Wrap Up: Sem. 2, Wk. 5

• This week in math has been a lot of review of addition and subtraction word problems. El has been learning when to use the comparison bar model and when to use the part-whole bar model.

In case you don't know what I'm talking about.

• Grammar has us working on prepositions, prepositional phrases, and the objects of prepositions. Thankfully, no diagramming of prepositional phrases this year.
• El is working on  "fact v. opinion" in writing. He is still having a bit of a hard time differentiating between the two.
• In science, we learned about Sally Fox and we went through another "states of matter" chemistry lesson.
• History was definitely here, there and everywhere this week. Harriet Tubman, Abraham Lincoln, and... early American civilizations? Yeah. No flow, but whatever.
• For our Friday "building construction" discussion (I have to figure out what to call this: Architecture? Construction? Legos in Real Life?) we talked about steel beams and steel-reinforced concrete beams. We also learned about elastic v. plastic deformation & deflection.  
• We started The Hobbit two weeks ago and I think we're now 3/4 of the way through the book. The kids absolutely LOVE it!
• We were supposed to go to the library today but it is super snowy, yucky, and cold outside so instead we ate microwaved S'mores.  We'll get to the library sometime in the next few days.

Here are a couple of El's latest drawings:

Map of his "ideal city." In geography, we have been reviewing cardinal and ordinal directions and learning a little about cartography.

El practices drawing birds

Pyrimids of Giza, another drawing inspired by the Draw 50 Buildings book.

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Em finally decided she was ready to start learning some guitar chords. Here she is, rocking an Em (E minor) chord. She learned Em and A7, and she did a great job!