Week 7: Catching Up

Jessie's 8th Grade

• Math went a bit more smoothly for Jessie this week. We spent a few days manipulating and solving equations. There was one long day when all of the problems required rounding to two decimal places, but she did very well on her quiz on Friday.
• Her R&S book had some punctuation review during the first half of the week.  Then we spent two days on a writing lesson which discussed different paragraph types and had her write a description, an exposition, and an argument.  In CW, we finally finished her first writing project and continued to work on the encomium paragraph in her regular work.  After a week of review, we completed our 6th vocabulary lesson in Word Within the Word 1.  In literature, we continue to make progress in Pilgrim's Progress.  I had her take a couple of days to make some revisions to her Rob Roy paper at the beginning of the week.  Then she read the introductory information and began Ivanhoe by Scott on Friday.
• Jessie finished her 5th Latin Alive lesson again scoring very well on her quiz.  We began working on the first chapter reading on Friday by trying to identify different uses of Latin nouns in the model.  In Greek, she began learning about the 3rd declension. 

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Violet's 6th Grade

• Violet spent to entire week on review exercises and word problems in Singapore.
• In grammar, she's been working with nouns reviewing common vs. proper and the formation of regular and irregular plural nouns.  She also completed her 7th spelling lesson.
• For CW, I chose the model "The Fifth Labor of Hercules".  The picture on the left shows Friday's analysis assignment where she paraphrased one of the paragraphs from the model using a combination of the techniques that she has learned so far.  She wrote a brief plot summary of Lassie Come Home after we discussed the book and made a story chart on Monday.  On Wednesday, she began reading The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.
• She completed her first review lesson in LfC C and finished her Greek Alphabet Code Cracker as well.

Benny's 3rd Grade

• Benny has been working on multiplication in his Singapore text and division in Miquon.
• He did very well on his first grammar test at the beginning of the week.  We spent the remainder of the week reviewing the definition of a noun, identifying nouns, and differentiating between common and proper nouns.
• In addition to his regular spelling lesson and copywork, we analyzed "Androcles and the Lion" in CW Aesop and added in some additional dictation whose main purpose is to help him remember not to capitalize random letters when he is writing. 
• In literature, he completed Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and began Dolphin Treasure as independent reading.  We  continuing to practice not skipping words when reading aloud using the 2nd grade McGruffrey reader and also enjoyed five more chapters of The Rescuers as our read aloud.

HISTORY

This week's focus was on movements towards reform and mission in the mid-19th century.  The girls read about Louis Braille, William Carey, Dorotha Dix, Adoniram Judson, Hudson Talyor, and William Wilberforce.  They each read and summarized Touch of Light by Neimark for Braille and a chapter from Trial and Triumph for Carey.  Wednesday, they read Dorothea L. Dix: Hospital Founder by Malone and portions of Hero Tales I by Jackson for Judson and Taylor.  Jessie chose to write about Dix, and Violet chose to write about Judson.  Thursday, they each outlined a chapter from Our Island Story which covered Wilberforce.  For map work, I gave them each a blank world map to mark the locations of each of the individuals.

Benny and I read A Picture Book of Louis Braille by Adler as well as the portions of the Jackson book on Judson and Taylor.  Benny gave me oral narrations for all three.  Our fun project for the week was candle making.  I gave them a choice of dipping their candles or using a paper cup as a mold.  Benny and I had a try a dipping, but he quickly decided that it would take too long.

 

 In the end they were both happy with the results after we removed the paper cup.

SCIENCE

Jessie is still struggling with her BJU Physical Science.  Wednesday, I could tell she wasn't understanding the material when she couldn't answer the section review questions.  So we took an  extra 30 minutes, and I quickly went over the main concepts in the chapter:  scalar versus vector quantities, definitions of velocity and accelerations, and calculations involving velocity and acceleration.  We worked through the lab together, which was basically a very long word problem on the distance required for braking safely versus traveling through a yellow light based on the speed of the vehicle.  In the end, she still scored an 80 on the chapter test, but she got everything correct that I went over with her.  I think for chapter 5, we'll try doing a brief science lesson each morning before she reads the material.  I'm going to look ahead over the weekend to make sure I do a more thorough job of presenting the material and hopefully we'll see an improvement.

Violet and Benny and I learned about ceramics and completed our 3rd quiz in science this week.  I have the clay for them to make their own creations, but they haven't had a chance to make anything as yet.

In unit 4, we began learning about chemical reactions and made a fire extinguisher in a jar.  The jar has play dough, vinegar, and a lighted birthday candle.  When Benny added the baking soda, the carbon dioxide released by the reaction displaced the oxygen causing the flame to go out.

We also learned about chemical equations and practiced writing 3 equations using the pictures on the worksheet as a guide.

OTHER

Art lessons as always are in the previous post.  No music this week again.  In geography, Jessie is still working on Europe while Violet finished up the US states.  Benny completed his Arkansas booklet and the first two-thirds of his California booklet.  We also began learning Spanish this week as a family.  This week we focused on basic informal and formal greetings. 

HENRY'S CORNER

I rearranged our book schedule and made it apple week for Henry.  We read How Do Apples Grow? by Maestro, Johnny Appleseed by Lindbergh, Apple Cider Making Days by Purmell, and a version of Snow White.  At Benny's request, we added the letter Mm to our refrigerator since he already knew it from McDonalds and the m's on M&M candies.

Instead of art, we took a field trip to one of the local apple orchards and picked some golden delicious apples.

Henry was thrilled that we went early enough this year that we were able to find several trees with apples that he could reach either on his own or with a quick lift from me.  He's going to help me make some applesauce over the weekend.

He's also been in a puzzle making mood this week and did a great job of staying focused while working with me to finish our 48 piece floor puzzle.