Friday, September 17, 2010

Week 7

We had a good productive week.  We even finished our school work half an hour early today so the kids are enjoying computer or Wii time early.  Both activities are banned during school hours; we find that they have improved attitudes and performance when they aren't rushing to get things done in order to get on the computer.

Language Arts
Grammar this week focused on types of clauses and sentences.  They read about dependent and independent clauses and how they combine to form simple, compound, complex, and compound-complex sentences.  They learned about narrative, interrogative, exclamatory, and imperative sentences.  They began studying the examples of sentence analysis in the back of the book.  They are almost done with their grammar texts and should be analyzing sentences after next week.  Each kid had five more Latin stems for vocabulary this week.  Sam got an A- on his cumulative quiz; Mika earned a B+.  For poetry, Mika learned about reversals while Sam read about alliteration, assonance, and consonance.  Both worked on their rough draft paragraphs about Jamestown using IEW's method of creating an outline from a source text.  After a good talk about attitude and effort, both gave me a good page of handwriting.

This is exceptionally good handwriting for Mika.  I was quite happy with her effort.

Sam gave me a good printed page because he's just learning his cursive letters.

Math

Mika learned how to write decimal numbers using exponential notion.  She also had to take a number writing in exponential notation and writing it in standard notation.  At first, she got mixed up if there was a 0 in the middle of the number but she's got it now.  Sam worked on solving for the unknown with one variable.  We also completed Olympiad 3 from the MOEMS book.

History

History this week covered James I of England, who also happened to be James VI of Scotland, and Jamestown.  We read the chapter in Story of the World, completed a map page, and played a game.  The game was a simple affair where one player secretly placed wealth into four "ships" and then tried to influence how the investor invested in each ship.  Depending on how the investor placed his money, he earned a portion of the wealth brought back by that ship.  The other player got the other portion.  The winner was determined by who had the most wealth.  The idea was that the investor could earn or lose money depending on how the ships fared on their trips.  We also had a colonial era meal:



There was colonial pottage which turned out okay.  Only Josh refused to eat it.  It contained beef, oatmeal, lettuce, spinach, endive, cauliflower, green cabbage, onion, salt, pepper, and wine vinegar.

There was parkin.  This cake was made with little sugar and lots of molasses.  If you don't like molasses stay away from parkin.  Only Scott would eat it.




Then there was homemade bread, sharp cheese, apples, grapes, and plums.  I included these so the kids would have something to eat in case the pottage proved inedible.

We also continued reading The Broken Blade.  We'll be finished on Monday.  I've enjoyed this book; I'm glad we read it and will make sure to cover it again with the littles.

Science

Zoology this week covered seals, sea lions, furred seals, and walruses.  We read through most of the chapter.  As we were reading, I showed the kids how to outline the material.  We focusing on learning study skills.  This chapter was perfect for that because there were no "Try This" activities, giving us more time.  Chemistry this week focused on chemical reactions.  We learned that there are four basic types chemical reactions: exchange, combination, decomposition, and displacement.  We learned that you can see evidence of a reaction taking place: bubbles, precipitation, heat, and color change and completed an experiment looking for evidence of a reaction.

The experiment consisted of taking regular household items and mixing small amounts to see if there was a reaction.  We mixed six different items together, systematically testing each combination for reactions.  Even Mika enjoyed this experiment.


This was the beginning of the experiment right after we finished our initial set up.


Here Mika is adding baking soda to all of the beakers.  After she was done, Sam added each of the other items to the baking soda to check for a reaction.  They took turns with one adding the tested item to all of the beakers and the other adding the other items to it.


Here Sam is adding lemon juice to each beaker to be tested.


Just for fun I added all of the leftover baking soda to the left over lemon juice so the kids could see what would happen when a larger amount was mixed.  They loved that!

Foreign Language
Sam worked on Korean Wednesday through Friday for 30-45 minutes each day.  I don't know what happened to Monday and Tuesday.  The way the reports print it looks like he completed each with 100% accuracy; what he really did was redo each section until he had 100% accuracy.  He's working on lesson 3 now.  Mika, on the other hand, is still waiting for our Rosetta Stone subscription to go through.  That should happen next week.

Fine Art

For art this week, we joined our friends as they are doing the same projects from the same website.


Yes, it looks like I'm sending secret hand signals to my friend and the kids are bored out of their skulls.  This was the beginning portion of the class where I told them about the artist and her background and gave them the initial directions for the project.  Once they started actually creating the art, they loved it.


This project was modeled after Sonia Delaunay who worked with geometric designs and bright colors.  This was Mika's finished project.


This was Sam's project.  He liked it so much that he completed another one at home.



My friend provided the paper.  We were using poster board because the website talked about coated paper and we thought the shiny side of the poster board would work just as well.  Unfortunately, the poster board she found didn't have a shiny side.  When I got home, I was able to find a piece and completed the project too. You can see that the colors are much brighter.  So, if you do this project, try to find coated paper or shiny poster board.

PE

Sam is still going to taekwondo classes.  He tests for his final belt before black next week.  We also began swimming classes again last week.  This week's classes was canceled so we'll be doing two classes next week.

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5 Comments:

Daisy said...

Your 8yo's handwriting is amazing. Sigh, I have no clue how to improve my son's horrible handwriting.

I love the looks of the yummy treats you made. I think we all would have liked that here.

Everyone did a fabulous job on the art projects.

Karen said...

The art projects are stunning! I'm going to have to go back and click on that art lesson link now ;)

Tonia said...

We have the "no screen time during school" rule too. It really helps keep us on track. Love the art project - they did a great job!

Dacia's School said...

WOW full week makes my little let's start slowly look well slow LOL Great art by the way

Bright Sky Mom said...

I think the food looks tasty -- although I'm not sure my children would agree about the pottage! The art project is really cool. I need to check the link!
Lee (5wolfcubs)