Weekly Report: Week 11

I'm very late in posting my weekly report. Here's what we accomplished last week:

Mika:

Language Arts: Mika made it through another 48 spelling words. She missed a couple on the first practice (ie. butcher, courtesy, and porridge) but got them right for the test. She analyzed four more sentences for parts of speech, parts of a sentence, phrases and clauses, and type of sentence. Because of one of the sentences, we'll be taking a week to take a closer look at active and passive tense verbs. I'm sure they'll end up coming up in grammar in a later year; it's what usually happens when I teach beyond the curriculum (LOL). We finally started vocabulary for the year. She reviewed some of last year's lessons (we started the book last year but didn't finish). She covered 5 Latin stems (bi, sub, de, pre, super) and words using them like prelude, superfluous, and deduce. We also finally started our poetry for the year. Mika read about various sounds in poetry like different types of rhyme, alliteration, consonance, and assonance. Mika's writing assignment this week was the last of the first lesson which covered keyword outlines and using the which clause to join two sentences. Her paragraph was more on cephalopods. She continues to practice cursive.

Math: We reviewed multiplying fractions again. She did fine the week we covered them but got confused the next week when she tried to combine what she learned about multiplying with what she learned about dividing. She also didn't understand dividing so we covered those again too. She seems to have gotten it down but I'll keep a close eye on her cumulative review worksheets. We also started what should have been last week's lesson on factorization and greatest common factors. We also covered a new type of problem solving problem. Our new set involves areas.

Health and Fitness: The weather is too cold for regular playing outside so Mika is using the Wii for PE now. She spends 30 minutes a day playing either Dance Dance Revolution or Wii Fit.

Technology: Mika learned about yet another program, called Doga, in her Computer Clubhouse class. It's a CGA (computer graphics animation) program. They made glowing jack-o-lanterns with it.


Sam:

Language Arts: Sam got all 20 of his spelling words correct. They were words with the long a sound, which included all spellings of the sound. Some of his words were great, rain, grade, okay, taste, and neighbor. Sam's vocabulary was to read the introduction of the text which discussed Roman architecture: the arch. It uses the analogy of how an arch, built by putting together pieces in just the right way, creates something beautiful, strong, and useful, and then compares that to how our words came from Latin stems which are put together to make words. He also learned about the stem "pre" and words using it (predict, preview, prevent, preschool, precede, prepare, and preposition). In poetry, he read about using sounds to hint at the poems meaning. He also learned about personification. His writing assignment this week was a paragraph on pillbugs. Sam is working hard to learn cursive letters.

Math: Sam covered five more chapters of Math-U-See Zeta. They covered converting simple percents to decimals and vice versa. It also covered changing mixed numbers into percents greater than 100 and then into a decimal. One chapter covered making and reading pie graphs. Finally, there was some multiplying 3 and 4 digit decimal numbers and more on converting within the metric system. I think he's covered the entire metric system now and actually remembers all of the prefixes from kilo down to milli.

Health and Fitness: Sam participated in 7 hours of taekwondo. Sparring class was cancelled due to Halloween. He's working on sharpening up his form and learning his breaking technique for a tournament he's going to this Saturday. He has do break 6 boards in his routine.

Life Skills: This week's life skills focused on ground beef. Sam already knows how to brown ground beef and helped me with that once this week. I'll ensure we eat some ground beef meals in the coming weeks so the kids can learn more about making things like meatloaf, meatballs, and casseroles, if I can find a dairy free one.


Both:

Language Arts: We discussed the plot line of Saint George and the Dragon this week.

History: The kids read about Charles the Hammer and Charlemagne in history this week. I created worksheets for them to fill out while reading to help with comprehension and retention. The questions were a variety of multiple choice and short answer. This has been a change I'm trying in order to find more time for housework, my 2 year old, and the baby. They also completed the corresponding map work and the beginnings of a craft (colored 10 people from the reading).

Science: We read chapter 3 in our science book. It covered a whole lot about feathers: all about molting, different types of feathers, the parts of a feather, how birds get their colors, and bathing practices of birds. The kids completed a 3 page worksheet to go with the chapter that I created. They also completed an experiment on glider design from the first chapter. This week, we'll focus on doing all of the activities and experiments from chapter 2 and 3.

Fine Arts: Sam had worked ahead on his own so I had Mika take some time to catch up. She completed the practice drawings on "surface" which is placing things higher or lower on the page to make them appear closer or further away. We're ready to pick up again this week.