Wrap Up: Week 9

The weeks pass by so quickly and this week was no exception!

Here is an overview of what we accomplished this week:

• Language: Two more spelling groups completed. We should be done with Spelling Power level D within the next week or two. Our grammar program introduced adverbs this week, so we have completed two lessons on that subject. We have also completed the fourth "Dictionary Skills" lesson in our grammar book. El's cursive copywork has improved since I've had him write on third grade paper rather than in standard wide-ruled composition notebooks. He completed two more Spectrum writing lessons and two days of WWE dictation. I almost wanted to give up on Latin when I saw that this week's lessons were focused on identifying the direct object in sentences so that the correct Latin word form could be used in sentences. I needn't have worried: El picked it up easily. 
• Reading: Read the books from the library and worked on the Plum Creek unit study I began last week.
• Science: Tues- 1st week of a two week study on bridge construction (focusing mainly on James B. Eads and his famous St. Louis bridge.) Thurs- two experiments with oil and water to teach about polar v. non-polar molecules. El loved this video as a supplement.
• Social Studies: Reviewed U.S. states, but mostly focused on Egypt's New Kingdom. This is a subject that practically teaches itself! I mean, really. King Tut. Hatshepsut. Mummies (right before Halloween!) Who doesn't love that stuff?
• Art: Friday's artist study was of Claude Monet. Monet liked to paint outside in the sunlight and study how light reflected off water. We went down to the river and El painted the scene we saw in the afternoon light:

• Math: Completed 3 more multiplication lessons in MiF and made a cool math game to practice multiplication facts of 6, 7, 8, and 9. Completed Beestar for the week, completed xtramath addition fact mastery and began subtraction fact mastery, more subtraction practice across 000's, and completed 3 levels of Challenge Math Ch. 9 (percents.)

Playing the multiplication game we made on Tuesday

• Health: Completed a lesson on communication and problem resolution

Wrap-Up: Wk. 8

We have completed another week, and what a chilly week it was! I had to pull out the gloves and comforters for our (technically, almost) freezing nights. It's hard to believe there will come a time in a few months when 35 degrees feels like heaven after several single digit weeks in a row.

It really was a great week. Eliot began multiplication and seems to have finally "gotten" subtraction. He is still very slow at subtracting, but I feel pretty confident xtramath.org will help him master those facts. As I stated last week, MiF (our math program) expected him to go into multiplication already knowing many multiplication facts so I didn't know how he would do with it. I didn't need to worry: He's a pro! He easily understood the concept of "6 groups of 8 is the same as 6 groups of 5 plus 6 groups of 3." Even though he has never been given the problem 6X8, he was able to use (6X3)+(6X5) to do the problem in his head. Obviously, he will eventually learn all of the multiplication facts by heart, but I'm glad to see this problem-solving mental approach to introducing a new concept. We will survive math this year. (I'm just going to keep saying that over and over.)

We will also survive writing. Today El wrote a letter to my mom, and it was a pretty good letter. Although he still doesn't remember to use punctuation at the end of sentences and capitals at the beginning of new sentences when writing a paragraph, the sentences are there. Basically, I take this to mean he is at least forming complete sentences in his head. This is a huge step forward for him. Anyway, I helped him correct the letter and he wrote a very nice final draft, addressed the envelope, and mailed the letter. I don't know if the Spectrum workbook we started using is helping him in his writing or not, but it at least gives him an opportunity to do some structured writing once or twice a week, which he wasn't getting with WWE. (My point is: WWE is good, we just needed more.)

I bought my first unit study package download today! As I have said before, my kids read all of the time so I haven't really done a formal "reading" anything so far this year. I just pick out library books that are somewhat aligned with CM & Classical programs and they read them. Sometimes I ask them what chapter they're on and I read them a couple of chapters. That's about it. El has been absolutely in love with the Little House series for the past few weeks, though, and he is currently reading my personal favorite of the series: On the Banks of Plum Creek. I really wanted to do some kind of unit on this, so I found this on CurrClick.  (I think in the future I will be able to develop my own literature unit studies, but right now I was totally willing to pay 5 bucks for someone else's hard work.)

What else is new? Oh, Beestar.org. It's okay I guess. In less than 20 minutes a week, I can verify that if I sent him back to public school he would do fine in math. I guess that's important. He liked it, so we'll do it until he gets tired of it and I won't push it after that.

Wednesday was cut short by sewage backup and an emergency plumber call, so that was fun.

Tuesday, El decided the world would absolutely END if we did not go to the apple orchard this fall, so we did that (it was one of those things on my to-do list during break week that just never happened.) It was freezing cold, but we were lost in the corn maze for most of the time we were there so the dead corn stalks protected us from the wind. We brought back apple cider doughnuts for the rest of the family.

Artsy Friday painting

El's finished product

Em enjoys a caramel apple

Wordless Wednesday

A mild winter, perhaps?

Yeah, I Think You're Doing It Wrong

Bar models are supposed to help you figure out mathematical word problems, and they should resemble this:

or maybe this:

or something similar. You get the idea.

(Are those mountains? I don't even understand what is going on here.)

I don't think my son does, though.

Wrap Up: Wk. 7 (Break Week!)

Wow. We did not get very much done this week.

Yes, I know, it was a break week. Still, I thought I could visit with my parents, deep clean Em's room and pull out her winter clothes, write a decent midterm essay, go to the apple orchard, carve pumpkins, cook tons of exciting new recipes with the kids, decorate for halloween, figure out El's costume.

Here's how it all ended up working out: "visit with my parents, deep clean Em's room and pull out her winter clothes, write a decent midterm essay, go to the apple orchard, carve pumpkins, cook tons of exciting new recipes with the kids, decorate for Halloween, figure out El's costume."

We did discover a very cool architecture website and El spent several hours designing homes on it. Em and I made Chicken Barley Chili that turned out delicious. She also made PB&J sandwich rolls, which I thought were adorable but for some reason she didn't like them (? I don't understand why. This child practically lives off of PB&J.) Lots of playing outside and making giant leaf piles with the neighbor kids (first 1/2 of the week), lots of board games (rainy second 1/2 of the week.) El had his first weekly speech session of the year so he got to visit his old public school. Em's class (she's my afterschooler, remember) walked to the fire station (and everybody had to very quickly move out of the way when they got a call. Have you ever seen 25 6-year-olds do anything very quickly in an organized manner? It's not really possible. Luckily the emergency call turned out to be no big deal.)

Also of note this week:

• What the heck is beestar.org? I don't really know, but it's free and it's math, so I signed El up. I'll let you know next week if it is worth our time. (This poor child will have math coming out of his ears by Christmas.)
• Speaking of Christmas, October is THE TIME to purchase anything that will be "hard-to-find" come Christmas season. Lego minifigures were sold out everywhere by last November, so I did make any necessary minifigure Christmas present purchases this week.
• Em wrote a story for our library's Young Author Challenge. The title of her book is "Zombie Children Mannequins." I would write a description, but I'm pretty sure the book is shorter than any description I could write, so here it is in it's entirety (at the end of each page is an illustration):

p.1 Once upon a time, there were mannequins and lightning struck them so they came alive
p.2 and they went into a haunted house and once they came out they were zombies and they were really scary.
p.3 They came out and everyone ran away from them.
p.4 But they went back to the haunted house and turned back into normal kid
p.5 and got adopted!

There was a 50 word minimum and I think she just barely eked in above that. I asked her if she was going to write "The End" at the end and she looked at me, horrified, and stated: "Mom. Real books don't say 'the end' at the end."

In a few days, our trees went from 90% full of leaves to about 5% full of leaves. It was a great week to be a kid with a rake.

Working on "Zombie Children Mannequins" for the local library's Young Author Contest. Standing in front of her is her Lego creation "Robot Mom with Awesome Big Socks."

Wrap up: Week 6

Well, we have finished up our first 1/5 of the school year and we are now going to take a week-long break. Well, El gets a break. I get to write a history midterm paper on... something. (I really need to read that assignment since it is due in, oh, seven days or so.)

Math: Following last week's test results, we decided to put away the Math in Focus book this week and focus on lots of subtraction-with-borrowing review as well as basic multiplication review.  MiF is largely a mastery program so I did not want to move on until he really had subtraction down. Also, MiF 3A begins multiplication with "multiplication and division by 6's," assuming the student completed "multiplication and division by 1-5" during the second grade year. Since this is his first year with MiF, he didn't have any multiplication or division last year so we have been working catching up to MiF 3A.

Language Arts: El still struggles with WWE (Lvl. 2) narration, so we have added a Spectrum workbook to make writing feel a little more productive. He actually really likes the writing prompts in this workbook, and it makes us both feel like we're getting somewhere in writing. I was going to give up completely on WWE, but I do really think he needs the narration practice. Maybe I need to give in and get the workbook? Not this month, anyway. Additionally, I'm pretty sure his handwriting has actually gotten worse over the last few weeks so he probably needs all the writing he can get. :/

Other than writing, El is rocking right on through language arts as usual. He has done tons of reading (his required book this week was "Tales from the Odyssey: Sirens and Sea Serpents"), 2 grammar lessons and a dictionary skills lesson, 3 more spelling groups mastered (we actually took Wed. & today off of spelling because it's just going so fast.)

Almost finished with Spelling Power level D. Here is some word work.

Our artist this week was John James Audubon

What a beautiful week to observe trees.They won't have leaves much longer, though!

Map work. This week our focus was Ancient China.

Making a clay bowl for our Ancient China studies.

I got the idea from this blog to prioritize my focuses using the acronym ART. I have it written inside my daily plans and I refer to it often when I start to get stressed about the "teaching" part of homeschooling. 

Anyway, here's the overview of the goals I set for this week with goals not met stricken:

Math:

• Rework missed math test problems and work on subtraction with borrowing daily
• Master "vocabulary of multiplication"  (factors and products)
• Do MiF intro to Ch. 6 and complete 6.1
• Challenge Math Ch. 7 Levels 1 & 2 Ch. 7 incorporates calculator use, so we skipped most of it and did Ch. 8 instead. No calculators yet, thank you!
• 30 minutes on xtramath.org and daily multiplication (1-5) review

Language Work:

• Memory work: Review Land of Nod and start memorizing list of pronouns
• 3 lessons in Spectrum workbook and 2 written paragraphs
• Writing With Ease: 2 days completed
• Spelling: Level D, 3 groups
• Latin: 3 lessons from the text, focusing mostly on subject/verb agreement
• Sign Language class with library co-op group

Social Studies:

• Story of the World, Ch. 10: Ancient China. Make page & do map work. Projects: Clay bowl and pictograms.
• SOTW, Ch. 11: Ancient Africa. Make page & do map work. Projects: Paper beads or henna hands

Science/ Health:

• Evan Moor unit on backyard habitats
• Chemistry experiment #7: Are some molecules heavier than others? (This experiment, by the way, ended as many of our experiments do; with a Crash! followed by........"Yay! Science!") =)
• Health: 2 textbook lessons on "Managing Stress" 
• Nature hike. Okay, we never took an actual hike this week, but we have spent hours outside enjoying the beautiful fall scenery.

Whole Child:

• Cooking: Homemade omelet
• Drawing: drawing things in nature
• Art: focus on John James Audubon
• Music:

aaaaannd.. Hello Burnout! We are tired. It's time for a week off!!!!!