Week 24: Another great week

MATH

Jessie completed her IP section on fractions during the first half of the week.  On Thursday, she began a new section in the 6B textbook and workbook on circles. 

So far she's covered the radius and diameter of a circle and how they are relate, what pi is, and how to calculate the perimeter of a circle.

Violet finished up her last pages in the 4A IP book!  YEAH!!!  About mid-week she began the first unit in her 4B books on decimals.  We've covered how decimals and fractionsare related, read various measurements to tenths, compared decimals, and added up the parts of a number (ie. 40+5+0.3=45.3).

Benny continues to work on adding and subtracting within 40 in Singapore.  He is also working on subtraction in Miquon.  He's doing a great job with math, so there's not really much else to report.

LANGUAGE ARTS

Jessie completed the regular grammar and vocabulary.  One of her grammar lessons had her writing the first draft of a story, which I'll post in a copy of weeks once it is revised.  Her literature selection this week has been The Second Mrs. Giaconda by Konigsburg.  She completed her second week of CW Poetry for which she wrote the quatrain pictures on the right.

Violet scored a 100% on her spelling test this week.  She finished everything but the chapter test for her grammar unit on adjectives.  She finished reading Adam of the Road by Gray and completed the remaining editing work for her CW model "The Three Billy Goats Gruff".

Benny worked on the letter c making the s sound before the vowels i and e in his Phonics Pathways this week.  He also read the first 3 Bob books in the C series in addition to The Berenstain Bears and the Missing Dinosaur Bone and The Berenstain Bears and the Spooky Old Tree.  He continue to zip along through ETC and SWO A.  For literature we finished The Woodshed Mystery by Warner.

LATIN/GREEK

Completed.

HISTORY

This week we covered Italian Renaissance artists and Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain. 

Jessie completed an outline of the Famous Men of the Renaissance and Reformation for Botticelli.  For Leonardo Da Vinci, she read the Guerber chapter as well as the landmark book Leonardo Da Vinci by Hahn.  Another Guerber chapter and the picture book Michelangelo by Stanley wrapped up her study of artists.  For Ferdinand and Isabella, she read from Guerber and summarized the events of the unification of Spain, the battle of Granada, and the Spanish inquisition.

Violet, Benny, and I branched out  from our regular SOTW reading and read mostly library books this week.  Benny and I read three books by Mike Venezia from the series Getting to Know the World's Greatest Artists entitled Botticelli, Da Vinci, and Michelangelo.  For fun we also read Leonardo and the Flying Boy by Anholt and Katie and the Mona Lisa by Mayhew.  Violet joined us on the book about Botticelli, but for the second two artists I assigned her to read Leonardo Da Vinci and Michelangelo by Stanley.  Thursday, we covered chapter 28a in SOTW on Ferdinand and Isabella.  I did manage to come up with some additional hands on activities this week to correspond to our studies.

On Monday, we talked about the importance of observation in art and played a quick memory game.  I put ten items in a shoe box, gave the kids one minute to study the contents.  Then Violet went off to write down a list of what was in the box while Benny listed as many things as he could orally.

On Tuesday, we borrowed an activity from Leonardo Da Vinci for Kids by Herbert.  First we measured the shadow of a six inch stick.

Then we measured the shadow of a tree, and I calculated the height of the tree.

When we studied Michelangelo, I decided to pull out the Bubber the girls received for Christmas and let the kids play around with the material and try a bit of sculpting.

ART

The results, I'm calling art for the week.

 Jessie sculpted a turtle.

 Violet carved a flower.

Benny went all out.  That's a shark at the top, an eel on the middle left, a grouper on the middle right, and a small cave at the bottom.

SCIENCE

Jessie completed a review crossword and her first quiz for unit 1 of chemistry and did an excellent job.  She moved on to unit 2 covering elements and learned about the periodic table, metals, and nonmetals this week.

Here we borrowed Benny's snap circuit set to demonstrate how metals conduct electricity rather than use copper wire and an actual light bulb.

This is the start of an experiment with fluoride.  She's coated half an egg with toothpaste.  In a few days, we'll put the entire egg in vinegar, let it sit, and then compare the side that was in toothpaste to the one without.

In earth science this week, we covered minerals, identifying minerals, valuable minerals, and gems.

From our science kit, we put together three models of different crystal shapes.  Then the girls went on a mineral scavenger hunt around the house.

Here we're working on identifying the 15 minerals in our science kit by looking at color, testing hardness and streak, and referring often to our guide from the library as well as the paper that came with the kit.

The kids tried their hand at mining by using a toothpick to mine chocolate chips out of cookies.

All three had fun and successfully extracted a chip.

Gotta love delicious science.

HENRY'S CORNER

Henry was his usual blend of cute and mischievous.  In an effort to be like his big brother, he's been sitting and "reading" books to himself while Benny and I work on phonics.  (It's much more entertaining to listen to his reading than the phonics lesson.)  Friday, I made pumpkin oat pancakes for breakfast, and around mid morning he came back to help himself to seconds.  He ate one pancake and returned for a second only to discover that Jessie had moved the plate to the back of the counter.  Undaunted he stacked up all of Benny's workbooks, the box of pattern blocks, and a towel and successfully reached his second pancake snack.

 With his current fishing rod awaiting repair from DH (from him taking the reel apart again), he decided to get a creative and going fishing on the stairs with our addition wrap up keys.

Another day he discovered DH's calculator on the bed and hid over in the corner happily pushing buttons.