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.