Week 27: Taking a breather

We didn't quite squeeze in all of our work this week.  On the other hand, I did get the federal taxes about 90% complete and took care of a little needed shopping.

MATH

Jessie finished up the IP section on circles this week. WooHoo!!! The new section in the textbook and workbook in on pie charts.  So far it feels more like a review of fractions and percentages than anything else, and Jessie has been doing an excellent job with the work.

Violet worked on rounding decimal numbers at the beginning of the week to complete the textbook section on decimals on Wednesday.  Thursday she moved on to the corresponding section in the IP text.

 
Benny finished up an IP section on addition and subtraction within 40 in his 1B books and has moved on to an introduction of multiplication in the textbook.  We're continuing to complete the CWP 1 book orally, and he is doing an excellent job with the word problems.  The Miquon Red book is still working on addition and subtraction skills.  He really is doing a phenomenal job in solving the problems by mental math.  It's very rare that I have to walk him through a problem.

LANGUAGE ARTS


Jessie continues to work with adjectives in R&S 6.  Most of the material this week has been review with a little bit of new terminology thrown in the mix.  I've decided to set her VFCR A book aside for the year.  We're going to try Caesar's English I instead once the new book arrives.  Hopefully, a different approach will help increase retention.  Her CW Poetry assignment on the right was to write a new quatrain with a matching rhyme scheme to the tune of "Yankee Doodle."  She officially had the week off of literature and has been using the free time to try to get me to let her read the 3rd book in the Dark is Rising sequence before I finish it.


Violet finished up working with adverbs in R&S 4 and has moved on to a unit on punctuation.  The last couple of lessons in the adverb unit were on poetry.  One of her assignments was to finish a poem by adding the second two lines in the quatrain.  She had a review lesson in SWO F and had the week off from CW Aesop.  For literature, she continues to work her way slowly through Herriot's All Things Bright and Beautiful.

Benny worked on different ways to the oo sound as in book is spelled for Phonics Pathways.  We also introduced the sounds for au and aw as in haul and straw.  His library books for the week were Bears in the Night and  The Bike Lesson by Berenstain.  He's started lesson 11 in ETC 3 on Friday and worked with word lists for the short o and short e sound in SWO A.  For a read aloud, we decided to take a break from our regular Boxcar children books and are reading Mr. Popper's Penguins instead.

LATIN/GREEK

Violet completed lesson 23 in LfC A which was a review lesson.  Jessie worked on lesson 22 in LfC C and lesson 19 in EG1.

HISTORY

This week in history all of the kids were setting the stage for next week's study of the conquistadors.

Jessie took a brief look at a German artist named Durer and learned a little about the Ottoman Empire.

Most of her time was focused on Charles V and Francis I and all of the power struggles in Europe during the early 16th century.

Violet and Benny were focused on the Americas.  We read about the Mayas, Aztecs, and Incas;

and completed a map of their locations.

For hands on we filled in the SOTW activity chart of Mayan numbers and

sampled some Aztec hot chocolate.  I think the overall consensus was to decrease the amount of cinnamon next time we make the hot chocolate.  I had planned to read Macchu Picchu by Mann, but after looking at the content I chose instead to just show them the picture of the site and talk about where it was and how it was found.

SCIENCE

We were a bit light on science this week.  Jessie completed the vocabulary review and test for the 3rd unit in chemistry.  Her new unit is on chemical reactions.

We lit a birthday candle inside a quart jar with some vinegar in the bottom, added baking soda, and

watched as the resulting gas put out the flame.  I looked at the wrong lesson number over the weekend so I missed getting Alka-Seltzer tablet for the second experiment.  (I just hope the cabbage we did buy is still good by the time we need it.)

In earth science, we only covered one lesson on volcanoes. 

 Our first attempts at using our volcano kit flopped because we had an air leak.  Once I found the missing piece we tried again with much better results.  Note to self:  Don't set out the supplies early and expect them to still be where they were left with 3 excited kids and a toddler running around.

HENRY'S CORNER

Henry has been trying to do all kinds of "big boy" things this week like feeding the dog extra food or vacuuming the basement floor with the shop vac.

 He tried on one of Violet's t-shirts and

worked very hard to move the microwave cart and trash cans to sweep the floor underneath.