Week 10: Up and Downs and Indians

Jessie's 7th Grade:

• We worked on adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing integers this week.  It did not go well at all.  We'll start fresh next week with a combination of NEM and whatever addition supplements I can find.
• In CW, she's been analyzing a piece praising Alexander the Great one paragraph at a time.
• She finished unit 3 in R&S on nouns and began working with verbs.  Although she did well on her test, she missed more than usual.  Starting next week, I'll have her diagram a sentence or two each day with a noun phrase or clause for continued review and additional practice with the topic. 
• Vocabulary and logic both went well as usual.
• In Omnibus, we finished with both On the Incarnation of Our Lord by Athanasius and  The Nine Tailors by Sayers.  Next up the creeds for primary and The Dragon and the Raven by Henty for secondary.
• In Latin Alive, she completed chapter 11 and most of chapter 12 this week covering various uses of the ablative and genitive cases.

Violet's 5th grade

• Math has gone very well for Violet this week.  YEAH!  She's done very well with adding and subtracting mixed numbers, multiplying fractions, and multiplying a fraction and a whole number.
• She's zipped through her grammar lessons and verbs and done very well with her spelling this week of French based words.
• Her literature continues to be Around the World in Eighty Days by Verne.
• In CW, we worked on various ways to make grammar changes in sentences, and she rewrote "The Tale of Jemima Puddle-duck".
• She completed two more Mind Benders puzzles in the B2 book and is halfway through Think-a-grams 1. 
• For Latin, she focused on the second person pronouns and the different uses of the genitive case.

Benny's 2nd Grade

• Benny finished up the measurement section of his IP book and finished the multiplication charts in Miquon.
• He also finished reading A Lion to Guard Us by Bulla and listening to Five Children and It by Nesbit.
• Two more spelling tests were completed successfully.
• He's been copying lines from "Amazing Grace" and working on identifying nouns and pronouns in sentences for grammar.

HISTORY

Everyone's history topic for the week was Indians, specifically those living in the eastern forests of the United States.

Jessie and Violet read Life of the Powhatan by Kalman and wrote about the different roles in their society.  They also read a portion of The Iroquois Indians by Sherrow covering Hiawatha and wrote a brief summary of the events.

 Benny and I spent three days reading from The Book of Indians by Holling.  He narrated about how to make a wigwam, made a duck decoy from a paper bag using directions from More than Moccasins by Carls, and got some help from DH in making a fishing lure with goose feathers although it didn't help him catch any fish.

Together, we had an Indian inspired dinner of halibut, mashed acorn squash, and cornbread.  The squash got mixed reviews.

SCIENCE

Jessie spent the week working on chapter 9 of BJU Life Science which discussion Creationism.

Violet continued learning about light and did some experiments looking a refraction.

Benny got another week off (although we did buy more clay for him to make a manatee).

GEOGRAPHY

• Jessie tried the USA puzzle games on sheppardsoftware.com.
• Violet moved up to the level 2 states game.
• Benny continues to work on locating Michigan, Indiana, and Ohio on a map and is up to Montana in his state song.

ART

Everyone drew clown fish this week and painted them with watercolor.  I challenged Jessie to add some depth to her drawing by having portions of the fish in front of some anemone and portions behind.

MUSIC

Jessie and Violet began learning about percussion instruments.  Benny learned about the harp.

Henry's Preschool

This week was more Henry chosen selections.  We did read The Three Billy Goats Gruff by Arnold almost every day.