Week 29: Catching back up

Another week, another report down!  Here's what we accomplished...

MATH

Jessie spent the entire week working on review exercises.  There is definitely a lot more review in these level 6 books than there was in the previous levels.  Still it's a good way to keep everything fresh in her mind, and she's done very well on all of the exercises.  Good math weeks are always easy weeks.

Violet spent most of the week working on addition with decimals.  Friday she began subtraction with decimals.  Really it's been an easy math week for her as well.  (I think she managed to catch the second episode of Curious George most mornings, which always puts her in a good mood.)
Benny finished up the IP section on multiplication and spent Friday completing a review exercise in the workbook.  In Miquon he's also into the multiplication section now.  His favorite math lesson of the week was the dot-to-dot on the left.

LANGUAGE ARTS

Jessie finished up the grammar unit on adjective phrases and clauses on Friday.  She did a fantastic job of diagramming all of the sentences with relative clauses and even aced the 3 challenge ones.  For literature, she's been reading The King's Fifth by O'Dell which last time I checked she thought was boring.  In vocabulary we completed lesson 2 of CE1 and started lesson 3 on Friday.  CW poetry was completed as well.  She still owes me her ballad for today, which I'll post up separately later when it's finished.
Violet continues with dictation from Prince Caspian by Lewis.  I gave her some freedom to pick her own selections for copywork.  I'm not sure why I was surprised to see this passage from Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone when I checked her work.  Spelling and literature  both went well.  No CW for her this week.  I need to pick out a few more models to finish out the year.

Benny did his regular 1 page per day in Phonics Pathways, began ETC4, and continued his Dr. Seuss's ABCs copywork this week.  His library reader for the week was Sam and the Firefly by Eastman.  He completed another spelling lesson on long a words and moved on to long i words as well.  For literature, we finished up Mr. Popper's Penguins by Atwater.  Benny enjoyed it so much that I put the audio copy on hold so he can listen to it on his own next week.

LATIN/GREEK

Violet completed lesson 25 and learned the remainder of the accusative case prepositions.  Jessie reviewed 1st and 2nd person pronouns in lesson 24 of LfC C, and learned the nominative and genitive cases of the in EG1.

HISTORY

This was our second week covering the Spanish conquistadors.

 Jessie read a chapter from Conquistadores by Le Sueur on Cabeza de Vaca, Pizarro: Conqueror of Peru by Jacobs, Macchu Picchu by Mann, and Coronado: Dreamer in Golden Armor by Jacobs.  She completed summaries of each conquistador and a paragraph on the Incas which she seems to have forgotten to add to her notebook.  The map shows the Incan empire and the routes of the men.

 Violet and Benny just covered conquistadors this week using chapters from Conquistadores by Le Sueur.  They also covered de Vaca, Pizarro, and Coronado.

I made then map work for the routes and gave them the conquistador coloring page from SOTW for two of their activities this week.

Our hands on was a treasure hunt, although in this case the gold turned out to be peanut butter chips which I turned into cookies later in the afternoon.  YUM!!

SCIENCE

Jessie finished up her chemistry unit on acids and bases this week.

On Monday, she used her indicator to test for acids.  Among the items tested were vinegar and lemon juice.

On Tuesday she tested for bases using baking soda and toothpaste.  We didn't have ammonia so I substitute laundry detergent instead which turned a beautiful shade of green.

Wednesday's lab was about how different parts of the tongue taste different things.  I think she was working on lemon juice when I took the picture.  If only the camera had reset fast enough to get the expression she gave me after I took the picture above. 

In earth science, we finished up learning about volcanoes by discussing volcano types and Mt. St. Helens.  We used our volcano kit to identify the different types.

We tried to do another eruption using food color this time.  It looked nice spilling out of the volcano, but we never came anywhere near the 6 feet it claimed it could do.  I think 2 inches was our best result.  It was actually very frustrating.  The volcano bottle was very cheaply made and did not seal very well.

HENRY'S CORNER

Henry decided to do some art this week and proudly asked me to take a picture of his line drawing.  Then he wiped the board clean and handed me the marker...

H:  Mom, draw me a round and round.

Me:  A round and round?  Oh, you mean like this.

H:  Yes.

Me:  That's called a circle.

H:  Now I'll draw a circle.

We spent the next 20 minutes passing the marker back and forth drawing circles some of which I turned into smiley faces, bears, and rabbits.  I have no idea how many times he said circle in that time period, but at least he's learned the name for one shape.

For more Henry antics see Wednesday's post below.