Week 30: Picking Back Up

It's been a good week back.  Here's our report.

MATH
Jessie spent another couple of days on review exercises this week in Singapore math before starting on a new unit on volume.  I love the variety of the problems presented, and Jessie is doing an excellent job with the material.

Violet spent the week working on operations with decimals focusing on adding and subtracting decimals.  There was also a bit of rounding/estimating and a few word problems thrown in.

Benny finished up the IP section on multiplication, completed the textbook and workbook unit on division, and began the corresponding IP section on division in Singapore math this week.  He's also working on multiplication with Miquon's Red book.  He had two skip counting dot to dots this week which he thoroughly enjoyed.

LANGUAGE ARTS


Jessie read The Hawk That Dare Not Hunt by Day by O'Dell for literature this week.  I haven't had a chance to read it yet, but it must be good since she read the entire thing on Monday.  In MCT Caesar's English 1, we completed lesson 4 this week.  So far so good, she really enjoys all of the literature quotes that he puts in the text.  For CW poetry this week, we spent some more time on metaphors.  We picked two metaphors from Shakespeare to rewrite in different forms.  From top to bottom that is the original, a simile, a metaphor of identification, a metaphor of renaming, an of metaphor, and a replacement metaphor.  (Personally, I didn't know metaphors came in so many forms.)  She also wrote a poem in short hymn format, which I posted down below this weekly review.  In grammar she completed the unit on adjectives and began working with adverbs.

Violet continues to read All Things Bright and Beautiful by Herriot for literature.  We should finally be finishing it up sometime next week.  For spelling, she did very well on her test for lesson 27.  In grammar, she finished up her unit on punctuation with a few lessons on poetry and receive an excellent score on her test.  For dictation, we're trying to lengthen the amount of material that she can remember and write at a time.  She despises repeating the sentences back to me, but it does seem to help her ability to retain them.  For cursive copywork, I've given her free reign in picking her own passages.  This week they all came from either the first or second Harry Potter book. 

Benny worked through 5 pages of Phonics Pathways and 13 pages of ETC 4 this week.  His reader was The Cat in the Hat Comes Back by Dr. Seuss.  For literature, we began reading Mountain Top Mystery by Warner.  Add some spelling and copywork, and that pretty much summarizes his LA for the week.

LATIN/GREEK

Jessie and Violet completed lessons 25 and 26 respectively in their LfC texts.  Jessie also completed lesson 22 in EG1.

HISTORY

This week we shifted our focus back to England for history.

Jessie read and wrote about William Tyndale, Sir Thomas More, King Henry VIII, and his children Mary and Edward VI this week using a combination of The Story of the Renaissance and Reformation by Miller and Famous Men of the Renaissance and Reformation by Shearer.

Violet and Benny read about Henry VIII in SOTW 2 and his wife Katherine Parr in Courage and Conviction.

We also read about Henry's children in SOTW 2 and Thomas Cranmer in Courage and Conviction.  Besides mapwork, we completed a family tree for Henry VII and Henry VIII.

For hands on, we chose a couple of the Renaissance cures from the SOTW activity guide.  The no bake treats in the background are supposed to look like cow manure poultice, which was used to draw out poison from inflamed limbs.  We skipped applying it to our arms and just enjoyed eating them instead.

For our second cure, we made spiders out of spaghetti noodles and put honey on them.  Benny thought they were delicious.

SCIENCE

Jessie worked on biochemistry this week covering topics of biochemistry, decomposers, chemicals in farming, and medicines.  Friday she completed her vocabulary review crossword puzzle.

Experiment 1 was supposed to show enzyme reaction rates.  That's 4 cups of plain gelatin.  To cup 1, we added pineapple juice.  Cup 2 received heated pineapple juice, and cup 3 was a combination of pineapple juice and vinegar.  Cup 4 was the control.  The pineapple juice didn't end up working as well as it should have.  I was in a hurry at the store and didn't notice that the juice was pasteurized.  I guess next time we'll buy a fresh pineapple instead.

Experiment 2 is still  undergoing.  Jessie placed 3 sections of banana and yeast in 3 separate ziploc bags.  One is in a warm, light place; the second a warm, dark place; and the last a cold, dark place.  We have to watch the changes over the course of a week, so I'll post the results next Friday.

In earth science, we read about geysers, weathering, mass wasting, and stream erosion.

We had fun using straws to create our own geysers

and watched the effects of vinegar on limestone for chemical weathering.  We also took a bar of soap and sprayed it with water until the top began pitting to demonstrated weathering by water.  (The actual directions were to place the soap under dripping water for a couple of hours, but I thought that was rather wasteful so we modified it.)  We still have the activities for the second two topics to complete, but I thought I'd wait until Monday and just do everything that involved dirt at one time so I only have to clean it up once.

HENRY'S CORNER

Henry's had a bit of a rough week.  He got a lot of attention last week when we took a break between his sibling, my mom, and myself.  Let's just say his choices for entertaining himself this week have not been very good.  I'm glad the chest of drawers he tipped didn't and on him.  I'm also glad I didn't return the carpet shampooer to my mil yet.  Getting all of the bubble soap out of the carpet is going to take awhile.

Rather than take pictures of his mischief, I prefer to remember the cute and snugly times of the week, such as the one above.