Week 26: Working round a snow day

Jessie's 7th Grade

• Jessie finished her Lial's Prealgebra book on Tuesday, has switched back over to NEM 1 for math, and is currently working with integers once again.
• In R&S, she completed the unit on adverbs Wednesday and began working on the ninth chapter covering prepositions and poetry so far.  She also took the last quiz in CE2 on Friday making vocabulary her first subject that is completed for the year!
• Her CW work for the week consisted of analysis of an article from the Spectator that was admired by Benjamin Franklin.  The sentence selected for diagramming on Wednesday was particularly challenging, and I wished for the first time that we had bought the student guide just for the answer key.  Still in the end, diagramming is subjective to a certain extent, and we could at least explain why we chose to diagram it as we did.
• We read more of The History of the Kings of Britain by Monmouth and began The Two Towers by Tolkien for Omnibus.
• I gave Jessie the week off from Latin to work on just vocabulary, so she played lots of FlashDash online this week.  Her Greek chapter was also a vocabulary review.
• As part of logic this week we discussed changes associated with the Industrial Revolution as well as the fallacy of composition.

Violet's 5th Grade

• Violet continued to work with percentages this week with a greater focus on solving word problems.
• She zipped through her grammar lessons on direct quotations and completed a short book report, but she struggled some with her spelling chapter and its combination of ei and ie words.  We'll spend another week on that lesson.
• In poetry one of her challenges for the week was to take two couplets and keep the same meaning and rhyme scheme but change the wording.  Her dictation for the week came from various books in "The Dark is Rising" series.
• Her literature remained the same: The Wolves of Willoughby Chase by Aiken and Johnny Tremain.
• In LfC she studied four basic sentence patterns.

Benny's 2nd Grade

• Benny finished his IP section on multiplying by 4, 5, and 10 and began a new textbook section on money this week.  He continues to work with place value in Miquon.
• In LA, he completed 2 more spelling chapters in SWO C, wrote a few more short dictated sentences, and continued his cursive copywork.  HE began learning about adjectives in FLL.
• After finishing The Bears on Hemlock Mountain on Monday, he began reading Encyclopedia Brown:  Boy Detective aloud to me.  I read the remainder of Warner's  The Mystery of the Lake Monster and began George Washington's Socks.

HISTORY

Our history topics for the week included Thomas Paine, Benjamin Franklin, the Declaration of Independence, the battle of Long Island, and Nathan Hale.  The girls summarized Thomas Paine: Political Writer by Fish and Nathan Hale by Lough, outlined 2 chapters from Guerber, and wrote about Benjamin Franklin.  Jessie's information came from Daugherty's Poor Richard, while Violet read Fritz's What's the Big Idea, Ben Franklin?.  Benny and I spent two days on Franklin reading Benjamin Franklin by D'Aulaire, The Whistle by Franklin, and Poor Richard in France by Monjo.  We read a portion of Dagliesh's The Fourth of July Story to cover the Declaration and Voight's Nathan Hale to finish up his week.  The girls also caught up with their timelines on Friday.

SCIENCE

Jessie did well on her chapter 20 test Monday.  She's been studying about biotic and a biotic communities as well as the carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen cycles.

Violet learned about airplanes, the Wright brothers, rockets, spacecraft, and hovercraft this week.  She tried various paper airplane designs to see which flew the farthest.  We still have to complete the rocket experiment since I didn't realize the kids had taken the last of my balloon stash.  Our hovercraft plate didn't work.

Benny and I read about conchology and different kinds of shells this week.  No hands on unfortunately.

GEOGRAPHY / ART

Same geography this week.

Violet practiced adding depth to her drawing by overlapping rings this week.

HENRY'S CORNER

Henry and I just read lots of books this week.  I was too busy preparing the last items for consignment, making a list of what we needed this spring/summer for kids' clothes, and then cleaning up afterward to be creative this week.  He was very proud of his gear creation this afternoon and insisted I come take a picture.