Creative Corner: Painted Figurine and 3D planets

 Violet asked to work on her figurine painting set for art this week.

Benny used chalk pastels on black construction paper following these directions to create his cosmic scene.

Creative Corner: A Bunny and an Owl

Violet had another attempt at volume drawing using a book called Wee Little Bunny for a model.

Benny drew his owl using these directions.

WW: Birthdays

Violet chose a Harry Potter theme and asked for a Quidditch cake for her 12th birthday.  The posts are yellow straws with pipe cleaners, and the figures came from our chamber of secrets trivia game.

She received lots of art projects and supplies,

and was very excited to get a new bike.

Jessie didn't really have any cake ideas for her 14th birthday.  She asked for a round yellow cake and left the decorations up to me.

She also received a few art supplies,

and is really excited about her new Kindle.

Week 27:

Jessie's 8th Grade

• Jessie worked on long division of polynomials, extraneous solutions of fractional expression, and some problems involving ratios and proportions this week in Foerster's Algebra.
• In grammar, she continued working with adverbs reviewing degrees of adverbs and prepositional phrases as adverbs.  She completed 3 CW lessons and will be ready for her final writing project next week.
• She continues to make progress with both Dicken's A Tale of Two Cities and Ballantyne's The Coral Island for literature.  She completed her 22nd vocabulary lesson as well.
• In Latin, she completed chapter 15, did very well on her test, and began learning about relative clauses in chapter 16.  In Greek, she completed another lesson on her own.

Violet's 6th Grade

• Violet completed several review pages in her Singapore textbook and workbook this week, then began working with volume of cuboids. In CWP, she worked some of the more challenging problems in the section of area and perimeter of circles, semicircles, and quarter circles.
• In grammar, she worked on writing descriptions, degrees of adjectives, and prepositional phrases acting as adjectives.She covered a lot of nouns ending in -ity for spelling.
• Her current literature selection continues to be Big Red, and she worked on long meter hymns this week in poetry.
• Her Latin reviewed 3rd person personal pronouns, and Greek reviewed 1st declension feminine nouns.

Benny's 3rd Grade

• Benny finished his IP section on measurement on Monday and began working on weight using grams and kilograms in his textbook and workbook. He reviewed measurement problems in CWP and did some mapwork/gridwork in Miquon.
• He's also been working on adverbs in grammar and practiced doubling the final consonant of a word ending with a short vowel and consonant before adding an ending in SWO D.
• For copywork, the first thing that came to mind was a hymn, so he's been copying the first verse of "How Great Thou Art".  We did a variety of sentences for dictation and analyzed "The Ant and the Grasshopper" for CW.
• In literature, he began reading The Whipping Boy independently, and we tried The Green Fairy Book by Lang for a read aloud but didn't really enjoy the first few stories.  We'll move onto something different next week.

HISTORY

We covered Polar explorers and famous women and African Americans of the late 19th and early 20th century this week.  The girls read The Story of Admiral Peary at the North Pole by Kent, Trapped by the Ice by McCurdy, Elizabeth Blackwell by Latham, Helen Keller by Latham, Matthew Henson by Hoena, and a book on George Washington Carver.  Benny and I read the McCurdy book, a portion of Into the Ice by Curlee covering Peary, Maria's Comet by Hopkinson, A Picture Book of Helen Keller by Adler, and A Picture Book of George Washington Carver by Adler.

SCIENCE

None for Jessie.

Violet and Benny completed two lessons, but no hands on activities.

OTHER

See art in previous post.

HENRY'S CORNER
Henry and I had polar bear week making the puppet in the picture and reading books by Hans De Beer in The Little Polar Bear series.  We also began Phonics Pathways this week covering the vowel sounds for a, e, and i.

Creative Corner: Unicorns and Koi Fish

 Violet drew a unicorn this week using one of our drawing books.

Benny completed these koi fish with crayons and watercolor following these directions.

Week 26: A Snowy Week

It's been a wacky week with the snow fall knocking out power for two and a half days.  I was very glad that DH got up at 3:30 on Tuesday morning to set up the portable generator and get the wood stove going before leaving for work.  It was great to have running water and partial power at least.  Somehow we managed to finish the bulk of our school work and still get all the kids time out in the snow.

Jessie's 8th Grade

• This week in algebra Jessie used her factoring skills to work on combining fractions containing polynomials either by finding the LCD in order to add or subtract the fractional expressions or factoring and multiplying and dividing. There really weren't any new skills just new ways to utilize skills that she had already learned.
• In grammar, she finished up everything except the test for the unit on adjectives and wrote a 3 stanza poem.  In vocabulary, we finally reached the portion of the book where instead of learning roots, we are applying those roots to learn actual words, which actually makes learning 25 new words much easier than I expected.  
• She continued reading A Tale of Two Cities and The Coral Island for literature.  In CW, she worked again on a timed essay, and we discussed the results.  I would say overall she improving, but I think we still have some work to do.
• For Latin, she worked with different types of sentences (transitive, intransitive, special intransitive, and passive), compound sentences with two independent clauses, and complex sentences containing dependent clauses.  She also completed lesson 23 in Greek covering  nouns with both alpha and eta endings in the singular form.

Violet's 6th Grade

• Violet spent the week in math working on review exercises in the textbook and workbook. Her CWP problems involved working with fractions.
• In grammar, she began the section on adjectives by reviewing limiting versus descriptive adjectives.  She also covered predicate adjectives and adjectives in the appositive position.  In spelling, she had a bunch of words ending in -ity.
• She worked with metaphors in CW poetry and also wrote a short ballad.  Her literature selection, Big Red, seems to be going well.
• Latin was a review of 1st and 2nd person personal pronouns, while in Greek she continue to work with first declension nouns.

Benny's 3rd Grade

• Benny finished up his textbook section on length after covering yards, feet, and inches and moved on to the corresponding IP section.   He also completed some Miquon and CWP pages whose topics escape me at the moment.
• We continued working on adverbs in grammar and did some sentence diagramming.  He narrated "The Milkmaid and Her Pail" for CW and completed his regular copywork and dictation. 
• He is still enjoying the escapades of the hamster in I, Houdini for his independent read.  We finished The Children of Green Known by Boston for our read aloud.  His spelling unit consisted of words that needed the final silent e dropped before adding an ending.

HISTORY

We finished up inventors of the last 19th and early 20th centuries this week.  Monday the girls summarized Marie Curie by Fisher, and Benny watched an animated video of Curie.  Tuesday, we covered Thomas Edison using Thomas Edison by Middleton for the girls and A Picture of Thomas Edison by Adler for Benny.  Wednesday, the girls read Here a Plant, There a Plant by Quackenbush on Burbank and The Story of Seward's Folly by Clinton.  Benny was supposed to watch a video on Pasteur, but we had only limited generator power so he spent the afternoon playing in the snow instead.  Thursday we covered the Suez Canal with SOTW 4 and the Panama Canal with The Panama Canal by Mann.

SCIENCE

Jessie is working on finishing her notes for chapter 6 of BJU as I'm typing.  Her being behind is partly my fault this week, since I asked her to take Henry out to play in the snow a couple of days.

Violet and Benny learned about suspensions, what a saturated solution is, and how different types of solutions are affected by temperature and pressure.

OTHER

For art, see the previous post.

HENRY'S CORNER

Henry decided to have another dragon week since all four of the dragon books by M. P. Robertson were available at the library.  We did reviews of letters and numbers, and I began teaching him to write his name by stamping the letters on his drawing board with our letter magnets and then having him trace.  DH was impressed last night when he wrote the uppercase letters A-G on the board for fun, so I guess we'll focus on more writing next week. 

Creative Corner: Volume Drawing and Layered Landscape

Violet attempted to do a volume drawing this week following the instructions from Drawing With Older Children and Teens  using the picture of a bear from a book entitled Ten in the Den. 

Benny did a landscape painting to work on the concept of creating depth in a picture following these directions.

WW: A Bit of Snow

The kids have had a great time this week.  We ended up with ten inches of wet snow perfect for snowmen as well as knocking down trees.  After two and a half days of running portions of the house using the portable generator, it is great to have hot water again that doesn't come from a pot on the stove.

Week 25: A Little Better

Jessie's 8th Grade

• Jessie worked on factoring and simplifying expressions containing variables and/or polynomials in both the numerator and the denominator in Foersters.
• In grammar, she worked with verbals and verbal phrases used as adjectives and relative causes used as adjectives as well as repetition, parallelism, and descriptive language in poetry.  We did a second week of vocabulary review focused on lessons 16-20.
• For literature, she began reading A Tale of Two Cities by Dickens and The Coral Island by Ballantyne.  In CW, she worked on the body and conclusion paragraphs in a five paragraph essay, then completed what was supposed to be a timed essay after the style of an SAT prompt.  Needless to say, I gave up on time and just ask her to finish the essay.
• She spent the week on the third unit reading in Latin, which was longer than I had planned, but since I only have 30 weeks of scheduled lessons it doesn't matter.  In Greek, she completed lesson 22 covering 1st declension nouns that take eta in the genitive and dative forms.

Violet's 6th Grade

• Violet completed the textbook section on pie charts, took two days to cover the corresponding IP sections, and then spent two days on general review exercises this week.
• She finished her grammar unit on punctuation after covering semicolons, colons, and hyphens.  She also completed another spelling lesson with words ending -ance, -ence, -ant, or -ent.  I was happy that she only missed four words.
• In literature, she finished reading The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Twain.  We completed a story chart covering plot and conflict, and then she wrote a book report.  CW Poetry began working on metaphors and had her write new lines for a children's song.
• She completed the review lesson 23 in LfC C and began learning about 1st declension nouns in EG1.

Benny's 3rd Grade

• Benny worked with meters and kilometers in Singapore, completed a variety of exercises in Miquon, and some more word problems dealing with weight in CWP 3.
• I introduced adverbs this week in grammar, and we worked with those answering the questions of how and when.  He completed his 13th spelling lesson in SWO D. 
• For literature, he began reading I, Houdini by Banks.  We continued reading The Children of Green Knowe as a read aloud.  I'm still have him read aloud from the McGruffy 3rd grade reader, but some of the longer lesson we are splitting over 2 days.

HISTORY

We are still working on inventors this week.  The girls read Alexander Graham Bell by Fisher, Shoes for Everyone by Mitchell, Guglielmo Marconi and Radio by Parker, Click by Mitchell, Gregor Mendel by Bardoe, and The Brooklyn Bridge by Mann.  They both wrote summaries about Bell and the Brooklyn Bridge, and then I gave then the choice for the other two days from among the remaining books of which to just read and which to also summarize.  Benny and I read Ahoy!  Ahoy!  Are You There? by Quackenbush for Bell.  Tuesday he got to watch the animated classic video on Bell.  Wednesday, I gave him off to help DH cutting wood.  Thursday we read the same book as the girls on Mendel.

SCIENCE

Jessie has actually gotten to some science this weekend.  I'm hopeful that she'll have completed taking notes on most of chapter 6 by this evening.

Violet, Benny, and I finished the 4th unit in Properties of Matter covering mixtures, air, and milk.

For the air lesson, we put out a candle by covering it with a jar again.

Then we mixed baking soda and vinegar in the jar and held it over the flame so that the resulting carbon dioxide from the reaction could sink onto the flame and put it out.

ART and MORE
Just Violet this week.  She finished her owl and I posted the picture in the previous post.  Everyone is still going strong with their logic resources.  I believe I'll have Violet and Benny resume geography next week.

BENNY'S CORNER

Apparently someone gave Henry a smart pill when I wasn't looking. This week he insisted that we add the remaining alphabet letters to the fridge (Uu, Vv, Yy, Zz), and he already knew the names of all but Uu. He has also picked up most of the letter sounds from somewhere. When I had him count the letter magnets, he got up to 52 with no trouble at all, so the next day we counted the beads on our abacus instead. He made it all the way up to 79 by himself. With me giving him the numbers 80, 90, and 100, we made it through all the beads in the abacus.
He did actually give himself a hair cut in the front while I thought he was going to the bathroom.  I'm hoping that after a couple of week growth, I'll be able to do something to make it look a little better before we take pictures for Easter. 
As far as books go, we read about soup this week.  Stone Soup by Forest, Pumpkin Soup by Cooper, Delicious by Cooper, and Growing Alphabet Soup by Ehlert.  I tried unsuccessfully in interesting him in making some vegetable soup but was turned down with a "Yuck!" every time.