Week 19: Still going

Jessie's 7th Grade

• Jessie worked on rate, ratio, proportion, and angles this week in Lial's Prealgebra.  Many of the concepts were review, but there was some new terminology to learn.
• In R&S, she completed all but the test for her unit on adjectives and gave an oral report on the Mayflower Compact.
• In CW, she paraphrased Portia's speech in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, learned about deliberative speech, and began analyzing FDR's congressional address in response to the attack on Pearl Harbor.
• We completed Beowulf by Heaney for Omnibus primary and began A Midsummer Night's Dream by Shakespeare for Omnibus secondary.
• She completed another lesson in CE and her regular logic work.
• For Latin she finished up personal pronouns and began working on demonstrative and imperative pronouns.  In EG2, she worked on the second person pronouns.

Violet's 5th Grade

• Violet spent her week in math working on the semester review in her Singapore IP book, completing word problems covering area and perimeter, and continuing to work on her math facts with the Flashmaster and multiplication charts.
• In R&S, she learned about demonstrative and indefinite pronouns.
• She completed a review chapter in SWO G, her dictation, and her regular logic assignments.
• In CW, she rewrote "Damon and Pythias", focused on adjectives for analysis, and practice paraphrasing by expanding.
• In Latin, she had a review chapter with some more practice with Roman numerals.
• Her literature continues to be Verne's Journey to the Centre of the Earth and Brill's Madeline Takes Command.

Benny's Second Grade

• Benny finished his last page in his 2A IP book this week and began his Singapore 2B math books. YEAH!! His Miquon Green book had him focusing on patterns in multiplying like 3x4=12, 3x40=120, 3x400=1200.
• In grammar, we learned about state of being verbs and worked on memorizing the chant.  He also finished copying the definition of a verb and the list of state of being verbs for his manuscript copywork.  In cursive, we're up to the letter I.
• He finished reading Farley's The Black Stallion to me and began reading Speare's The Sign of the Beaver.  We're still working through Ginger Pye by Estes as our read aloud.  In Egermeier's Bible story book we're finally into the book of Acts.
• On the right is one of his Mind Benders pages from his critical thinking work.  He also completed another one and a half lesson in SWO B.

HISTORY

The girls read and summarized John Peter Zenger:  Free Press Advocate by Westermann, outlined a portion of a chapter from Guerber's The Story of the Thirteen Colonies covering the War of Austrian Succession, and summarized two chapters from Marshall's Our Island Story covering the failed attempt by the Jacobites to place a Stuart back on the throne of England.  Jessie's summaries were of much better quality this week after I had her revise some the previous week.  This week I focused on Violet's writing.  She was not happy to revise her first summary and completed rewrite her second summary twice, but at least I know she comprehends the material and can give a well ordered summary with detail when she chooses (or is required) to do so.

I couldn't find any books covering the same topics for Benny, so we learned about Edmund Halley using Halley's Comet by Fradin.  He got a break from narration this week.

SCIENCE

Jessie finished chapter 15 in BJU, dissected an earthworm, and began learning about mollusks in lesson 16 this week.

We also checked back up on her bean seed experiment.  There were 4 control, 1 refrigerated, and 2 frozen bean sprouting.

Violet completed unit 4 this week.  One of the lessons covered gravitational acceleration and challenged her to design a parachute for an egg.  She used a Tupperware container with a folded paper towel attached to a fabric parachute.

Then we dropped it about 5 or 6 feet.  The shell did crack, but most of the egg stayed inside the shell.  She was thrilled to take it inside and scramble it for a second breakfast.

Benny and I read about ichthyosaurs and began learning about fish this week.  There weren't any activities to go along with the reading.

GEOGRAPHY / ART

Jessie has started learning the countries of South America.  Violet is on level 4 of her states game.  Benny has made it to Texas in his state song and has almost mastered all of the midwestern states.

Violet drew a duck and colored it in with watercolor pencils.  Benny's art for the week is in the Wednesday post below.

BENNY'S PRESCHOOL

We stepped it up a notch in Benny's preschool this week.  We added a couple of songs to our reading time, acted out the Jack be nimble rhyme by jumping over candlesticks, and made sure to fit in a few Kumon pages as well.