Week 12: Still trying to get back in a rhythm

Jessie's 8th Grade

• Jessie has been working on equations involving the absolute value of an expression as well as factoring and multiplying out binomial squares. 
• Grammar consisted of working with substantives, writing from an outline, and identifying and diagramming verbals.  Vocabulary was our second scheduled review week between chapters 10 and 11.  She is almost caught back up in her CW lessons.  All of her daily lessons were completed, but she forgot to finish off the last couple of paragraphs from her unit 2 writing assignment, so those are homework for tomorrow.
• In literature, I assigned her a five paragraph essay for Pilgrim's Progress.  This will be the first such essay that she has written outside of either her writing or grammar texts, so I got her started by providing the entire introductory paragraph with a topic sentence.  Her task is to write three supporting example paragraphs (along the lines of those she has written for CW) and then an appropriate conclusion.  She got off to a good but very slow start Monday but will need time over the weekend to finish up.
• In Latin, she learned about comparative and superlative adverbs, completed her chapter 8 quiz, and began learning about partitive expressions.  EG3 introduced the future tense of verbs.

Violet's 6th Grade

• As promised, I backed Violet up to the beginning of the percentage section per her request.  We quickly zipped through the conversions between fractions, decimals, and percentages and got back into the work problems by the end of the week, which is where she had the most difficulty previously.
• Violet also had some outlining in grammar this week as well as a review of predicate nominatives and predicate adjectives.  In SWO, she completed her second review lesson.  She finished reading My Friend Flicka and wrote a book report on it.  CW focused on adverbial elements, summarizing, and finishing her writing project from the previous week.
• Her LfC lesson was her second review lesson in that book.  In Greek, she practiced translating Greek verbs in the present tense.

Benny's 3rd Grade

• Benny continued working on his long division this week, finished up the textbook and workbook, and moved onto the IP book Thursday.  As the picture illustrates, he still doesn't want to show his work.  In Miquon, he's been working with prime numbers.
• He's continued working with nouns and pronouns in grammar.  He finished his SWO C book on Tuesday and began SWO D.  His first test did not go well.  I know he was having some trouble reading the words because they were written in cursive, so we're going to try again Monday with me giving him a printed version of the words.  If he still has difficulty, then it may be time to slow down our rate and spread the lessons over more days.
• He wrote a narration for "Pandora's Box" in CW and completed his regular copywork and dictation.  He continued reading Sea Star for literature, and we continued By the Great Horn Spoon for our read-aloud.  His reading aloud is getting better.  He not longer mumbles although he still skips words or reads them out of order sometimes. 

HISTORY

History topics for the week included whaling, Commodore Perry, the Pony Express, and the Underground Railroad.  The girls read Whaling Days by Carrock, Commodore Perry in the Land of the Shogun by Blumberg, Pony Express by Kroll, and a section of The Great Republic.  Benny and I enjoyed a portion of Seabird by Holling, John Tabor's Ride by Day, First Ride by Geis, The Drinking Gourd by Monjo, Allen JAy and the Underground Railroad by Brill, Freedom River by Rappaport, and Under the Quilt of Night by Hopkinson.  The latter two I actually assigned to him to read on his own while I was working on something else.  The girls wrote about whaling and Perry and outlined from Guerber.  Benny narrated about the Pony Express and the Underground Railroad.

SCIENCE

Jessie and I only accomplished one day of science this week.  We'll do a bit this weekend and add the rest onto next weeks assignment.

Violet, Benny, and I read about perfumes, rubber, and Goodyear this week in science.  I skipped the perfume activity because I knew it would give me a headache.  The rubber activity involved drawing a face on a blown up balloon and then letting the air out.  Both Violet and Benny insisted they had done that often enough on their own that it didn't need to be repeated.

OTHER

Jessie began working on Asia this week in geography.  Violet began working on South America.  Benny and I covered Hawaii, but didn't get to Idaho.  For art, see the previous post.  No music.

HENRY'S CORNER

Henry's theme for the week was fall.  We read The Seasons of Arnold's Apple Tree by Gibbons, How Do You Know It's Fall? by Fowler,  The Ant and the Grasshopper  by Poole, I Know It's Autumn by Spinelli, and Mouse's First Fall by Thompson.  We added the letter Ll to our list this week otherwise, it was just review.  The owl stickers were just for fun one day when he needed a constructive activity.  I had picked up a 20 pack of them at Staples on clearance for fifty cents.