Week 34: Chugging Along

MATH

Jessie spent the entire week working on review exercises in the textbook.  She did an excellent job with all of these, and I am very pleased with how well her math skills have developed.  She also continued working with geometry for her CWP 6 book this week.  She hit the challenging problems on Wednesday.  They were definitely challenging.  The picture to the left was one we worked on together.  The green is my redrawing of the original diagram.  The red is our work (with a 102 that should say 112).  The problems do an excellent job of combining all the different elements learned into a overlapping diagram.

Violet has spent the week working on the decimal section of the IP text.  Overall she's done very well and has shown a good grasp of the concepts. 

Benny has been doing simple addition and subtraction with numbers up to 100.  Most of the problems this week focused on place value.  He would add or subtract either a multiple of 10 or a single digit number that did not require regrouping to a larger number.  Friday he completed problems like 34 + 7 where we practiced making ten to solve the problem.  In Miquon, he finished up the section on fractions and has started a new section that is a mixture of several different operations.

LANGUAGE ARTS

Jessie complete her final lesson in CW Poetry for Beginners this week.  YEAH!!  One subject down!  She's close to halfway through CE1 already.  She's studying conjunctions in grammar and had the week off from literature.  (I forgot to write down the assignment.)

Violet has been working on capitalization this week in grammar and completed another spelling lesson in SWO F.  She did one last fable for CW Aesop in addition to her regular dictation and copywork.  For literature she finished Pippi in the South Seas.

Benny completed his regular phonics and copywork and read The Dragon and the Gruesome Twosome by Robertson.  For literature, we continued with The Schoolhouse Mystery  by Warner and will most likely finish it this afternoon when he comes back inside for a bit.

 HISTORY

This week in history we remained focused on Elizabethan England covering Sir Francis Drake, the Spanish Armada, and Sir Walter Raleigh.

 Jessie read The True Story of Francis Drake by Holwood and completed a biographical summary.

 She outlined the chapter on the Spanish Armada from Miller's The Story of the Renaissance and Reformation and read Queen Elizabeth and the Spanish Armada by Winwar to get an overall view of Elizabeth's reign.  Her summary of Sir Walter Raleigh was based on a chapter of the Miller book as well as Walter Raleigh by Syme.

Violet and Benny used SOTW 2 to cover the Spanish Armada and Walter Raleigh.  Our only activities for the week were the mapwork and coloring page.

SCIENCE

Jessie began God's Design Properties of Matter this week completing the four lesson of unit one and her crossword review.

 She tested the heat conduction of metal, wood, and plastic by measuring how long it took to melt butter on them.  We actually ended up moving the objects to a pot on the stove to get the butter to melt.

 She practiced using the scientific method by setting up a control of water and yeast to compare with a bottle also containing sugar and one also containing molasses.

She also worked with metric units finding a container that what hold 1 liter and estimating the weight of a pencil using paper clips which weigh roughly 0.5 grams each.

We also began God's Design Our Weather and Water this week talking about weather, the atmosphere, and air.

Here we have a candle attached to a plate of water by some clay.

As the oxygen is used up inside the glass, it draws up the water level in the glass to a higher level than the surrounding plate.

To show that air has weight, we taped two empty balloons to a yard stick so that they balanced.  Then we blew up one balloon, taped it back to the yard stick, and watched the air filled balloon side dip slightly lower.

HENRY'S CORNER

Among his many interests for the week, Henry wanted to join in on the school work (meaning use dry erase markers like everyone else).  Yes, that is blue dry erase marker on his cheek, and he's very proud of his "work".

WW: Benny's 7th Birthday

Benny is ready to blow out the flames from his fire breathing dragon.

There were things for building,

things for working,

things for playing,

and things for riding.

Easter Fun

 Our simple Easter gifts:  animal crackers for everyone, containers with homemade peanut butter eggs,

 something just for fun, and

 a healthy popcorn snack to balance the sweets.

We set up an Easter egg hunt just for Henry.  He picked up a few eggs,

 dumped them out, headed across the yard,

 set the basket down, and went sliding instead.

We picked up and reset with a much harder egg hunt for the older ones, who all had a blast.

Week 33: An Off Week

It has been a very long week.  Days just do not go very smoothly when I am sick and cannot focus well.  Sadly, I gave my cold to Henry and spent much of the end of the week snuggling with him.  We did manage to get at least most of the basics done.

MATH

 Jessie finished up the textbook unit on geometry this week, spent a couple of days on review, and then completed the corresponding section in the IP book.  A few of the diagrams in the latter were quite challenging with two to three overlapping parallelograms, triangles, rhombuses, squares, etc.  A few of these we worked through together by tracing one figure at a time and working on its angles before moving to the next overlapping figure.


Violet finished up the textbook section on operations with decimals, completed a bit of review,  and moved on to the corresponding section in the IP book.  She has a good grasp of the concepts but is still plagued with lots of careless errors.


Benny began a new section in his textbook and workbook on numbers to 100 for Singapore.  It started with a review of tens and ones and some matching of numbers to words, so its been a very easy week for him.  He also continued to work on fractions in his Miquon text.

LANGUAGE ARTS


Jessie read Kidnapped by Stevenson by her literature this week (although I have no idea if she liked it or not since we haven't had a chance to talk about it).  She completed her ninth unit in R&S grammar on adverbs, and did very well with the adverb clauses since we had already covered them to some extent in CW Homer.  The picture to the right shows the paragraph she wrote about the hymn "It is Well With My Soul" for CW poetry.  She continues to do very well with her vocabulary in Caesar's English 1.  Our pace of 3 days for odd lessons and 4 days for even lesson seems to be working well.

 Violet has been reading Pippi in the South Seas by Lindgren for literature.  She's still doing cursive copywork out of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets and dictation out of Prince Caspian,but got the week off from CW since I hadn't written any plans.  She completed a review lesson for spelling and her tenth unit in R&S 4, which prompted her and Jessie to compare how many grammar lessons each one had left in the book for the year.

Benny completed 4 days of  copywork and of phonics work in Phonics Pathways and ETC 4.  (I gave him most of the day off for his birthday.)  For reader this week, he read The Dragon Snatcher by Robertson and Barkley by Hoff.  We didn't do any read alouds due to my sore throat and all the time he spent fishing with DH.
LATIN/LOGIC

Jessie did complete lesson 25 of EG1 and lesson 28 of LfC C.  Violet completed lesson 29 of LfC A.  We're almost to the final few review lessons!  YEAH!! 

HISTORY

This weeks topics included Queen Elizabeth I, John Knox, and Mary Queen of Scots.

Jessie completed all of her reading just using the Guerber/Miller spine.  I had intended for her to read an additional book on Elizabeth I, but apparently I didn't place it on hold.

Violet and Benny learned about Elizabeth I using SOTW 2, John Knox using Courage and Conviction, and Mary Queen of Scots using Miller's The Story of the Renaissance and Reformation.  We managed a map and a small coloring page, but no other extra activities this week.

SCIENCE

We took the week off.

HENRY'S CORNER
Before getting sick, Henry was his usual bundle of mischief and energy.

He managed to hold of Benny's harmonica and learn how to play notes on it,

and pretended to be a turtle with my laundry basket.

If you're wondering why our dog is staring at the door knob of a closed door,

it's because Henry was on the other side playing keep away with Jack's tennis ball.