Week 29: Getting Back to Normal

Jessie's 7th Grade

• Jessie continued working through review exercises covering the material of the first four chapters on NEM 1 this week.
• In Omnibus, we spent a third week on Tolkien's The Two Towers and also started our first week of Shakespeare's MacBeth.  Jessie and I both agree that this is not our favorite play.
• In R&S, she finished up her unit on conjunctions and began her 10th unit on capitalization and punctuation.
• In CW, she struggled a bit coming up with supporting paragraphs for her thesis statement in the theory section before beginning the analysis section of the last unit.
• We looked at arguments for and against women's suffrage in logic.  She did very well on her Art of Argument unit test.
• EG1 covered more deponent verbs, and Latin Alive 1 covered adverbs this week.

Violet's 5th Grade

• Violet completed her IP section on averaging and began learning about rates this week.
• She began reading Carry On, Mr. Bowditch while also continuing Kidnapped by Stevenson for literature.
• In CW, we looked more at rhyme and rhythm, and she wrote a heroic couplet. 
• She worked on prepositions and conjunctions for grammar and sailed through another SWO G lesson.
• Latin focused again on 3rd conjugation verbs as well as the imperative form of the verbs.  She's struggling with the vocabulary, so we'll take next week off to focus on catching up with that.

Benny's 2nd Grade

• Benny finished up working with money in his Singapore IP and did a couple of review exercises this week.  In Miquon, he was introduced to square numbers and basic exponential notation.
• He read Keep the Lights Burning, Abbie by Roop and 18 Penny Goose by Walker to me and began reading Ralph S. Mouse by Cleary.  I began reading A Spy in Williamsburg by Lawrence to him.
• His chosen topic for dictation this week was worms.  I gave him 1 3-5 word sentence each day trying to keep the spelling within his abilities.  He continued his cursive copywork and completed another one and a half lessons in spelling as well as his critical thinking books.

HISTORY

We continued making our way through the American Revolution this week.  We started off the week learning about George Rogers Clark.  The girls summarized George Rogers Clark: American General by Burgan, while Benny and I read George Rogers Clark: Frontier Fighter by de Leeuw.  For the mutiny at Morristown, the girls outlined from Guerber while Benny and I enjoyed This Time, Tempe Wick? by Gauch.  The last two books for the girls were Francis Marion: The Swamp Fox by Cornelius and Benedict Arnold: Traitor to the Cause by Lutz.  Benny and I read George Washington by D'Aulaires and a short fictional story called Katie's Trunk by Turner depicting the treatment of Tories by the Patriots.

SCIENCE

Jessie made her way steadily through chapter 23 of BJU Life Science this week.  We also checked on her bean plants.  So far the only noticeable differences are the number of plants that have sprouted and the fact that more roots can be seen in crowded pot.

Violet mixed popcorn, rice, and flour as dry ingredients then shook them gently and watched the flour sink to the bottom while the popcorn rose to the top.  This simulated the initial problems with creating gunpowder.  Then she made the mixture into more of a paste that kept the ingredient mixed.

She practiced calculating the depth of water based on sonar measurements, completed her unit three test, and leaned about light bulbs on Friday.

Benny and I finished the lesson on cephalopods and began learning about echinoderms this week.  So far we have covered sea star, brittle star, and sea urchins.  He also made a clay clam, octopus, and squid.

ART

Violet's art came from our 1-2-3 Draw Ocean Animals by Levin.  Jessie drew a cactus using Draw 50 Flowers, Trees, and Other Plants by Ames but didn't want me to take a picture.

HENRY'S CORNER

Henry and I got back up to speed this week as well.  We added the letter Ee and the number 4 to our games, read lots of books, and acted out the rhyme "Wee Willy Winky". (Any rhyme that involves running is always a hit.)

He also bravely defended his castle,

and was snuggling so nicely with Pooh bear until he heard me with the camera.