Sunday, September 29, 2013

Weeks 6 & 7 Upper:

Over the past two weeks, Jessie has completed the geometry chapter on angles, it's associated review and test, and began chapter 4 on triangles.

In English, she completed a review week in vocabulary and the first chapter of the second unit. She also completed her second unit of grammar and began working with various types of phrases and clauses in unit 3. Her CW work all dealt with stasis theory where she had to determine if an act/crime had occurred, what type of crime it was, what degree of the crime was, and what procedure should be taken. She applied this to various literature selections including Cain and Abel, Agamemnon, and Eumenides. We need to pick back up with Lost World for discussion and writing this week.

In Great Books, she has completed listening through the 10th Teaching Company lecture and read through the 21st book of The Iliad.

In Spanish she spent a week covering the use of estar for location or condition with the associated vocabulary then a week of the use of ser for characteristics and identification. She also learned the position of adjectives and some basic adverbs.

In Latin Alive 2 she has now completed through chapter 22 and reviewed Latin numbers and demonstrative pronouns.

For Ancient History, she covered the remainder of the information on Egypt as well as a brief section on megalithic sites and the two associated focus questions. In History of the Ancient World she has taken notes on 6 more chapters. She also completed a map of the Hittite Empire.

She is currently 2 weeks behind in Biology after bogging down in both the organic chemistry chapter and the basic cell chapter. I'm considering making some changes but haven't settled on a solution at this point.

For her Music Appreciation credit, she wrote paragraphs on Renaissance music for church and secular events. I found several CDs at our local library, and so far she has listened to "Requiem" by Rutter and "Madrigals" by The King's Singers.

Violet has slowly worked her way through chapter 2 of Lials solving equations. Several of the sections I had her work the odds one day and the evens the next for additional practice. It wasn't that she didn't get the concepts, but the amount of careless errors was frustrating.

She continues working through BTS 3 Figural and we covered tu quoque and genetic fallacies in Art of Argument.

She also completed her second unit of CW and began working on the third. In Caesar's English, she completed through lesson 8 and working on 9. We're also working on how to study flash cards on independently. She's been reading Lost World by Doyle for literature and is working through the second analysis section of CW.

In Latin, she is almost finished with chapter 8. She completed the last lesson of review in EG 1 and learned about the use of the accusative case for direct objects in lesson 7.

Violet's history of the last two weeks has involved readings from both Payne's The Pharaohs of Ancient Egypt as well as The Usborne Encyclopedia of the Ancient World. She's has covered the Old Kingdom and the First Intermediate Period and has also written paragraphs on temples and pyramids.

She's up to chapter 7 of Life Science, but I think I need to set aside some time over the next two weeks to specifically work on how to take notes from a textbook.

Her music she has been doing independently at her own pace, and I honestly have no idea what she's covered the last two weeks.

Week 7 LG: Babylon, Assyria, and More Big Cats

Benny continued working with fractions this week in Singapore math focusing on mixed numbers and improper fractions. He finished the regular problems in the last review section of CWP 3 and has only the challenging ones left before moving on to the next book.

His BTS focused on congruent and non-congruent shapes made from dividing squares or rectangles. He completed another MindBenders puzzle as well.

He finished his second unit in R&S 4 as well as his second SWO E lesson. He began reading Lad: A Dog independently, and we continued The Golden Goblet as our read aloud selection. For CW, he analyzed the fable "The Wind and the Sun" and completed his regular copywork and dictation.

In Latin, he worked with 2nd declension masculine nouns and the present tense conjugation of sum, esse.

All of the history reading this week came from SOTW 1. We covered chapters 7 and 8 on Hammurabi and the Babylonians, Shamsi Adad and the Assyrians, and the "Epic of Gilgamesh". He completed narrations on all three topics as well as the mapwork for both chapters. DH was off on Wednesday, so he skipped the hands on activity to spend time with him.

His reading in Zoology 3 covered tigers, bobcats, cougars, lynx, and hyenas.

Henry continued working on sounding out 3 letters words in Phonics Pathways. We continued our Bible readings, but didn't start a new chapter book this week. I took a break from scheduled readings and let him pick whatever he wanted instead. He also completed some more work out of his Kumon books.

Thursday, September 26, 2013

Creative Corner: Teapots and Tigers

Violet completed this acrylic painting of two peaches and a teapot using Acrylic Painting by Hammond
Benny used these directions to create a tiger with black Sharpie and oil pastels.

Wednesday, September 25, 2013

Friday, September 20, 2013

Week 6 LG: Israelites and Felines

Benny finished his IP section on double digit multiplication and long division and began working on addition and subtraction of fractions this week.  In his CWP3 book, he began the final section of review problems.

For BTS, he was looking for matching shapes within a shape that had missing or added lines.  His MindBenders required a little help since he wasn't familiar with the TV shows that it referenced.

His first spelling test in SWO E didn't go as well as I would like, so I had him copy the words he missed several times and retested the following day.  He covered commands and exclamations in grammar and finished reading My Side of the Mountain by Grant.  We began a new read aloud, The Golden Goblet by .  In CW, he narrated the fable "The Lion and the Bulls".  We reviewed the definitions of the different types of sentences for cursive copywork and did our first dictation out of a real book Charlotte's Web.

His LfC A lesson introduced masculine nouns this week as well as the corresponding masculine words for master, slave, friend, etc. which he easily memorized since he had already learned the feminine words.

We didn't get to music this week.  His art is in the previous post.

We covered the Israelites in chapter 6 of SOTW for history covering the time span from Abraham to Joseph and also read the corresponding VP cards.  All of it was review because he's been reading Genesis in A Child's Bible Book by Vos.  I did end up editing quite a bit of the SOTW chapter where it was adding details not found in Genesis.  We completed the corresponding map, and he did the word search for his hands on activity.

In science, we discussed the chapter 3 experiment but skipped doing it because he could already tell me what would happen.  We began chapter 4 covering felines and went over some general information.

Henry began working with three letter words in phonics this week.  We did our regular counting and practiced writing some numbers.  In BTS, he combined two shapes to make the new shape on the page and he began a new section in VPSB1 that had a shape to match with lots of scribbly lines and dots around and over the choices.  We did a much better job of getting through his different Kumon books, but didn't end up with as much reading as I had planned.  Other than Bible reading and our chapter book The Dragons of Blueland by Gannet we only read 2 science books on panda bears.
He also did some great art work on his own time.

Thursday, September 19, 2013

Creative Corner: A Couch and a Fall Landscape

Violet completed a couch pencil drawing this week using Lifelike Drawing by Hammond.
Benny used these directions to complete a fall landscape with Sharpie and watercolor.

Wednesday, September 18, 2013

Sunday, September 15, 2013

Weeks 4 & 5 Upper: Working Out the Schedule

The past couple of weeks have been a little crazy. The girls and I are fine tuning our schedule, working on a balance between enough quiet to focus while still allowing the boys to play, and trying to get used to not working on every subject together every day. I've also been distracted trying to get together items to sell at our local consignment sale. Hopefully everything will settle out next week. Here's a recap of the past two weeks.

Jessie completed chapter 2 on points, lines, and planes in Jacob's Geometry, scored an A on her second test, and began learning about rays and angles in chapter 3.

In English, she completed the review, first chapter test, and learned about listening skills in chapter 2  of R&S. We opted to skip the three lessons dedicated to creating an oral report and have her spend that time instead choosing a topic for her first history paper. She's completed two more vocabulary lessons and scored A's on her tests. In CW, she's analyzed excerpts of historical accounts and written paragraphs relating to the probability, plausibility, propriety, and expediency of the passages. She also completed the reading portion of her first literature selection Lost World by Doyle.

For her Great Books credit, she has been steadily working her way through Homer's Iliad taking notes and listening to the corresponding Vandiver lectures. As of Friday, she has listened to 5 lectures and read 10 books.

Jessie has continued working with participles in Latin, completed chapters 19 and 20 of Latin Alive 2. She's also been reviewing the formation of various adjectives for her grammar memory work. In Spanish, she covered chapter 2 lessons 2 and 3 learning vocabulary related to home and school, definite and indefinite articles, uses of de, and different ways to ask questions. Both subjects are going well so far.

In Ancient History, she has completed the section on Mesopotamia and begun working on Egyptian history in Spielvogel. She completed taking notes on her third lecture by Noble, read another six chapters of History of the Ancient World, and filled in maps of the Happaran civilization and ancient Egypt. She has decided to take her second focus question on the development of civilization in Mesopotamia and expand its content for her first research paper.

She's fallen a week behind in Biology, which I've told her will be caught up over Thanksgiving break. She completed chapter 2 on organic chemistry and scored a solid B on her test. We ran the osmosis lab this weekend measuring the change of mass in three different sections of dialysis tubing containing a sugar water solution, a second solution with twice the sugar concentration, and plain water. She'll be completing her first lab write up on this as well. She's also begun taking notes on chapter 3 covering cells.

Her music appreciation credit is going well. She's written a summary of her notes on music in the Middle Ages, listened to a CD of Gregorian chants, and taken notes on 3 lectures covering music during the Renaissance both for the church and outside the church.

I don't think she has logged any PE hours the past couple of weeks. I'm hoping we can work that in more regularly starting next week.

Violet completed her first chapter test in Lial's Prealgebra and began working on the first chapter of NEM 1 over the past two weeks. Along with a quick review of order of operation and exponents, she worked on prime factorization, highest common factor, lowest common multiple, and number patterns.

In Art of Argument, we've covered our first two ad hominem fallacies: ad hominem abusive and ad hominem circumstantial. She's also completed 16 more pages in Building Thinking Skills 3 Figural.

Her grammar topics over the past couple weeks have included clauses in sentences; differences in simple, compound, and complex sentences; topic sentences; and paragraph coherence. She's learned about the encomium paragraph in CW and worked with nouns in the theory section. She finished her final attempt at the first writing project and her first attempt at the second one. In literature, she completed Rawling's The Yearling, wrote a book report, and began reading Doyle's Lost World. She's up to the 7th lesson in Caesar's English 1.

Her Latin continues to be mostly a review of grammar with a few additions here and there. She completed her first unit reading and test and did well once she actually read and followed the directions.

In EG2, she has completed two more lessons which reviewed the remainder of last year's vocabulary and grammar topics.

Violet covered the Babylonian empire under Hammurabi, the Indus Valley, the importance of the Nile River in Egypt, and Egyptian heiroglyphs. She's read a combination of Usborne's Encyclopedia of the Ancient World, a portion of Babylonians by Landau, The Indus Valley by Aronovsky, selections from The Egyptians by Odjik, the beginning of The Pharaohs of Ancient Egypt by Payne, and The Riddle of the Rosetta Stone. She completed two short outlines, brief paragraphs on the Indus Valley and the gift of the Nile, and longer essays on Hammurabi and hieroglyphs. Her mapwork included a map of Hammurabi's empire and a map of Egypt's major landforms.

In life science, Violet has completed through chapter 4 covering topics relating to cells over the past couple weeks. We caught up her lab work this weekend demonstrating osmosis with two sections of dialysis tubing filled with water or corn syrup that soaked in water for 30 minutes, learning how to use the microscope with prepared slides of onion skin and a leaf section as well as a slide we made of epithelial cells, and demonstrating turgor pressure by soaking two slices of potato in regular and salt water and comparing them after 30 minutes.

She completed two acrylic paintings for art that are shown in previous posts and covered violins, violas, cellos, and the double bass in music.

Friday, September 13, 2013

Week 5 LG: Pyramids, the Akkadians, and Otters

Benny completed some review exercises in his Singapore textbook and workbook and began the corresponding IP section on double digit multiplication and long division this week. He continues to make progress on the second review section on CWP 3 as well.

His Building Thinking Skills 2 book had him comparing figures looking for differences, and he did another Mind Benders puzzle as well.

In grammar he began working with different sentence types and covered identifying and diagramming statements and questions. He finish the final lesson of SWO D and began working on the first lesson of SWO E on Friday. He continued reading My Side of the Mountain by George and had the week off from a read aloud since we were still waiting on the library book. He analyzed the fable "The Lion and the Bulls" in CW and completed his regular dictation and cursive copywork.

Latin for the week was a review lesson, which gave us time to focus on mastering all of the vocabulary from the first four lessons.

In history, we read about pyramids in SOTW 1 as well as in Pyramid by Macauley. He drew a sphinx for art and built a pyramid out of legos for hands on. On Thursday, we read about Sargon and the Akkadian empire in SOTW 1.

Our science topics for the week included otters, muskelids, and skunks. We covered violins, violas, and cellos for music.

Henry had a great week. We finished the last of the pages introducing consonant sounds and began working on the end of section page containing pairs of a consonant with a short vowel. We finished reading Elmer and the Dragon and began The Dragons of Blueland by Gannett for our chapter book. There was no additional history reading, but we did Grizzley Bears and Polar Bears by Gibbons for science. Our geography books came from Korea this week and included: The Sun Girl and the Moon Boy by Choi, The King's Secret: the Legend of King Sejong by Farley, and The Princess and the Beggar by O'Brien. We continued skip counting, began learning the days of the week, and did some mazes and pasting projects. He also decided to spend some time painting one day and made the picture on the left.

Thursday, September 12, 2013

Creative Corner: Acrylic Apple and a Sphinx

Violet completed another acrylic painting project from Acrylic Painting by Hammond.  It took her a couple of tries before she was satisfied with her final apple.

Benny tried his first project from Draw and Write Through History and drew this sphinx but wasn't interested in coloring it so we left it as a sketch.

Monday, September 9, 2013

Week 4 LG: Hieroglyphs, Mummies, and Bears

Benny's 4th Grade

Benny began a new unit on multiplication this week. First he worked on multiplying by multiples of 10 and then by two digit numbers.

In logic, he looked for matching figures in BTS 2, and he completed another MindBenders puzzle.

Benny finished reading Rabbit Hill by Lawson and began My Side of the Mountain by George. We finished our read aloud The Story of the Treasure Seekers by Nesbit, but our next book wasn't available at the library yet. He completed lesson 35 in SWO D, took his first grammar chapter test, and began learning to distinguish between complete sentences, run-ons, and fragments.

In Latin he learned the 1st declension noun ending this week and practiced declining nouns.
We read about cuneiform and hieroglyphs in SOTW 1 and learned about Champollion in Seeker of Knowledge by Rumford on Monday.  Tuesday, we read The Shipwrecked Sailor by Bower and Hieroglyphs by Milton.  The latter book had a hieroglyph stencil in the back that we used to write his name on the other page of his notebook which I left out of the picture.  Thursday, we covered the first part of chapter 4 in SOTW which introduced the Old Kingdom of Egypt and discussed mummies.

His hands on project for the week was to write a message in cuneiform.  The plan was to write gone fishing, but we ran out of room and settled for gone fish instead.

He opted to skip the experiment for the second science chapter, which would have had us make lemon jello and add red food dye to half of the batch to see if the change in color caused someone else to think the jello was a different flavor.  I personally hate red food dye, so I was fine with his decision.  We spent the remainder of the week reading about the basic characteristics of bears, the difference in the behavior of human fed bears, and how to react if meeting a bear in the woods.

Art is in the previous post.  I forgot to do music this week.


Henry and I continued reading Gannett's Elmer and the Dragon this week.  We covered the letters p, t, j, and g in Phonics Pathways.  We practiced more counting, did more matching in his critical thinking books, played Old Maid and Chomp, and went down to the pond and caught some tadpoles for fun.  For science, we read two books about foxes, but I forgot to write down the names.  For history, we read The 5000 Year Old Puzzle.  We didn't get to geography because I was busy getting items ready for consignment.

We did start a Kumon page book, complete 2 folding pages and a cutting page, and glue a few faces together in a sticker and paste book.