Week 32:

Jessie's 8th Grade

• Jessie worked on converting inequalities involving absolute values into regular inequalities as well as determining the range of possibilities for an answer in different word problems for algebra this week.
• In grammar she reviewed subordinating conjunctions and interjections, worked on descriptions, and did a general review of the eight parts of speech.  She scored a 94 on her vocabulary test for lesson 26.
• For literature, we discussed Captains Courageous and filled out a story chart together.  Then she completed a standard plot summary of the work.  For Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, I had her complete the story chart on her own, and then we discussed character and conflict.  In CW, she finished unit four on stanza forms and began unit 5 with a review of a poem's content and background.
• She completed one day of Latin and her 29th lesson in EG3.
  

Violet's 6th Grade

• Violet completed some more textbook review this week before starting on a section of more challenging word problems in her textbook.  She reviewing angles in triangle and quadrilaterals in CWP.
• Violet covered adverb clauses and how to diagram them this week in grammar.  She also did a poetry lesson and learned the differences between simple, compound, and complex sentences.  She scored a 95 on her spelling test.
• In literature, she finished reading The Hobbit by Tolkien.  She completed her last week of CW Poetry as well!!
• In Latin, she learned about correlative adverbs, and for Greek she practiced identifying which adjectives would take an eta instead of an alpha in the singular forms.
  

Benny's 3rd Grade

• Benny began his section on fractions in Singapore this week.  In Miquon he covered Venn diagrams and some other miscellaneous topics.
• He's been working on descriptions in grammar and struggled on his spelling test covering words with ie, ei, and eigh.  We'll work on that list again next week.
• He finished reading Follow My Leader by Garfield and began Peter Pan by Barrie.  We continuing with our Happy Hollister book for a read aloud.  In CW, he rewrote "A Laconic Answer".

HISTORY
This week everyone read SOTW 4 to cover Stalin's rise to power and the formation of the USSR as well as the rise of Mussolini and fascism in Italy.  We read books by Venezia on Picasso and Klee for modern art.  The girls read Ticket to the Twenties by Blocksma for a look at the culture of that decade.  We mapped the modern countries that made up the former USSR as well.

SCIENCE

Jessie read and took notes on chapter 6 of BJU Physical this week covering the nature of energy, types of energy. and the conservation of energy.  She also completed a calculation based lab looking at the correlation of braking distance and speed in a simplified system.

Violet and Benny continued there section on food chemistry.  They learned about proteins, fats, and carbohydrates; flavoring; and food additives.  We made chocolate chip cookies with and without baking soda for comparison and will make some chocolate flavored pudding over the weekend for fun.

OTHER

See the previous post for art.  All the logic assignments were completed.  Benny is finished with all of his critical thinking books for the year!!

HENRY'S CORNER

Henry and I read random books of his choice this week, did some phonics lessons, worked some more on shapes, and completed some writing and drawing on his drawing board.  His favorite part of the week was watching the new Curious George special about spring.  He asked me to take a picture of his musical instrument.

Creative Corner: A girl, an ice cream cone, and Veggietales

Violet drew a young girls from the cover art of one of our books.

Benny completed this watercolor ice cream cone following these directions (with a tiny bit of help from his younger brother on painting the background).

Henry drew his favorite art subjects, Bob and Larry, and then turned them into trees just to be silly.

WW: Benny Turns 9!

A little bit of cake

Something to build

Something for outside

Something else to do at the pond

Week 31

Jessie's 8th Grade

• Jessie completed chapter 12 on radicals, did well on her test, and began learning about number lines graphs and solving in equalities in chapter 13.
• In grammar she worked with prepositions and correlative conjunctions.  She had a review week in vocabulary.
• She completed several CW lessons related to limericks and finished reading Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde for literature.
• She finished lesson 17 in Latin and began lesson 18 with a review of the naughty nine adjectives and their declension patterns.  She worked with contract verbs in Greek where the ending vowel on the stem combines or contracts with the vowel of the ending.

Violet's 6th Grade

• Violet finished her IP section on triangles and four sided figures and completed some review work in Singapore this week.
• Her grammar reviewed the appropriate uses of good, well, and negative adverbs.  She also covered prepositional phrases as adverbs, rhyme in poetry, and distinguishing between adverbs and adjectives.  She completed her 31st lesson in spelling.
• Her CW covered more personification and hymns, and she continues to enjoy reading Tolkien's The Hobbit for literature.
• Her Latin grammar covered correlative adverbs of place and of time and degree.  She began learning about Greek adjectives in EG 1.

Benny's 3rd Grade

• Benny finished up the Miquon section on coordinate graphing and zipped through both the textbook and IP sections covering picture graphs and bar graphs.
• His grammar covered how to the determine the appropriate definition for words with multiple entries as well as synonyms and antonyms.  He completed his 19th lesson in SWO D.
• Our CW model for the week was "A Laconic Answer" which we analyzed.  Our literature selections were both continuations from the previous week:  Follow My Leader for independent reader and a Happy Hollisters mystery for a read aloud.

HISTORY

In history, we covered the Russian revolution, the Irish revolt, and the Treaty of Versailles using SOTW 4 this week.  The girls also read America's First World War by Castor and Anastasia's Album by Brewster.  Benny and I really enjoyed Christmas in the Trenches by McCutcheon which tells the story of British and German troops declaring a truce and celebrating Christmas together on the front lines.  It's a delightful uplifting story for an otherwise rather depressing topic.

SCIENCE

I did squeeze in one science lesson this week with Benny and Violet on food chemistry, but we didn't get a chance to do the activity.  Science went by the wayside for the rest of the week so I could get ready for Benny's birthday.

OTHER

Art is, as always, in the previous post.

 HENRY'S CORNER

Benny and I took the week off from phonics and matched letter magnets, counted, practiced writing letters, and did some Kumon activities.  For read aloud this week, we enjoyed several animal books with excellent illustrations by Arnosky.

Creative Corner: a lady and a birdhouse

Violet completed another drawing from our 1-2-3 Draw People book this week.

Benny followed these directions to create another Popsicle house which he painted as a bird house.  We also added a magnet to the back and placed it on the fridge.

WW: Best $2 I've Spent in Awhile

 I bought this perplexus ball at a recent consignment sale for $2.

It has gotten hours of play over the past few weeks, although so far Benny is the only one to make it all the way to the end.

Week 30

Jessie's 8th Grade

• Jessie continued working with radical expressions in Foerster's algebra.
• She finished editing her persuasive essay from grammar, completed the chapter on adverbs, did well on her test, and began a new unit on prepositions.  In vocabulary, she completed her first unit of vocabulary words.
• Her CW Intermediate poetry focused on stanzas and specialized poems.  She began reading Kipling's Captains Courageous and Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.  We still need to discuss A Tale of Two Cities.
• In LA2, she completed her chapter 16 quiz and began learning more about interrogative sentences and interrogative pronouns.  She also completed another week of EG3.

Violet's 6th Grade

• Violet worked on calculating angles in figures made up of combinations of parallelograms, rhombuses, right angle triangles, isosceles triangles, and trapezoids in Singapore.
• Violet began a new section in grammar on adverbs with some review of topics from previous years and also had a quick lesson on rhythm in poetry.  In spelling, she completed a review lesson.
• One of her CW poetry assignments was to write a common meter hymn.  She continues to read Tolkien's The Hobbit for literature.
• In Latin, she worked a review lesson, and her weekly Greek lesson was also completed.

Benny's 3rd Grade

• Benny completed the textbook/workbook section on capacity and began the corresponding section in his IP book. In Miquon, he's continuing to plot points on a coordinate system based on a given equation.
• He completed his grammar unit on adverbs and adjectives as well as a review lesson in spelling.
• For literature, he began reading Follow My Leader by Garfield.  We finished our read aloud, The Wolves of Willoughby Chase by Aiken, and began a Happy Hollisters book for a change of pace.

HISTORY

In history this week, we all read the section of Rescue and Redeem covering Dwight L. Moody. The girls outlined and Benny summarized the section in SOTW 4 covering the Boxer rebellion.  Everyone summarized the section on the beginning of WWI and colored a map to show the Central and Allied powers.  The girls also read Flying Aces of World War I.  Benny and I read a small portion of The Story of the Lafayette Escadrille by Stein covering the Red Baron.

OTHER

Another week off of science.  (I will start again next week at least with Violet and Benny.)  For art, see the previous post.

Henry's Corner

Henry and I read books about dogs including the Angus books by Flack, some Clifford books, and a few other miscellaneous ones as well. We worked a couple of days on writing his name and counting by 5's.  He was playing around writing letters on his own and figured out that he could transform one of his capital A's into a ship, so naturally he created a whole fleet.

Creative Corner: A Gymnast and a Dog

Violet drew this gymnast using 1-2-3 Draw People by Levin.

Benny followed these directions except that we used crayon instead of Sharpie to trace the outline in order to keep the watercolors from bleeding.

WW: Henry's Photos of His Drawings

Weeks 28 & 29

We finished our shopping for summer clothes and gotten them washed.  The taxes have been submitted.  The house was cleaned prior to my parents visiting, and we took our spring break while they were visiting.  Hopefully, we can settle back into our regular routine next week without any more outside distractions.  Here's a quick recap of the last two school weeks.

Jessie's 8th Grade

• Jessie finished chapter 11 on rational algebraic expressions, scored well on her test, and began working with radical algebraic expressions. She completed assignments involving adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing radicals as well as working on radical binomials.
• In grammar, she continued working with adverbs, learned about persuasive arguments, and wrote a rough draft on the importance of geography.  She completed lesson 23 and 24 in vocabulary.
• It took 3 weeks, but she finally completed her final lessons and writing project in CW Diogenes Chreia and will be moving on to the second half of the poetry book next week.  In literature, she finished reading both The Coral Island and The Tale of Two Cities.  We discussed the former and she completed a book report on it.  The latter, we'll discuss and finish up next week.
• In Latin, she completed chapter 16 and then had a week break.  She did completed another two weeks of Greek less

Violet's 6th Grade

• Violet completed her unit on volume, the corresponding IP section, and several review lessons over the past two weeks.
• She finished her grammar unit on adjectives and began working on adverbs.  In spelling, she completed another 2 lessons.
• For literature, she began reading The Hobbit by Tolkien.  In CW poetry, she had lessons that included  personification and common meter hymns.
• She completed lessons 26 & 27 in LfC C, which leaves her with 3 remaining review chapters for the year.  She continued working with 1st declension nouns in EG1.

Benny's 3rd Grade

• Benny completed several review exercises in his textbook and workbook and began learning about capacity working with liters and milliliters. In Miquon, he continues to work on plotting points on a coordinate system.
• Benny has also been working with adverbs in his grammar lessons.  In spelling, he completed two lessons that contained words with suffixes first with ending consonants to double and then requiring the dropping of a silent e.
• He completed a narration of  "The Ant and the Grasshopper" for CW and did some analysis of  "The City Mouse and the Country Mouse".  He also did his regular cursive copywork and dictation exercises. 
• In literature, he finished reading I, Houdini by Reid and began Homer Price.  Together, we've been reading The Wolves of Willoughby Chase by Aiken.

HISTORY

In history, the girls covered the suffrage movement, humanism, and the progressive movement using the TruthQuest guide.  They outlined a chapter of This Country of Ours covering Teddy Roosevelt and wrote a summary of the Spanish-America War using The Story o the Great Republic.  Benny covered the latter two topics using Don't You Dare Shoot That Bear by Quackenbush and a section of SOTW 4.  Then we covered art and music at the turn of the century using books by Venezia about Monet, Cezanne, Cassatt, Homer, Gauguin, Van Gogh, Seurat, Stravinsky, and Copland.

No science the past two weeks.

OTHER

See the previous two posts for art.

HENRY'S CORNER

Henry and I began working on some letter blending in Phonics Pathways.  The first couple of days, he gave me a lot of resistance, but then he settled into the new lessons.  We'll give it another week or two to see if the new skill clicks.  If not, we can always take a break.  For read-alouds, we went with a week of chicken books including Henny Penny and The Little Red Hen and others followed by bunny week with The Complete Tales of Peter Rabbit and a cute picture book called Muncha!  Muncha!  Muncha!