Weekly Report: Week 13

I can't believe we're more than a third of the way through with school. It feels like school started a couple of weeks ago, not a few months ago.

We had a light week this week due to several things all crashing together at once. First, my laptop died, and with it our daily schedule that I didn't have memorized or written anywhere. The schedule was written into a school bell program that kept us on track throughout the day...time for math, time for spelling, time for _____, etc. Without that, it's been harder to keep on top of our work. Also on that computer was my spelling software, SpellQuizzer. The desktop I am using doesn't have a microphone so we can't do spelling and vocabulary the way we were. I'm having to adjust to a less enjoyable, less efficient way of doing both of those for the time being. With the holiday coming up, our virtual academy moved reporting deadlines up, so I have monthly reviews to get done by tomorrow (these weekly reports on my blog make doing them much easier, btw). I'm also going out of town next week and have all of the preparations for that. Trying to get it all done on top of my already too full schedule is impossible. Something had to give...and school it gave.

Mika:

Language Arts: Mika covered two more spelling lists and the words missed last week for a total of 56 words. She has the two misspelled words down now. One list, which included ou and ow words like tower, announcer, and thousands, was passed on the pretest. The second list covered qu words included words like questioned, frequently, equator, unique, quantities, and equality. She missed two on the pretest and got them on the final test. She got all four of her sentences correct for grammar. She's analyzing sentences such as "She felt a strange perplexity about the reasons for the change" for parts of speech, parts of a sentence, phrases, clauses, and type of sentences. The sentences are getting more challenging with compound predicts, direct and indirect objects, or multiple phrases. Mika's vocabulary words this week were serene, acute, grotesque, condescend, and odious. We skipped poetry and writing this week.

Math: I've been trying to get Mika caught up on math ever since we had to redo that one week. This week, she finished page F of lesson 11, pages C, D, and D of lesson 12, and pages A, B, and C of lesson 13. The last lesson was the new material scheduled for this week. It covered prime factorization using factor trees and reducing fractions using prime factors. She seems to be getting it, though I've noticed she needs a little bit more hand holding than she used to.

Life Skills: We skipped life skills this week.

Health and Fitness: We were so busy that I didn't remember to get Mika on the Wii for PE this week, though we did attend a couple of play dates that included active play. On Tuesday, we met another family at one of the area children's museums. On Wednesday, we got together with a group of homeschoolers and the kids enjoyed the lack of rain outside.

Technology: Mika went to her computer class where they worked on Scratch from the MIT website again.


Sam:

Language Arts: Sam's spelling list contained 24 words with the long i sound and four previously misspelled words. He got the misspelled words correct this time. He misspelled science on his pretest but got it right for the final test. Sam loves analyzing sentences for grammar. He likes to sit with me and talk me through the sentences as he's doing them. He's doing pretty good with them (better than I expected) and I only had to discuss two issues with him. One sentence had an adverb modifying an adjective. He thought it was just another adjective. The other had a direct object, the first one he's come to. Sam's vocabulary focused on words with the Latin stem "re". We worked on them for two weeks. We skipped poetry and writing this week.

Math: Sam completed lessons 19 through 23 in math this week. They covered solving for the unknown where the coefficients and/or other numbers are decimals, dividing decimals by decimals, and how to handle remainders when dividing decimals (rounding, repeating decimals, and leaving the remainder as a fraction. The latter one is weird because you end up with an answer that has both a decimal and a fraction. However, the reason for teaching it makes sense; it's for percents. He also learned how to convert any fraction to a decimal or percent.

Health and Fitness: Sam attended taekwondo classes for nine hours this week. He participated in a tournament last Saturday, and now he is preparing to test for his brown belt next Saturday.

Life Skills: We skipped life skills this week.


Both:

Language Arts: We finished listening to Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince this week. What an ending! We started Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Friday night and listened to the whole first CD in one sitting. The kids both finished the last of the Warriors books owned by our library system. The only ones they haven't read are the "Manga" part of the series which are graphic novels. Mika is now reading Take Your Best Shot (see the right side bar). Sam is reading Redwall. For literature, we are reading and analyzing The Cricket in Times Square.

Math: We did Venn Perplexors this week and three problems from our Math Olympia book. We're focusing on problems with area. One type of area problem we've encountered in the book gives a larger space in one unit that needs to be covered with something smaller given in another unit. The kids have to figure out to change the units to match, determine the area of the larger space, determine the area of the smaller space, and then divide the area of the big thing by the area of the little things. The other type of problem gives an odd-shaped shape with some of the dimensions, and then you have to find the area.

History: History this week covered the Vikings. We learned about the Viking invasion of the Franks and Eric the Red's discovery of Greenland. We also read about Leif Ericsson's discovery of North America. The kids completed a map page to go with the lesson and review questions from the activity guide. They are also in the process of making Viking plank houses out of card stock and craft sticks.

Science: We skipped science this week.

Social Studies: We skipped social studies this week.

Fine Arts: We skipped fine arts this week.