Week 8: Moving Along

It's been another busy week here. We've been trying to get school done, get fall/winter clothes out and washed, and start planning for our upcoming beach trip. The worst part is bringing in the clothes from the clothesline in the evening and having to look through checking for stink bugs. We found almost 3 dozen last night. I guess I'll either have to shake each piece out individually before putting it in the basket or switch to using the clothes dryer a month earlier than usual this year.

MATH

Math for Jessie this week has been all review. There were two 4 page reviews in the textbook, which I spread over 2 days each and another 4 page review in the workbook which she completed the first half on Friday. It has been a lot of word problems, and she's needed a few hints here and there and some help drawing a picture or two, but overall she's done very well.

Violet is doing extremely well in fractions. She had a few review pages as well this week before I introduced mixed numbers and improper fractions. She does forget to simplify on occasion, but I'm sure that will become more automatic with practice.

Benny and I continue to work with addition up to 20. We've practiced making ten to add numbers together for a couple of days and compared addition sentences like 4+3=7 to 14+3=17. We've also been doing a page of Miquon Orange orally reviewing simpler addition and subtraction facts.



LANGUAGE ARTS

Jessie finished chapter 3 in R&S on nouns, tested well, and began chapter 4 on verbs. She successfully completed another spelling lesson in SWO H. In CW Homer, it was our last week at level 7 where we had to write the models from end to beginning. YEAH!!! Her model for the week was "The Birth of Christ". In literature, she finished reading The Fellowship of the Ring. She loved the book, wants to memorize one of the poems in it for her memory work, and can't wait until she can read the rest of the trilogy. I had planned to complete a story chart using Teaching the Classics, but I think we'll wait until Monday so I can look over the discussion questions and choose which to cover first.

Violet continues to work on nouns in R&S 4. In spelling, she worked on lesson 7 this week. We'll continue to work on the words next week since she missed 5 on her test today. For cursive copywork, I've written out several Psalms for her to copy over the next few weeks. This week was Psalm 1. In CW Aesop, she rewrote the fable "The Cock and the Fox" with the same focus on dialogue and a few more descriptive words as last week. In literature, she completed read Son of Charlemagne and began Beorn the Proud this week.

Benny continues to make steady progress in phonics covering 1 page of Phonics Pathways, 1 page of Pyramid, and 2 pages of ETC daily. He did very well at the beginning of the week adding -ing, -ed, and -er to short vowel words. He struggled a little bit Friday when the endings were added to long vowel words. The next page is a combination of the two, so we'll see how Monday goes and decide if we need to spend extra time on it next week or not. In handwriting, he's been working on verse 4 of the 23rd Psalm.

LATIN/GREEK

Jessie completed her second week of Elementary Greek, finished the review of the Greek alphabet, and reviewed breathing marks and diphthongs. In LfC C, she completed chapter 7 which was a review of the verb tenses she had covered so far. Violet completed chapter 7 in LfC A covering 2nd declension masculine endings and the present tense conjugation of sum, esse.

HISTORY

In history this week, Violet and Benny covered the Islamic invasion of Spain and Charles Martel. the main focus for the week was Charlemagne and the famous French knight Roland. Jessie started off the week with an outline of the chapter on Pepin from The Story of the Middle Ages. Then she took notes on the chapters covering Charlemagne in that same book as well as from a chapter in Trial and Triumph. The notes were turned into a 3 paragraph essay on Thursday describing Charlemagne as king, as a person, and as emperor.

She also read The Story of Roland by Baldwin. I mostly wanted her to simply enjoy the story, so I simply asked for one paragraph with at least 3 examples of why Roland was called the best and bravest knight of his time.


Violet, Benny, and I started off with chapter 12 of SOTW covering the Islamic invasion. We wrote summaries of the events, completed the associated map work, and read 1 piece of corresponding literature The Beautiful Butterfly by Sierra.

Then we moved on to Charles Martel and Charlemagne in chapter 13 of SOTW. We also read more about Charlemagne in Monks & Mystics. After mapping Charlemagne's kingdom, we read a bit of historical fiction, The Two Travelers by Manson, as well as "The Song of Roland" from Favorite Medieval Tales by Osborne. For corresponding literature, we read Puss in Boots by Galdone. (This was a favorite of Benny and Henry, so we read it over and over again all week.)

Our only other hands on activity this week was to make simplified versions of Charlemagne's crown. I decided to skip the step of painting with gold or silver paint or covering with aluminum foil and just use yellow cardstock for the crowns instead. Rather than gluing on jewels, I gave them the option to draw them with markers instead. It made for a quick, fun craft with minimal expense or mess.

SCIENCE

This week in Anatomy, Jessie finished off the lesson on nutrition completing the lab at the end of the chapter which tests for vitamin C.

She mixed cornstarch and water and then added iodine to made our indicator.

We added 20 drops of juice to 4 teaspoons of indicator.

First, we compared the vitamin C content of oranges, lemons, and tomatoes.

Then we compared freshly squeezed orange juice to our regular carton of store bought juice, and she wrote up the results. After successfully passing her test on Tuesday, she started a new chapter on the respiratory system.
She had to explain what happened to air while it is in the nose and outline the sections on the lungs. She also labeled a diagram of the respiratory system.

Then of course, it was time to add a complete respiratory system to Mr. Bones.

In astronomy this week, we covered the 4 gas planets: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.

The girls continued filling in their planet facts chart and answering the chapter questions. Nathan and I completed 4 more matchbook booklets.

For Jupiter, we illustrated the relative size of Earth and Jupiter with a marble and pair of cereal bowls. I let each of the kids guess how many Earths would fit in side of Jupiter. They all underestimated and were surprised to find out the answer of more than 1300.

For Uranus, we focused on its tilt.

Using a 2 color ball, we illustrated the tilt of Earth.

Then we rotated the ball to show the tilt of Uranus. We also orbited the ball around our "sun" to show how both sides of the planet get light.

For Neptune, we looked at planet color.

Using three cups containing plain water, red water, and blue water, we shined a flashlight through each to see the results.

Next we discussed what colors of light were absorbed by the dyes versus what color was let through. Then I read the explanation from the book on Neptune's blue color.