Week 16: Getting Along on Our Own

We had a bit of chaotic week. DH was out of town on a fishing trip most of the week. I've been trying to finish up Christmas shopping for my side of the family, so I can get the presents mailed off. Jessie and Violet finished putting the lights on the Christmas tree for me one morning. They're still waiting for me to get around to putting the ribbon on so we can put up the ornaments. Here's our school week...

MATH

Jessie finally finished up with the IP section on percentages this week. YEAH!! She spent the remainder of the week working on review exercises in the textbook. In the CWP book, she's reached the challenging section of problems. Some problems like the one on the left we've been figuring out the diagram together, and then I have her finish the problem. She doing really well for the most part. She still gets messed up sometimes when the problems are talking about cost, profit, and price but it's definitely getting better.

Violet finished the IP section on tables and bar graphs in the 4A book this week. She spent a couple of days on review exercises before beginning a new unit on angles in the textbook and workbook. So far she has measured angles using a protractor drawn on the page, measured a few more with a regular protractor, and draw a few angles of her own.

Benny finished a lot this week. We completed the last IP unit on weight. Then we spent a couple of days working on the final two review exercises in the 1A workbook, which is now COMPLETE!! That just leaves the final review in the IP for next week. In Miquon, he finished covering comparing number, did a bit of skip counting with number lines, and a few lessons on shapes. He also finished up his Building Thinking Skills Primary this week.

LANGUAGE ARTS

Jessie scored a 100% on her spelling test this week. In grammar, she learned a little about active versus passive voice and spent several days making an outline from notes to use to write a rough draft and final draft on the topic of alligators. She also decided to help me out one day by grading her own grammar worksheet. The picture you see is what I found when I went to grade her paper. For CW, we continued to work on concision using an old rewrite of "The Cyclops" from last year. In this case, we actually ended up with a longer final draft since her original had been very sparse on detail. Her literature book for the week was The Lost Baron by French.

Violet completed another week of spelling and dictation. In grammar, she worked on identifying and diagramming direct objects and predicate nominatives. For literature, she began The Hidden Treasure of Glaston by Jewett. In CW, she rewrote a slightly longer selection called "The Sons of William the Conqueror".

Benny finished up with words beginning with double consonants in Phonics Pathways this week and began learning words were the vowel is followed by r and makes a different sound like are, war, and torn. He read Green Eggs and Ham aloud, completed 10 more ETC 2 pages, and finished copying the first verse of "Away in the Manger" for copywork. For literature, we finally manage to read Castle Diary by Platt.

HISTORY

This week in history, Jessie broke from the normal TruthQuest order and covered chapters 77, 82-83, and 90-99 in The Story of the Middle Ages. For once it just didn't make sense to break the last block chapters up and rearrange them in the order listed in TruthQuest. It would have put various Crusades out of order and reference from one chapter to the next just wouldn't have made sense.

Jessie covered Conrad, Frederick Barbarossa, Heinrich VI and Frederick II in Germany; King John and the Magna Charta in England, and the French kings from Philip Augustus through Louis VIII to Louis IX. Since it was such a broad swath of topics, she did a combination of outlines and shorter summaries for the week instead of a larger essay. Violet and Benny were focused on England this week. We read about King Richard and mapped his route from the England to Palestine and back.

We also read about King John and the Magna Charta. Then we skipped the SOTW section on Robin Hood and read The Adventures of Robin Hood by Williams instead. It's written cartoon style, but I like the fact that it includes all the main stories from Robin becoming an outlaw to his death. I confess to being a bit disappointed by the suggested activities in the SOTW activity guide this week. Some were similar to projects we had already done, and other weren't really projects the kids could do themselves so...

in the spirit of Robin Hood, we held our own archery contest. The first objective was simply to hit the target. (The girls hadn't practiced in a while so I thought that would be enough difficulty.)

All three managed to hit the target. (Benny was quick to point out that his arrow was the closest to the center. Probably because he actually practices fairly regularly.)

For our second event, we decided to see who could shoot the arrow the farthest. I had the kids shooting over the target toward the woods thinking they probably wouldn't shoot past the first line of trees. Boy was I wrong! The girls arrows landed in the grass. Benny's arrow went about 20 feet into the woods.

SCIENCE

This week in anatomy, Jessie began working on the chapter covering the senses. She did her normal outlining, summarizing, and vocabulary cards. She did the activities independently, so I really have no idea what all was included.

As a group, all three started God's Design: Our Planet Earth this week. We covered what earth science and geology are, the history of the earth, and the great flood.

As with the last book, I have the girls giving written answers to the questions from each chapter, while Benny and I are making booklets with his questions. I have him answer the question aloud, and then I write down his answer leaving out one or two keys words for him to fill in himself. For our activities this week, we did a geology scavenger hunt for common items like hollow wooden tubes filled with graphite. Some the kids got right away. Some required hints, and a couple we had to look up in the teacher's guide.

This is one of our experiments on the second law of thermodynamics. We started swinging the ball from a fixed point and observed how each time the ball swung a little bit less. Jack was very interested as well since we were borrowing his tennis ball for the experiment. We ended up with a combination of science and dog training.

We also took a quart jar added sand, dirt, pebbles, rocks, and water and shook it all up.

Then we watched the different layers settle out and discussed how the flood would change the landscape of the Earth.

HENRY'S CORNER

Henry's been fairly quiet this week (at least by his standard). He's played a lot with Jack and been downstairs riding either a tricycle, bike, or tractor. Jessie's been reading to him for their play together time.