Weekly Report - Week 8

Here's what we accomplished this week:

Mika:

Language Arts: Mika got a 100% on her spelling test which included 22 words with the short u sound. I didn't have time to program in the second set of words, so she only did one set this week. For grammar, we spent some extra time devoted to gerunds and participial phrases. I didn't feel our text covered them well enough so I found a web page that covered them a bit more detail. That concludes our review of her grammar text, which she read last year. She'll begin analyzing sentences Monday. She also worked on her cursive skills.

Math: Mika's math lesson covered adding three fractions together, and provided three methods to do it. Her lesson tripped her up initially. It's not usual for her to need more than a short lesson, but she needed extra help this week. I believe she's got it now.

Health and Fitness: Not much activity for Mika other than a park day today. I need to get her started on the Wii again this year. She's not a sports-minded kid so I don't waste our time and money on organized sports for her.

Technology: Mika attended Computer Clubhouse again. This was her third class; they focused on stop action this class. Mika told me that they worked in groups. Her group filmed toy dinosaurs jumping on cars, running into the camera, and making the camera fall over. I wish I could see her creations; I need to call the teacher about that since Scott has been dropping her off.


Sam:

Language Arts: Sam got another 100% on his spelling test containing 20 words with the short i sound. He read about interjections, a review of the parts of speech, prepositional phrases, and clauses. He wasn't suppose to read all of this, but he did. He's now finished with Grammar Island and will start Sentence Island on Monday. He also began learning cursive.

Math: Sam completed all 30 lesson tests and the unit tests for Epsilon. He earned a 90% overall. His biggest issue is carelessness. He tends to not pay attention to details. He'll add on a subtraction problem because he didn't notice the minus sign, for example. We spent this week going over all of the problems he missed, and it is apparent that he knows the work just fine. He'll take the final exam tomorrow because he wants to start Zeta on Monday. He also completed four Perplexor problems, and we did two problem solving problems. I changed the way we are working through the book when I found that they list the problems by type in the back of the book. Now, we going through all of the problems by type rather than in order. My hope is that the thought processes for each problem type will click in once they realize that they've seen a similar problem before.

Health and Fitness: Sam went to taekwondo for four classes this week. He missed a class so we could attend a play. We're hoping to start having him attend the sparring classes on Saturday afternoons when we are available. His conditioning isn't what it was last year before we scaled back for the summer but returning to two hours a night just isn't happening this year.


Both:

Language Arts: We finished listening to Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Everyone really enjoyed it; I think it was the best one so far.

We read and discussed A Bargain for Frances using Teaching the Classics plot map. I want to find my notes from the Washington Homeschool Organization seminar I attended because this was the book we covered in that seminar as an example. I think I got the climax wrong; I have such a hard time picking them out sometimes.

We also completed our second writing assignment using a paragraph from our Kingfisher animal encyclopedia. The paragraph was a general one on birds and flight to go with our science lesson but it wasn't all that well-written, making our paragraphs more difficult. With Sam, I stuck with the lesson plan: create a keyword outline and write the paragraph from that. With Mika, I discussed the reasons why the paragraph wasn't well-written (it contained information that did not support the topic sentence) and had her edit her paragraph to properly support the topic sentence and add a clincher/conclusion sentence. Here are their finalized paragraphs:

Mika's:

Birds have several features that help them get off the ground. Hollow bones, slender legs, and a beak instead of jaws reduce their weight. Their most important features are their feathers and wings. Feathers are useful in a number of ways; they provide lift, keep the bird streamlined, and provide heat. These features are what make flight possible.

Sam's

Birds have several features that help them fly. They have hollow bones, slender feet, and a beak, which weighs less than jaws. The most important features are feathers and wings. Feathers help the bird lift, let the bird fly streamlined, and keep it warm. There are 9,000 species of birds. They lay hard-shelled eggs and protect their young.

History: Our history chapter this week covered the early people in Australia and New Zealand.

Science: We read about extinction, which finished up the first chapter of our science curriculum. We had to skip an experiment because we haven't yet received the supplies, but will do it when they arrive.

Social Studies: We read about and discussed a lesson called "Keep an I Out." It was basically about being careful not to always bring the conversation back onto yourself. It also gave an example that they called "out ouching" the other person; that's where you empathize by telling the person you experienced something similar but then go on to show how your experience was worse. We also reviewed the previous concepts.

Fine Arts: We began our next set of drawing lessons which covered the technique surface. Surface is where anything drawn lower on the paper appears closer (unless it is a drawing in space/air). It also fools the eye into making something look three dimensional because one part of the (insert item here) is drawn lower to make it look closer. Our first surface drawing was a cattail in water.

We also attended a play of Charlotte's Web. It was a fun, cute play which we enjoyed.

Life Skills: Our focus in the kitchen was on yeast bread. We didn't have much time to dedicate to lessons so we discussed the usual steps for making bread by hand but practiced my usual method of making bread, having the machine make the dough. After having him load and start the machine, the kids made bread sculptures with their bread. Mika made a turtle and Sam made the snowman.

Kids making their bread sculptures.

Fun bread!