Wednesday, May 29, 2013

WW: Violet

This picture of Violet was taken Sunday after she was baptized and joined our church.

Monday, May 27, 2013

Jessie's 9th Grade Plan

I think I've finally settled on our curriculum for the upcoming 9th grade year.

English 9 - 1 credit
  • CW Herodotus and part of CW Advanced Poetry
  • R&S English 9/10 Book 1
  • Word Within the Word 2
Geometry - 1 credit
  • Geometry by Jurgensen, Brown, and Jurgensen (if I can find the resources)
History - 1 credit
  • Spielvogel's Western Civilization
  • Bauer's The History of the Ancient World
  • Noble's The Foundations of Western Civilization (appropriate lectures)
  • miscellaneous resources to be determined
World Literature 1 - 1 credit
  • The Well Educated Mind by Bauer
  • ancient book list still to be determined
  • various Vandiver lectures and portions of Great Authors of the Western Literary Tradition
Biology - 1 credit
  • BJU Biology 4th Edition
Foreign Language (Latin 2 or 3?, Spanish 1) - 2 credits
  • Latin Alive 3
  • BJU Spanish 1
Physical Education - 1 credit
  • logged time exercising
Total of 8 credits

Sunday, May 26, 2013

Week 36: Nearly Done

Jessie's 8th Grade
  • Jessie completed algebra this week scoring a B+ on the final exam.
  • She also completed her final in grammar.  In vocabulary, she covered lesson 30 and will test on it next week.
  • She continued to analyze a portion of "Beowulf" for CW and finished reading White Fang by London for literature.  She has a few book reports to complete to finish off the latter for the year.
  • I gave her the week off from Latin to focus on her other work.  The plan is to alternate between some new material and some review over the course of the summer with a week or two off here and there.

Violet's 6th Grade
  • Violet continues to work steadily through the end of year review in Singapore and completed her textbook this week.
  • In grammar, she is covering the final section on dictionaries and other reference books.  She also completed a writing lesson focused on style and sentence variety.  She completed her final lesson in SWO H and is done with spelling.
  • She is still reading The Winged Watchman for literature and should finish next week.

Benny's 3rd Grade
  • Benny completed his textbook and workbook section on angles this week in both the text and IP. He also finished his final Miquon book.
  • Benny finished his final grammar lesson.  I also told him that he was done with copywork and dictation for the year.  He completed his 23rd lesson in SWO D.
  • In literature, he is nearly finished with his final book The Incredible Journey, and we should also finish our Happy Hollister read aloud next week as well.
HISTORY
This week in history, we covered the holocaust, the partitioning of Palestine, and the Marshall Plan.  All three children covered these topics using SOTW4.  We also read a few picture books about those who tried to help the Jews:  Yellow Star by Deedy about the efforts of King Christian of Denmark,  Passage to Freedom by Mochizuki about the efforts of a Japanese diplomat to issue as many travel papers as possible despite his orders to the contrary, Who Was Anne Frank? by Abramson for the girls, and The Story of Anne Frank by Lewis for Benny.  We didn't quite get to the map word, so we'll catch up next week.  My plan is to finish off the year over the next couple of weeks using mainly SOTW 4 and possibly a few short picture books following the topics of TruthQuest.

SCIENCE

Jessie completed taking notes for chapter 8 of science.  We'll work on labs, extra problems, and tests at the beginning of next week.

HENRY'S CORNER

Henry's blending is still hit and miss, but he is improving.  We'll continue the lessons over the summer with one or two weeks of break.  Other work such as counting, numbers, shapes, and writing will be based on his interest.  He's very nearly mastered counting by 5's as well as 1's and 10's to 100. 

Thursday, May 23, 2013

Creative Corner: Sketch of Hogwarts and a Completed Landscape

 Violet began working on Hogwarts by sketching from a picture I found online.
Benny completed his landscape using oil pastels based on these directions.

Wednesday, May 22, 2013

WW: Henry's 5th Birthday

 Henry wanted a Cars cake for his 5th birthday.
 He opened present for indoor play
 and outdoor play,
and even received a new snuggle buddy.

Monday, May 20, 2013

Week 35

Jessie's 8th Grade
  • Jessie continued working with inequalities in algebra this week solving and graphing both linear and quadratic inequalities.
  • In grammar, she completed her final unit on Friday leaving a couple of review lessons and the final for next week.  She also completed her 29th vocabulary lesson. 
  • In CW, she has been doing analysis work on a portion of Beowulf.  She finished reading London's The Call of the Wild and made notes to do an oral book report on Doyle's The Hound of the Baskervilles.
  • She's been working with active participles in Latin.
Violet's 6th Grade

  • Violet has been working on review exercises in her textbook this week.
  • In grammar, she covered some courtesy and interjections and reviewed the eight parts of speech.  She completed her final list of spelling words leaving one review lesson for next week.
  • She began reading The Winged Watchman for literature.
  • In Latin, she completed her final review exercises while she worked with prepositions again in Greek.

Benny's 3rd Grade
  • Benny completed the time section of his textbook and IP this week.  He's been doing math puzzles in Miquon.
  • His grammar has been all about poetry.  We've been using a poem called "Sowing and Reaping" for copywork.  He completed his 22nd spelling lesson.
  • In CW, he did some analysis work on "Alexander and Bucephalus".  He completed reading Twenty and Ten for literature and began The Incredible Journey.
HISTORY

This week in history we covered the main events of World War 2.  The girls both read The Invasion of Poland, Pearl Harbor, The Battle of Midway and D-Day by Skipper.  Jessie read The Battle of Britain  by Reynolds while Violet read the corresponding Skipper book.  Both outlined the section of SOTW covering the end of the war in Europe and summarized the section on the atomic bomb.  In addition to the two SOTW sections Benny read The Little Ships by Borden about the rescue of Dunkirk and the SOTW section on Pearl Harbor.  We didn't get our mapwork done this week, so we'll put our history pages together next week instead.

SCIENCE
Jessie did begin taking notes on chapter 8 in physical science.  We still have 3 labs to complete that were scheduled for last week as well.

OTHER
For art see the previous post.

HENRY'S CORNER

Henry successfully completed the blending on the s page today, so we'll have another try at some of the other pages next week.  He also turned 5!  I'll post some birthday pictures next week.

Thursday, May 16, 2013

Creative Corner: A Dollhouse

Violet attempted to put her perspective lessons to use this week by drawing her dollhouse.
Benny began a landscape project that will be finished next week.

Wednesday, May 15, 2013

Sunday, May 12, 2013

Week 34

Jessie's 8th Grade
  • Jessie took her chapter 13 test in Foerster's algebra and began her final chapter this week.
  • In grammar, she covered the use of a dictionary, a thesaurus, a concordance, a Bible dictionary, and a tropical Bible. She also had a writing lesson on summaries. She completed her 28th lesson in vocabulary only two more lessons to go.
  • Her CW has been a review of analyzing and writing about a poem based on content, mechanics, figurative language, etc. The last lesson pulls all of these together in one place, so she requested permission to spread it out over more than one day. She wrote a book report for Wells' The Time Machine after we discussed the influence of worldview on the narrative. She continues to read Doyle's The Hound of the Baskervilles and also began White Fang by London.
  • She did very well on her chapter 18 Latin quiz, completed her 4th unit reading and test, and began her 19th chapter on Thursday.

Violet's 6th Grade
  • Violet continued to work on her IP section covering challenging word problems.
  • In grammar, she covered prepositions, introductions, coordinating conjunctions, and subordinating conjunctions in grammar. She completed her 34th spelling lesson, only 2 more to go.
  • For literature, she completed her reading of Where the Red Fern Grows and wrote a book report.
  • In Latin, she started her final review lesson and will finish up next week. She began working with prepositions in Greek.

Benny' 3rd Grade
  • Benny completed some review work this week and began his unit on time. In Miquon, he's been doing a combination of matching units to various items and solving some math puzzles.
  • His grammar has been all about letters: letter parts, friendly letters, thank-you letter, and envelope setup. He only missed 2 on his spelling test.
  • He finished reading Barrie's Peter Pan and began Twenty and Ten since we're about to cover WWII in history.

HISTORY

In history, we covered the Great Depression, Norman Rockwell,  the Empire State building, the Hoover Dam, Amelia Earhart, the Hindenburg, and Jessie Owens. The girls outlined and Benny summarized SOTW 4 covering the Great Depression. The girls read The Hoover Dam by Mann, Amelia Earhart by Langley , Norman Rockwell by Venezia, The Hindenburg by O'Brien, and A Picture Book of Jessie Owens by Adler. They did summaries on Earhart and Owens. Benny read the last three books as well as A Picture Book of Amelia Earhart by Adler and Sky Boys by Hopkinson.  Benny completed narrations of SOTW and Earhart.


SCIENCE

Jessie covered levers, gears, and pulleys in science this week. We completed two labs on levers.



HENRY'S CORNER

Henry and I continued on the same routine of reading aloud, phonics, and counting or shapes. He and Violet built the lego building pictures here during their play together time one day.

Thursday, May 9, 2013

Creative Corner


Violet completed some two point perspective worksheets this week.


Benny made a crayon and watercolor butterfly piece using these directions.

Sunday, May 5, 2013

Week 33

Jessie's 8th Grade
  • Jessie continued working with inequalities this week: graphing the intersection of 2 or 3 inequalities, solving word problems with inequalities, and solving word problems with equations and inequalities.
  • She completed her 10th grammar unit, wrote a description of a place, and covered her 27th vocabulary chapter.
  • In literature, she began reading The Hound of the Baskervilles by Doyle and The Time Machine by Wells, which she completed on Friday.  Her CW has been analyzing this content and use of figures of speech in a Wordsworth poem.
  • In Latin, she nearly finished the 18th chapter after learning the irregular noun vis and completing the chapter reading.  She is also done with Elementary Greek 3!!
Violet's 6th Grade
  • Violet spent the week working on multistep word problems in Singapore.
  • She completed her 9th grammar unit and began working with prepositions.  Her spelling went well.
  • For literature, she began reading When the Red Fern Grows and after giving me some initial grief based on the cover seems to be enjoying the book.
  • In Latin, she completed her final section review while continuing to work with adjectives in Greek.
Benny's 3rd Grade
  • Benny completed his textbook section on fractions and began the corresponding IP section in Singapore. In Miquon, he worked with Venn diagrams.
  • His grammar covered various descriptions, introductions, and phone etiquette.  He did much better on his spelling test this week after review the i before e rule each day.
  • For CW, he analyzed "The Princess and the Pea".  He's reading Peter Pan by Barrie.  We finished our Happy Hollister read aloud.
HISTORY
This week we covered Charles Lindbergh, Albert Einstein, Georgia O'Keeffe, Robert Goddard, Louis Armstrong, and George Gershwin.  Because of the large number of topics, we stuck mostly to picture books.  Everyone read Charles Lindbergh by Graves, The Boy Who Dreamed of Rockets by Quackenbush, and George Gershwin by Venezia.  The girls also read Who Was Albert Einstein?, Georgia O'Keeffe by Venezia, and Who Was Louis Armstrong?

SCIENCE

Jessie completed chapter 6 and began chapter 7.  Violet and Benny got the week off.  (I just need to stop leaving the space blank on my check sheet.)

OTHER

For art, see the previous post.

HENRY'S CORNER

Mostly the same old thing here:  books of his choice, some phonics, some writing, some counting, and some shapes.  I did get a chuckle Monday.  He hopped off the bed after I finished reading and said, "I'll be right back with the comics book."  I was still puzzling over the word comics when he returned 20 seconds later carrying the phonics book.


Thursday, May 2, 2013

Creative Corner: One Point Perspective and Cityscape

 Violet completed these one point perspective worksheets this week.
Benny worked very hard on his beachfront city drawing following these directions.

Wednesday, May 1, 2013

WW: Benny's New KNex Creations

He and Violet worked together to complete his Ferris Wheel.
He's also having lots of fun with his basic KNex set as well.