Creative Corner: Finished Owl

Week 24

 Jessie's 8th Grade

• Jessie spent four days practicing solving word problems with a combination of factoring and solving for the variables before taking her chapter 10 test on Friday.
• In grammar, she completed a test on the pronoun unit on Monday and worked on a combination of adjectives and poetry for the remainder of the week.  We completely the first of two weeks of vocabulary review focusing on the first 15 lessons.  Next week we'll focus on the last 5 completed lessons before adding new material.
• Jessie worked on the introductory paragraph in a modern 5 paragraph essay at the beginning of the week by analyzing a model paragraph and then rewriting it based on her analysis.  She was having some trouble with the section on body paragraphs, so we'll work on that over the weekend.  We also discussed Oliver Twist and I asked her to write a character description of Twist, which is still under construction.
• In Latin, she spent most of the week working on vocabulary review before finally taking her chapter 14 quiz on Thursday.  Friday she read the background information related to the unit 3 reading for next week.  In EG3, she learned to decline and use the demonstrative pronoun and adjective this.

Violet's 6th Grade

• Violet worked on her IP section on the area and perimeter of figures containing circles, semi-circles, or quarter circles.  In CWP, she finished the section on speed and began working on fractions.
• In grammar, she worked on uses for commas and edited her story from last week.  She breezed through a review spelling lesson, completed another week of CW Poetry for Beginners, and continued reading The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.
• Her Latin grammar for the week covered 5th declension nouns and their endings, while in Greek I gave her the week off from lessons to catch up on vocabulary.

Benny's 3rd Grade

• Benny finished his IP section on mental math and began working with measurement converting between meters and centimeters.  His Miquon work covered division and fractions.
• He continued learning about adjectives in grammar, completed a review spelling lesson, and narrated the story of Cornelia's jewels for CW.  He's still forgetting to dot his i's and cross his t's in cursive copywork, but has finally mastered the punctuation for direct quotations for dictation.
• For literature, he finished reading Pinocchio independently, and we began reading The Children of Greene Knowe as a read aloud.  It's been a bit of a slow start, but we'll give it another week.

HISTORY

This week in history we started focusing on inventors and accomplishments  in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.  Monday was an odd day.  I had the girls read about Niijima Jo and modern missions from Rescue and Redeem while Benny and I enjoyed The Ringling Brothers by Glendinning.  Then we covered Henry Ford, the Transatlantic cable, and the Wright Brothers.  The girls read We'll Race You Henry by Mitchell First to Fly by Busby, and The Story of the Flight at Kitty Hawk by Stein.  They outlined from The Great Republic for the cable.  Benny and I enjoyed Henry Ford  by Middleton, Tin Lizzie by Spier, Alice Ramsey's Grand Adventure by Brown, and To Fly by Old.

SCIENCE

Violet, Benny, and I learned about compounds this week.  I really need to make sure we get our science done before lunch next week so it doesn't fall by the wayside.
Art is in the previous post as usual.

HENRY'S CORNER

Henry and I added the letters Uu to his magnets this week.  Otherwise we just read books, counted, and did some calendar.  I really to plan some more activities for him next week.

Creative Corner: Beginning of an Owl and Wrap Around Snake

Violet began working on drawing a snowy owl from a picture this week by drawing the outline.

Benny followed these directions to create his wrap around snake, which he then colored in crayon.

WW: Creative Snowmen

This is a guard snowman.

This snowman is the captain of a ship

who has now been tied up by the infamous pirate Henry.

Week 23:

Jessie's 8th Grade

• Jessie continued to work on more factoring in algebra this week and then combined her factoring and problem solving skills to begin determining the possible values for the variables.
• In grammar, she finished with relative and interrogative pronouns, practiced some sentence variety, and completed the chapter review on pronouns.  She did well on her lesson 20 vocabulary test.
• In literature, she is finishing up a book report on Children of the New Forest by Marryat.  She read the final chapters of Oliver Twist by Dickens on Friday. She did not complete her CW this week.  Normally I would have her catch up on the weekend; but since she's working on a modern essay, I wanted her to take her time and focus on each of the parts instead of cramming them into the weekend.
• In Latin, she completed chapter 14 covering pluperfect and future perfect passive indicative and perfect infinitives.  She had the week off from Greek to do review, which we didn't quite get done.  In logic, she's working on the 8th chapter of Traditional Logic 1 and creating flow charts in Building Thinking Skills 3:  Verbal.

Violet's 6th Grade

• Violet continued working with the area and perimeter of figures that contain circle, semicircles, or quarter circles in 6B.  In CWP, she is solving problems related to speed.
• Her grammar this week was entirely review and covered capitalization, punctuation, and quotations.  She passed her lesson 23 spelling test and worked with a combination of couples and quatrains again in CW.  She finished her second week of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Twain for literature.
• She learned how to conjugate 4th declension neuter nouns in Latin and review second declension nouns, present tense verbs, and the irregular verb to be in Greek.

Benny's 3rd Grade

• Benny began his 3B books this week with several lessons on mental math covering all four of the basic operations.  In Miquon, he began working on the fraction section.
• We began learning about adjectives in grammar, the questions they answer, and how to diagram them.  He worked on spelling words with silent consonants, completed his regular copywork and dictation, and analyzed the story of Cornelia's jewels for CW.  He continued to read Pinocchio independently, and we finished Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang as a read-aloud.

HISTORY

This week the girls outlined a section from The Great Republic covering the last rulers of Hawaii, took notes on the events under President Grant through President McKinley, and wrote summaries about the Statue of Liberty.  Jessie read The Statue of Liberty by Fisher, and Violet Liberty  by Curlee.  Violet also read The Story of the San Francisco Earthquake by Stein, but I inadvertently returned it before Jessie was able to read it. 

Benny and I read Last Princess by Stanley.  Covered the idea of immigrants by reading two fictional books:  Peppe the Lamplighter by Bartone and Streets of Gold by Wells.  We also enjoyed The Snow Walker by Wetterer about a boy during the 1888 Great Blizzard in New York City.  Finally, he did a summary of The Story of the Statue of Liberty by Maestro.

SCIENCE

Not much science got done this week.  Violet and Benny covered elements and William Prout.  The rest of the week, I sent Benny outside to wear off some energy.

Art is in the previous post.

HENRY'S CORNER

Henry and I enjoyed another relaxed week with him choosing whatever books he wished from our shelves to read.  We worked on the same letters as last week, covered number recognition with the calendar, sang our months of the year song, and did lots of counting.  He can currently get all the way up to 49.

I'm really not sure why he found playing with our Minotaur game board so fun, but he thought it was hilarious when he had completely blocked all open passages to the temple in the center.

Creative Corner: Owls and Valentine Bears

 Violet drew this flying owl from a coloring page I found online.

 Benny completed this valentine's bear following these directions,

and then create his own lego version of the face for fun.

Week 22: Another Week Almost Done

Jessie's 8th Grade

• Jessie worked on factoring this week in algebra. She factored out constants, common variables, and common elements in parenthesis in addition to more basic polynomial factoring. It's been slow, but she's done very well.
• In R&S, she completed several lessons related to sentence style.  She continued reading Oliver Twist by Dickens and Children of the New Forest by Marryat for literature.
• She successfully passed her 19th vocabulary quiz in Word Within the Word, Volume 1, but has not yet finished up all of her CW assignments for the week.
• We took a break from Latin this week to catch up on vocab and conjugate some verbs in all of the various active and passive cases that she has now learned.  She did her Greek lessons on her own again.

Violet's 6th Grade

• Violet began working with circles this week in Singapore 6B and learned to calculate the area and circumference as well as the values of pi.  I also finally remembered to start her CWP lessons back up, and she's been working on the speed section of CWP 6.
• In grammar this week, Violet reviewed capitalization and punctuation and learned the three basic parts to a story.  Her spelling continues to go very well.  We worked with couplets and quatrains for poetry.
• For literature, she began reading The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain and is truly enjoying the story.  We also used various paragraphs from the story for her dictation as well.

Benny's 3rd Grade

• Benny finished up the last exercises in his 3A IP book this week, so he's ready to move on to the 3B books on Monday!!  He's been reviewing multiplication in Miquon purple.
• Benny completed his grammar unit on verbs after learning about direct objects.  He worked with different spellings for the "f" sound in SWO D.  For writing, he continued cursive copywork with Psalm 1 and worked more on direct quotations for dictation.  In CW Aesop, he rewrote a story about Julius Caesar.
• In literature, Benny is continuing to reading Pinocchio independently.  We started Chitty Chitty Bang Bang for a read aloud.

HISTORY

History topics for the week included the Klondike and Alaska Gold Rushes, Plains Indians, and Indians wars in the western US, and steamboats on the Mississippi.  The girls read Yukon Gold by Jones, The Apaches by Himler, Sitting Bull by Fleischer, The Story of Geronimo by Kent, and a portion of The Great Republic covering General Custer.  They wrote summaries about Geronimo and Sitting Bull and outlined the section on Custer.

Benny and I read portions of The Book of Indians by Holling, A Boy Called Slow by Bruchac, a portion of SOTW 4 on the Indian wars, Steamboat!i by Gilliland, and Mike Fink by Kellogg.  He only did a summary of the SOTW section.

SCIENCE

Jessie still has plenty of science to keep her busy over the weekend.

Violet, Benny, and I read about liquids, gases, gas laws, and Robert Boyle this week before taking the unit 3 quiz.

We compared the bouncing ability of a room temperature ball to one that came out of the freezer.  (It took a couple of tries due to doggie interference.)

We measured the diameter of a balloon before and after it went in the freezer for 15 minutes and found almost an inch difference.

Then we heated up some water in a gallon milk jug in the microwave, capped the jug, and submerged it in cold water.  The kids all liked watching the jug compress.

ART

See previous post.

HENRY'S CORNER

We read snowman books this week.  Our two favorite were The Biggest Snowman Ever and Snow Family.  The plan is to make some snowman cookie cutouts over the weekend.  Henry decided to add the Ww magnets to our refrigerator and continues to enjoy our calendar activity as well.

Creative Corner: Winter Trees and Log Cabins

Violet's winter tree scene was made with painter's tape and watercolor using these directions.

Benny's log cabin was made with miniature popsicle sticks and tacky glue and then decorated with a black Sharpie and brown crayon following these directions.

WW: Playdough carving

I loved that look of concentration. 

His great carving masterpiece is, by the way, a tic-tac-toe board.

Week 21: Staying Warm

Jessie's 8th Grade

• Jessie finished chapter 9 on powers and exponents in algebra and worked on finding the greatest common factor in chapter 10 this week.
• Her grammar consisted of a combination of pronoun review and working on sentence style.  She began working on her final unit in CW (and finished all the lessons on time!!)  She struggled a little with her vocabulary, but managed to do well on her test.  She is on track in her reading for both Oliver Twist and Children of the New Forest.
• In Latin, she completed her quiz on chapter 13 and began chapter 14, but I have not yet checked the assignments.  She also completed lesson 19 of EG3 and her regular logic lessons.

Violet's 6th Grade

• Violet finished up her first textbook section and completed the corresponding IP section in her 6B books this week.
• In grammar, she completed her unit on pronouns and did well on her unit test.  Regular spelling and dictation were done.  She began the second portion of CW Poetry for Beginners this week.  She also finished reading National Velvet and wrote a book report on Friday.
• Her Latin chapter was a review this week.  She continued declining 2nd declension neuter nouns in EG1 and did some beginning translations this week.

Benny's 3rd Grade

• Benny finished up the last review pages in both his 3A textbook and workbook this week. His Miquon has been a review of subtraction.
• In grammar, he began learning about paragraphs, topic sentences, and ordering of events within a paragraph.  He completed his 9th spelling lesson, worked on direct quotations for dictation, and copied a portion of Psalm 1 in cursive.  In CW, we analyzed a passage on Julius Caesar.
• He continues to read Pinocchio independently and to read aloud from McGuffey's 3rd reader.  We finished our read aloud, The Black Cauldron by Alexander on Friday.

HISTORY

This week's topics focused mainly on the Wild West and the transcontinental railroad.  The girls summarized Frontier Surgeons: a story about the Mayo brothers by Crofford and Annie Oakley by Graves, outlined from The Great Republic, and read The Book of Cowboys by Holling.  Benny and I read Bill Pickett, rodeo riding cowboy by Pinkney, Black Cowboy, Wild Horses by Lester, Buffalo Bill by d'Aulaire, Little Sure Shot by Spinner, John Henry by Keats, Kate Shelley and the Midnight Express by Wetterer, and a potion of SOTW 4 for the transcontinental railroad and the creation of time zones.

SCIENCE

Jessie actually got some science done this week (pausing to do a happy dance). We completed the lab on center of gravity on Monday. She read the facets, worked the the extra problems, and went over the review questions with me for chapter 5.  She taking the chapter test open book as I type this up.

Benny and Violet did two days of science this week learning about the difference between a chemical change and a physical one as well as the different types of possible physical changes.

OTHER

See Thursday's post for art.

HENRY'S CORNER

Henry and I added the letter Tt to his magnets, counted with his calendar, and read mostly Larryboy chapter books along with his Bible stories at his request.