Courage by Jacobs and Violet summarized a short section from The Story of the Thirteen Colonies by Guerber covering his basic information. 
Both girls read Beyond the Sea of Ice by Goodman covering the voyages of Henry Hudson.  In addition to studying the routes he took, we discussed the differences between the attitudes of the French and English concerning the Indians they encountered and the corresponding responses of the Indians.  We also discussed the qualities of a good leader and discussed what Hudson did well and not so well.  Then each wrote a basic chronological narration of his travels.  We mapped the Spanish settlements mentioned in the reading on the Spanish, the settlements and routes of Champlain, and the four routes of Hudson.

SCIENCE

Jessie spent the week in BJU Life Science studying chapter 2 on classification.
For lab work, she compared the similarities and differences between our two types of apple trees and used the guide in the textbook to classify insects, a few practice ones from pictures and then a few live specimen the kids captured the night before.

Violet finished up unit 1 in God's Design for the Physical World:  Heat and Energy by completing a review crossword and the unit quiz.  Then she began studying heat. 
We practiced measuring different air and liquid temperatures and then compared the heat capacity of water and oil by measuring the temperature change in a half a cup over two minutes at the same heat level.  (Note to self, use the low setting next time, so the oil doesn't pop and surpass the temperature capacity of the thermometer.)

LATIN & GREEK

Jessie completed chapter 2 in Latin Alive 1 and scored very well on the oral quiz I gave her. She also completed most of chapter 3 this week. In Greek, she learned the uncial (uppercase) Greek letters. Violet completed lesson 1 of LfC B, did an excellent job with the translating in her History Reader, and aced her chapter test on Friday.
ART & MUSIC

 
 
Both girls set up their orchestra folders this week for music after we read the introductory information from The Story of the Orchestra by Levine.
Violet had a fall themed activity focused on using the line elements using these online directions.
Jessie is still working on sketching the outlines from pictures. This week she sketched the ducks on the cover page from the Usbourne book we used last week. Next week, we'll switch gears and have our first go at shading using oil pastels.

1 comment:

Mandy in TN said...

Your cutie-pie girls are hard workers. It sounds like they accomplished a lot this week!