Girls Week 3: Jamestown, cells & energy

MATH

Jessie did an excellent job with her first challenge and problem solving set in NEM 1.  On Thursday, she began unit 2 on fractions.  Much of the basic information was review except for using cross multiplication to compare fractions.

Violet finished up her first unit in Singapore 5A textbook and began working on the corresponding section in the Intensive Practice this week.  She continues to do an excellent job solving her word problems in her review section of CWP 4 using bar diagrams.

LANGUAGE ARTS

Jessie continues to work through The Church History by Eusebius for Omnibus primary.  This week, we took a couple of days to try one of the progymnasmata exercises, and she wrote an encomium on Origen.  For Omnibus Secondary, we've started The Fellowship of the Ring by Tolkien.  In CW Diogenes, she learned what the paradigm and summary paragraphs of the maxim outline are and practiced writing a few of each.  In grammar, she did very well on her unit 1 test and began working on sentence types and word order in unit 2.

Violet continues to progress through The Swiss Family Robinson by Wyss for literature and began reading Blackthorn Winter by Wilson this week as well.  In addition to her dictation, she analyzed the fable "The Wind and the Sun" using Theon's six components of a scene and rewrote the story for CW Homer.  She also did very well on her first grammar test and has started learning about sentence types in unit 2.  She aced her spelling test for the second week in a row.

LATIN / GREEK / LOGIC

Jessie completed lesson 4 and began lesson 5 of Latin Alive this week.  She also completed the second lesson of Elementary Greek 2 and did her logic work in the first Critical Thinking in US History book and The Art of Argument.

Violet completed lesson 2 of LfC B and did her regular lessons in Building Thinking Skills 2, Mind Benders B1, and Think-a-Grams A1.

HISTORY
This week in history was all about Jamestown.

 Both of the girls read several chapters from Guerber's The Story of the Thirteen Colonies and outlined selected chapters from the text on the colony.

 Jessie read John Smith:English Explorer and Colonist by Mello, and Violet read John Smith Escapes Again by Schanzer.  They each wrote a chronological narrative account of Smith's life of 5 and 3 paragraphs respectively.

Violet mapped Smith's explorations (yes the bottom map is upside down) from 1606 on.  Jessie mapped those as well as his earlier travels.  Both also wrote a brief summary of Pocahontas as well.

Since Violet had been grumbling about missing out on all of Benny's fun activities,

I let each of the girls spend one day building paper models of Jamestown, which I had downloaded for free several years ago.

SCIENCE

Jessie studied cells this week in BJU Life Science learning the basics of cell theory, how they were discovered, and the characteristics of living organisms.

She had two labs scheduled for the week.  On her own, she investigated the pH of various substances.  The second lab, I had to postpone until Saturday.  We'll be using Biuret solution to test for the presence of proteins.  Because the solution is a strong acid, I didn't want to do the lab with a non-napping toddler running underfoot.  By waiting until Saturday, DH can keep him occupied while we work.
Violet studied conduction, convection, radiation, and geothermal energy this week with several activities.

She mixed cold and hot water to study convection.

She measured the difference in temperature of water in a black versus white cup from solar radiation.

She raised the temperature of water by 4 degrees by pouring is over some oven heated rocks.

ART

Everyone had the same art lesson this week.  The idea was to introduce the kids to oil pastels and their ability to blend and layer.  We used this online lesson plan.

Each of the hands is uniquely layered with two colors and then the remaining negative space was filled in with a single layer of color.

For music we covered violins, violas, and cellos this week and added the cards to our orchestra folders.