Week 1: Getting started, part 2

The girls had several long days this week as they tried to adjust to school and an increase in expectations this week.  This is the first time in several years that we've jumped in nearly full steam.  Overall, they have worked very hard this week, and I'm proud of both of their efforts.

MATH

Jessie start NEM 1 this week.  It has been a large jump in difficulty from the Primary series.  We covered order of operation, prime numbers, prime factorization, and highest common multiple.  After the normal start of the year, you have to read the directions carefully reminders and a few discussions about the importance of showing your work.  She seems to have adjusted to the new level expected (although I keep hearing sporadic comments about having to think too hard.)

Violet began her Singapore Primary 5A series with an easy topic of numbers to a million.  We reviewed place value up to ten thousands, learned the hundred thousands and millions places, practiced some rounding, and worked on estimating.  After the same discussions about reading directions carefully, she did very well overall.  Estimating with division was the only tricky part for her since the number is rounded based on the nearest multiple and not the normal rounding rules.  She also picked back up with her CWP 4 book and began working through the final two review sections.

LANGUAGE ARTS

Jessie has moved into R&S 7 for grammar this year.  This week was mostly review of sentence parts (subject, predicate, direct object, and indirect object) with a little bit of diagramming and a character sketch thrown in to the mix.  Jessie chose to write about how friendly Henry is.  It was a sweet paragraph to read.  For Classical Writing Diogenes Maxim, we set up her commonplace book, discussed the definition of a maxim, the types of maxims, and worked with each type.  We didn't purchase the student book for this level, so I just have her completing the exercises on notebook paper and keeping them in the back of her commonplace book for now.  For vocabulary, we spent the week reviewing the stems and words from last year before continuing through the last few lessons of Caesar's English I next week.  We also started our first week of Omnibus II.  We managed to stay on schedule with 5 sessions of The Church History by Eusebius and three sessions of The Hobbit by Tolkien.  I had her write up the answers to two of the Summa questions (Who is Christ? and What is the Canon?) in paragraph form.  We didn't have the most profound discussions in the world, but I felt like we got off to a good start.

Violet began R&S 5 with a review of sentence parts similar to Jessie, although at a slower pace.  We focused on subjects and predicates (complete and simple).  For CW Homer, we did analysis and rewriting of the fable "Hercules and the Waggoner".  She successfully completed her first lesson in SWO G and began reading Swiss Family Robinson by Wyss and The Sign of the Beaver by
Speare.  Right now, she is narrating both stories to me, but I plan to switch over to just having her narrate the literature selection and to complete book reports on the historical fiction in the next few weeks.  We still need to add in dictation next week to round out her language arts.

LATIN / GREEK

Jessie completed lesson 1 of Latin Alive and began lesson 2.  She reviewed her Greek vocabulary and grammar from last year.  Violet spent the week reviewing her Latin voacabulary and grammar from last year and will begin Latin for Chidren B next week.

HISTORY

 This week in history we covered two topics in TruthQuest Age of Revolution 1 with the girls:  King James I of England and  the Separatists in England.  Both girls started out Monday with a list of questions to accompany the commentary in sections 1 and 2 of the guide.  We focused on the two big belief of the Renaissance and Reformation, the difference of the basis of human worth between the two, and the considered King James claim of the "Biblical" right of succession to see if it was actually based on scripture.

 Each had a section of the reading relating to the King James Bible to outline after a brief review of how to outline.  Jessie's outline being two levels, and Violet's one.  The each read the first 15 pages of The Landing of the Pilgrims by Daugherty and wrote 1 paragraph summaries of the Pilgrims in England and their move to Holland.

After reading several chapters from The Story of the Renaissance and Reformation, I discussed King James separately with each of them.  (Violet had been given some questions to get started.)  I gave Jessie a set of parameters for what to write and talked through the writing process with Violet creating a brief outline to get her started.  They also did some corresponding mapwork and added King James and Guy Fawkes to their timeline notebooks. 

SCIENCE

Jessie is studying Life Science this year using BJU's 7th grade program.  This week we covered and tested chapter one which was a very basic introduction to science, worldview, and the scientific method.  I had her complete a portion of the lab on measuring and gave her some class data so she could work through the questions.  Then for lab 1D I introduced the basics of writing a lab report.

 The lab itself was designed to practice using the scientific method.  We sorted some multicolored popcorn, and Jessie wrote a hypothesis about what color she believed the popcorn would be once it was popped.

Afterwards, we popped enough additional popcorn for the afternoon snack.

Violet is using God's Design for the Physical World this year and completed the first 5 lessons in the Heat and Energy text.  She learned about the different forms of energy, mechanical energy, chemical energy, nuclear energy, and nuclear weapons.  Most of the labs were worksheets except for Tuesday.

She rolled a marble down the ramp at several different heights and compared the distances that it traveled from the ramp.

ART & MUSIC

For art this week, I gave Jessie an illustration from one of Henry's Usborne books and asked her to drawing just the edges of the picture.

Violet learned about the five elements of shape and filled in each section of the maple leaf with different elements.  I gave her a lot of leeway in the project.  She chose to use colored pencils and make her leaf symmetrical instead of making each individual section unique.

We'll start up music next week.