Weekly Wrap-Up

We just finished our last full week before holiday break. Next week will be kind of off-and-on as far as school goes since we have a lot of extra things going on.

Coloring a poster showcasing Midwestern prairie grasses and wildflowers

This was also Em's last week of homeschool ballet for the fall semester.

Em (in white) practicing for the homeschool ballet recital

What did El learn about this week? 
Area, perimeter, and volume
Æthelred the Unready v. Sweyn, King of Denmark, and why you should never pay the Dane-Geld
Leif Ericson
Compounds v. Mixtures
Rube Goldberg machines
2-point perspective drawing

Subject and Object Pronouns, Subject Complement, "Complement" v. "Compliment"
Fjords (and that "fjord" is maybe the best word ever)
Paraphrasing for a summary

What did Em learn about this week?

Subtraction with renaming

Inequalities

Possessive pronouns

Landforms

Life Cycles/ Metamorphoses of Frogs and Moths

"wound" v. "wound" (homographs)
cursive letters "i" and "t"

drawing adorable animals

 

Em also wanted to showcase the evolution of her drawing over the past few years

from meatball people (1) to neck-less people (2) to... 

squirrels (3).

December Nature Walks

Although the weather is more seasonal now, we had some absolutely incredible days at the beginning of the week. We went out to the woods one lovely afternoon and enjoyed the December scenery.

 We explored paths we couldn't explore earlier in the year, when the thick foliage had barred our passage.

 

And we brought back some fallen twigs and pine cones, which we used to create a gumdrop tree scene. Em had the idea to use the pine cones around the bottom as underbrush.

Our Second Break Week is Here

I really needed to update this blog, didn't I?

Another 6 weeks of work have passed and we are currently on our second break week of the school year. However, both kids couldn't keep their hands off the new math arrival...

Beast Academy!

Beast Academy 3A Set

BA is the newly-released elementary math series from the amazing people over at Art of Problem Solving (AoPS.) Unfortunately, it is being released too slowly for us to be able to use as a math "spine," but we are able to use the books as fun supplements. The 3A book is geometry-heavy, which is great since Singapore PM seems to be the opposite. Each year will consist of 4 graphic-novel style books and 4 accompanying workbooks, which can be purchased as a book/workbook set for $27 over at Horrible Ray's Horrible Books. This works out to about $110 for a year of math, which is pretty much the going rate for any other math program. I just ordered the 3A set because it does such a fantastic job covering elementary geometry. 3B & 3C are currently available, and I believe 3D has a release date of early 2013. Anyway, there are far better reviews online for BA so please search around for those if you are considering this math program.

As you can probably tell, I'm having a hard time keeping up with my "What we're reading" tab. These children devour books. I tried to get into the habit of taking pictures of their books before they went back to the library, but I can't even remember to do that every time.

Notable recent reads? Em is enjoying Caddie Woodlawn, El is enjoying some of the Sherlock Holmes short stories, and together we are wrapping up Anne of Green Gables and working our way through Wildwood's sequel, Under Wildwood.The best nonfiction we've read this month would probably be two David J. Smith books, If the World Were a Village and If America Were a Village. These wonderful books are full of culture, statistics, and compassion. We also found a great book on Thanksgiving history: Turkeys, Pilgrims, and Indian Corn: The Story of the Thanksgiving Symbols. (Sadly, I can not recommend the Halloween symbols book by the same author as it is rife with historical inaccuracies to an almost offensive degree. Hey, though, it's always good to give the kids a lesson in "Don't believe everything you read.")

El has been working his way through his "Draw 3D" book. Here is one of his most recent drawings inspired by a that book:

The Draw 3D book is a little too advanced for Em, but she has been having great luck with the Draw Write Now series, which teaches you to learn to draw particular objects or animals one simple step at a time. Here are a couple of her recent drawings:

I never know a clever way to end my posts, so I'll leave you with El's alien guy looking at the World's Strangest Building (or "Stragest" if you want to be technical.) :)

Happy Halloween...

... from the farmer and the Viking.

October

Language Arts with Em

El learns Google SketchUp

Em works on the computer

Em practices guitar with dad

2 recipes we made from Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution cookbook: Cauliflower soup and cucumber salad



Time to scoop the goop!




Our homemade apple pie (with homemade chicken stock cooking in the background.) Yum!



Em finishing the fifth Harry Potter book

El does some fraction work

We have slowly been finding our groove this fall. The big accomplishments would technically be El learning multiple digit multiplication (267 X 43 =?) and Em learning addition with regrouping. Really, though, just finding a comfortable footing has been the biggest accomplishment in my eyes.

Wrap-Up: The First 10 School Days

We just finished our second week of school. This completes Em's first 2 weeks of homeschool ever! (She has gone to public school since pre-K.) We have a couple of bumps to make it over this year, but overall things went well.

Em:

• Writing: Let's start with the frustrating one so it will all be uphill after that. ;) Writing With Ease 1 Week 1 & 2 are complete. I'm sorry, but she *hates* WWE with a passion. Unfortunately, it is exactly what she needs in a writing program right now.  

She completed 5 handwriting practice pages. Also, we are working on "fixing sentences," which is really difficult for a child who has totally forgotten the difference between upper & lower case letters. She wrote a very, very basic "thank you" letter to her great uncle (as in "10 words" basic.) We have a looong way to go with writing. I'm okay with this. First of all, Em is dealing with some physical issues that make writing a little harder for her so, if we think she needs to, she can see an OT in the future. We're holding off on this for right now, but the resource is available if we decide to go that route. Secondly, she was a preemie. She is going to do some things slower than average. I'm just glad she's home so that we can move at a pace that suits her. (Well, the "pace that suits her" would be "not doing any writing," so I guess I should say "a pace that isn't more than she can handle.")

• Reading: She has been doing a great job of recording her school reading and free reading in her reading response journal. She read "The Long Way Westward" and "The House on Walenska Street" (Yep, I am going through the Sonlight grade 3 readers available at my library ;) She did lots of free reading too, and finally finished the 5th Harry Potter book that she has been working on for the past month.
• Spelling: Finished the first 2 units in Spelling Workout D. She's not a big fan of this program, but it's something for her to do while she waits for me to work with her brother.
• Science unit on plant life cycle and plant parts. Completed unit and read supplemental books. Watched a couple of "Magic School Bus" videos on YouTube regarding plants.
• History: You really can't throw someone into history without starting at the beginning. The first week, I tried to put her in with El's "Story of the World 2" history program. She was confused, and I knew I was shortchanging her. You just can't begin a linear history program in 450 CE, so she is doing her own history thing for a few weeks using the 2nd grade Core Knowledge history sequence. Once she catches up to El, I'll lump her back into SOTW2.
• Math: The success story. Math went really well. I have my arsenal of manipulatives built up from Singapore with El so I'm ready to go with whatever I need for the day's lesson. Miquon is going great (we are working through the orange book, so it is mostly review for her) and she hasn't fought me on Singapore once. She only works on math for about 40-50 minutes a day and is ahead of schedule. I love, love, love the Singapore/Miquon combo for this grade. Easy, works well, makes sense, 'nuff said.

Overall, it's a start. This is her first two weeks ever of being homeschooled so I expected an adjustment period. I think we're all glad she's home.

El:

• Science unit on germs, antibodies, and contagious diseases. Read the first 1/3 of this biography about Isaac Newton and started a unit on gravity.
• Working on learning more about and using Google Sketchup
• Finished a Singapore math unit on metric capacity measurement (addition and subtraction.) Tried to start "Life of Fred Fractions" but we will have to hold off until he learns multiple digit multiplication. (i.e. 459 X 67.) Oddly, he can use long division to divide by double digits (which has not yet been covered in Singapore, so I'm not sure how he learned it) but has yet to learn how to handle these numbers in multiplication. He can do it in his head if the numbers are smaller (like 459 X 67) but he starts to have problems when the numbers get bigger.
• Finished Spelling Power lv. E, started lv. F and did 2 weeks of Evan-Moor Daily Paragraph Editing
• Read Grammar Town, through "linking verbs"
• History: SOTW2, First 2 Chapters (Fall of Rome & Celts, Angles & Saxons.) Watched clips from "The Dark Ages" on Netflix. Also, the Celtic story of Craith from SOTW2 is retold in this Russian folktale, so we did a brief comparative analysis of the two versions. It was just a "happy accident" kind of thing: We read one of our library books the day after reading the Craith story and we both went, "HEY! This sounds familiar!"
• Started Intermediate Language Lessons. This is a tiny little book from 100+ years ago that is just perfect for where El is right now in writing. 

This little book contains three "years" of lessons, thought I expect we'll make it through in two or less. Here it is for free, if you're into that kind of thing. ;) You can also download the free answer key here. 

• Learned about drawing in one-point perspective

The first 2 weeks of fourth grade seemed to go very smoothly for El. He was definitely doing a lot more independent work since I was working with his sister, but he handled it well. I think he's going to have a great year.

There wasn't a lot of school work the kids could really do together, but we did fit in some cooking and an awesome hike!

There's an Em in this pic. You just have to look closely.

Making mini-quiche cups (recipe here)

One week at a time (Planning for two children)

I want to create a separate post dedicated to planning before I write our first week's wrap up. This was our first week of school and it helped to have our weekly plan written out so that the kids could see what was expected of them. I did this in a couple of different ways.

First of all, I found this awesome download of a weekly checklist on Pinterest. I taped a copy to the kids' weekly folders (I haven't perfected the folders. They each just have a file folder filled with things they need to work on that week, and as they finish them I put the finished items back into the folders. At the end of the week I will empty them out and put all the finished papers in the correct place. NOTE TO SELF: Week one just ended! Do that thing you just said you were going to do.)

Second, I cut pages out of a standard lesson plan book (here is a free 2-page download similar to the one I had) and pasted them to a large piece of construction paper. I made two double-sided pages like this, with one on each side so I could plan for one child and while looking at the previous week's plans. I then had both pages laminated. I can write on the pages with wet erase markers and they just wipe off with a damp cloth.

Sorry. I know this pic is horrible. The light was reflecting off of laminated pages.

I hung both pages up on a bulletin board and then (after this picture was taken :p) hung the board up next to where we do most of our school work. Each child can see his or her own plans for the week.

I also found this helpful webpage from Donna Young, which offers downloads of lesson planning pages to use with more than one child. I really like the 5X7 2-child planning pages which offer separate sections for each child and then a section for the subjects the children do together. I haven't used this yet, but it looks like it would be helpful if I need a planner page for just me.

Filling the Physics Gap

Part of my science stash

I am SO excited to have discovered that Life of Fred is coming out with an elementary physics text in a week or so. Science is my last big planning hurdle for the upcoming year. I have a crate full of science-y books, a couple of awesome science encyclopedias (see above,) Evan-Moor "Read & Understand Science" units, Physics Experiments for Children, Snap Circuits, and a couple of building kits. What I didn't have, though, was a cohesive plan to make sure El got a basic understanding of middle school physics.

Thank you Stanley Schmidt!

I was already going to have El work through the first 2 Life of Fred books, Fractions and Decimals & Percents, sometime this year. I had no idea that the author was writing a book to fit in right after D&P for grammar/logic stage physics. This works out perfectly. I will work through my "hither, thither, and yon" DIY science with both kids and then hopefully El will have finished the 2 math books and be ready for LoF Physics sometime in the spring semester.  

CLICK HERE for a sample of Life of Fred Elementary Physics which should be released mid/late August 2012.

Elementary Physics

And, hey, while I'm here and on the subject, I'm might as well add some awesome science links, right? Here are a few of the science websites we continue to enjoy:

• BBC's KS2 Bitesize- Middle School Science 
• Frostbite theater (and really everything else over at the Jefferson Lab website)
• Sciencebob.com
• Brainpop Science (the freebies) 
• Howstuffworks Science
• Internet4Classrooms Science Resources
• Also, Bill Nye and Magic School Bus shows on YouTube

Reader's Response Notebooks

Today I put together Reader's Response Notebooks for both kids. I chose the inserts and sections from a variety of sources which I wanted to share here.

First of all, the notebooks are based loosely on the Fountas & Pinnell Reader's Notebook. If you don't mind that they come in a 5-pack, don't want to deal with putting together your own, and don't need to customize every little thing, this printed reader's notebook is the way to go.

The following sections are included in the F & P Notebooks:

• Reading List with columns for title, author, genre, and date completed and a column to rate book as easy, just right, or challenging. 
• Books To Read page 
• Genre list with descriptions of each 
• Guidelines for preparing for a group discussion about the book
• Letter from the teacher about how she and the students will communicate with each other by writing response letters 
• Letter form to refer to when writing letters 
• Revising and Editing Tools page
• List of ways to respond 
• Section for writing letters
• Section for guided reading

For everyone else, you can put together your reader's notebook using the many resources available online, including:

• The Reader's Notebook page from Scholastic.com describes what one classroom teacher includes in each section of her notebooks.
• Reading Graphic Organizers and Printables
• Reader's Notebook downloads from Mrs. Newingham's third grade classroom (I used most of these, but some had to be tweaked to fit a homeschool environment)

My notebooks turned out like this:

Decorated covers, with El's cover left blank for him to decorate. Sticky tabs on the side for the main sections.

Reading Log

"Lists" section includes things like "Books I Plan to Read" and "Authors I Like"

"Genres" section includes a short definition of the different types of literature as well as a genre graph

Reading Goals. If you don't know where to begin with these, a great starting place is the Reading Informative Texts and Reading Literature guidelines in the Common Core State Standards for ELA.

Again, most of the pages pictured were downloaded from this page. 

At the end of the notebook you can include a reference section with commonly used things like character traits, a cursive letter reference, or anything else your child might find helpful. What you include or exclude from this section (and, really, the whole notebook) is totally up to you and will depend largely on your child's grade and ability level. My 2nd grader will get a cursive reference page once she learns cursive, whereas my 4th grader has this Thinking Stems document to help him come up with writing ideas.

If you don't want to bother with the notebook at all, here are some awesome reader response task cards you could print out, laminate, and stick on a metal ring (or put in an index card box, or whatever.) These were written for a third grade class, but they could easily work with homeschooled 2nd graders up to fourth or fifth graders.

There you have it! I am once step closer to being ready for the new school year... and have once again killed an ink cartridge <Grrr!>

Homemade School Supplies

The 50 cent composition notebooks were fine and dandy for El last year, but apparently Em expects more from her school supplies. Here are some cute notebook covers I made for her yesterday:

And a binder cover...

I didn't use a pattern or tutorial, but there are plenty of resources online if you want to make something like this. (Here is a cute one.) Em doesn't know about these yet; I plan on giving them to her on the first day of school... which is a date still to be determined (probably August 23 or August 27.) 

Seven Wonders Unit

We recently finished our history book (Story of the World: Ancients by Susan Wise Bauer) and I didn't want to begin the Middle Ages book until our next year "officially" begins next month. I found a neat book at the library about the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World and we decided to do a unit reviewing the Wonders we learned about throughout the past year (and learning about the 2 or 3 Wonders we missed.)

First, El made a layered foldable (directions here) with 8 tabs. Each day, we would read one chapter in the book Seven Wonders of the Ancient World by Lynn Curlee. Then he would draw a picture of the "Wonder" (often an interpretation since we don't know how the actual ancient monument would have looked.) Underneath that, he would write a little about it. He chose to write the height and estimated date next to his drawing. Finally, he would go over to our timeline and add the dates of the monument's completion and its final demise (if the dates were listed.)

Drawing the Colossus of Rhodes

The Mausoleum at Halicarnassus

El's (almost complete!) 7 Wonders foldable

My favorite drawing, the Statue of Zeus at Olympia

After this was all done, we would hit Google and YouTube up for extra ancient fun. We especially liked the videos on The Museum of UnNatural Mystery's YouTube page, but there are many, many others to choose from.


El had a lot of fun working on this unit!

My Favorite Time of Year

The week or so that stretches from the summer solstice to the Fourth of July is my absolute favorite time of year. Okay, maybe it has something to do with the fact that I was born during that time, but that's not entirely it. I just love the long, hot days of summer, the thunderstorms that cool the air at night, the jars of lightning bugs and lemonade (separate jars, of course) ;-) my homemade iced coffee drinks, fresh local produce, bright mornings and no bothersome pollen or flu viruses floating around. Sometimes you have chilly nights in early June. Sometimes you have dead grass or ragweed in the air in August. From the solstice until the Fourth, though, it's just quintessential summer.

Beets, blueberries, a beautiful pepper and some local honey all for $8: I love farmers' markets!

Em decorates a homemade birthday cake for mom with "fireworks"

We have been taking it pretty easy with school. I planned a full, 5-day week last week and we have been working through it leisurely over a 2-week period.

El, making a foldable book of the 7 Wonders of the Ancient World.

El has been working on a creative writing unit to go along with The Little Prince. Basically, he copies the first two or three sentences from the first paragraph of a chapter, then he predicts what will happen next. I have found that this works much better than open-ended journal prompts for El. Prediction involves creative writing, but at the end of the day you can go back to the already-written story and safely move along to an already-written next chapter. This method presents its own difficulties for a child with some occasional perfectionist tendencies, but for whatever reason it still seems to be far less daunting than those dreaded open-ended journal prompts were.

I really am amazed at how far his writing has come since the beginning of the year. Here are a couple of sentences from September:
Once I wound up in a time macine. Bad: titanik! Good: seince! I was born after the ship sank I wasn't really on the ship meaning I could not sink. So I was able to save people!

Here are a couple of sentences from the other day:
I was looking for cactus water when I came across a boy, standing by a large piece of metal. I asked him what he was doing and he said "Waiting for help." I told him he couldn't just stand there so he came with me and showed me where a grove of cacti were.

We weren't really able to focus on any kind of nonfiction writing this year because, when he began grade 3, El was really struggling with forming basic sentences. As I wrote earlier in the year, he would write a few words then start drawing pictures with thought or speech bubbles. He would usually just end with just pictures or words like "WHAM!" and "Pow!" or, the always funny, "Seince!" (Science.) I would love to say that I discovered some amazing curriculum or method which helped him learn to write better sentences, but I think it had far less to do with writing instruction and more to do with just reading well-written books. And time. And maturity. (And less exposure to fragment-happy word-inventing blogtastic writers like his mom.)

Speaking of well-written books, we just finished up the Narnia series, which was highly enjoyed by all. Most surprising, though, is our current read-aloud: Where the Mountain Meets the Moon by Grace Lin. Wow! Books like this are the reason I can't really schedule literature ahead of time. You never know what will catch our eye in the library and turn out to be one of the best books of the year. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who loves folk tales or Wonderlandesque adventures.