Week 3 found me frustrated that my usual before-school-starts work wasn't done. Frustrated enough, in fact, it become a priority this week. It's been a long week, but I got a lot done. A good amount of our work is now planned out in Homeschool Tracker Plus. I still need to do the last half of history, our writing, three more art projects (I didn't have enough chosen to fill the year), meteorology, and our astronomy labs. Sounds like a lot left to do when I list it out! But at least half of history is done; my kids didn't do history this week because I forgot to add it to this week's assignments before I printed their assignment sheets. That's how we've been getting through...crisis managing one day at a time. And it isn't fun! I also got a lot of copying and printing done; now I just have to get that organized into their binders. I figure I'll be ready to really work with my younger two by January at this rate!
Anyway, here's how the actual work went:
Language Arts:
Mikaela had a difficult assignment (actually she's not done yet) in grammar that had her analyzing the verbs in 13 sentences from Julius Caesar. She had to make the following observations: regular/irregular, action/linking/being, tense, person, number, mood, transitive/intransitive, and voice. It became a lesson in study skills: how to look back and find the information you need to complete an assignment. She started a new lesson on vocabulary, read about stops in poetry, and started research for a writing assignment.
Samuel finished the parts of speech section of his grammar book and moved onto the parts of a sentence section. He completed lesson 3 in vocabulary, which was a stems lesson. In poetry, he read about consonants and reversals. He also started his writing assignment by picking three topics for his essay.
Math:
Mikaela is enjoying math right now. It's the easy geometry vocabulary chapters at the end of Zeta. She's learned what points, line segments, lines, rays, plans, and angles are and how to name them properly.
Samuel and I are learning a lot but struggling with his math. We watched the online video, read the examples in the book, attempted the practice problems (there are usually 4-9 problems per section), and got half of them wrong. The topics were counting with casework and complimentary counting. I'm waffling between plugging along because we ARE learning a lot and going way back to their version of a topic we've already covered (ie. prealgebra or algebra).
History:
We didn't do history this week, because I apparently forgot to add it to Homeschool Tracker.
Science:
Mikaela's astronomy had us outside learning how you can focus the sun's energy with a magnifying glass. It started with burning chocolate chips and progressed to paper and leaves. The kids LOVED it, of course. We couldn't do our lab for the week because clouds moved in. The lab I had planned required clear night skies. The next lab required sunny days. I didn't have the materials copied for any other labs so I was stuck with nothing we could do.
Sam's astronomy proved that he needed a study skills lesson, as well. He wasn't prepared for his test, and I caught him looking up the answers in his book. We spent the week going back through the chapter, but this time, I helped him determine what information might be important and take notes. The book makes note-taking easy because each chapter begins with a list of objectives. I had him write each objective on a separate sheet of paper and write notes under the appropriate objective. He ended up getting 87% on the test when he retook it.
Both kids read about air pressure and created a barometer. We've been watching the pressure changes the rest of the week.
Mikaela made a wet barometer. It was the more difficult one to make, and it failed overnight. At least we learned how they are suppose to work, right?
Sam made a dry barometer. His is still working. According to his barometer, the wet weather we got right after will only last a short while. The weather forecast agrees.
In geology, we examined sugar in three different solid states: as it came, crushed, and re-solidified after being melted. The point was to show that the same "element" can be solid yet still look dramatically different. We learned two weeks ago that most common rocks have eight different elements. If each of those eight elements can look dramatically different, how many different looking rocks can there be? Lots. Actually, we pulled out some of Sam's math from last week and did a theoretical problem to find that the number of possibilities is very high.
Here's Sam examining the sugars at 10x magnification.
Anyway, here's how the actual work went:
Language Arts:
Mikaela had a difficult assignment (actually she's not done yet) in grammar that had her analyzing the verbs in 13 sentences from Julius Caesar. She had to make the following observations: regular/irregular, action/linking/being, tense, person, number, mood, transitive/intransitive, and voice. It became a lesson in study skills: how to look back and find the information you need to complete an assignment. She started a new lesson on vocabulary, read about stops in poetry, and started research for a writing assignment.
Samuel finished the parts of speech section of his grammar book and moved onto the parts of a sentence section. He completed lesson 3 in vocabulary, which was a stems lesson. In poetry, he read about consonants and reversals. He also started his writing assignment by picking three topics for his essay.
Math:
Mikaela is enjoying math right now. It's the easy geometry vocabulary chapters at the end of Zeta. She's learned what points, line segments, lines, rays, plans, and angles are and how to name them properly.
Samuel and I are learning a lot but struggling with his math. We watched the online video, read the examples in the book, attempted the practice problems (there are usually 4-9 problems per section), and got half of them wrong. The topics were counting with casework and complimentary counting. I'm waffling between plugging along because we ARE learning a lot and going way back to their version of a topic we've already covered (ie. prealgebra or algebra).
History:
We didn't do history this week, because I apparently forgot to add it to Homeschool Tracker.
Science:
Mikaela's astronomy had us outside learning how you can focus the sun's energy with a magnifying glass. It started with burning chocolate chips and progressed to paper and leaves. The kids LOVED it, of course. We couldn't do our lab for the week because clouds moved in. The lab I had planned required clear night skies. The next lab required sunny days. I didn't have the materials copied for any other labs so I was stuck with nothing we could do.
Sam's astronomy proved that he needed a study skills lesson, as well. He wasn't prepared for his test, and I caught him looking up the answers in his book. We spent the week going back through the chapter, but this time, I helped him determine what information might be important and take notes. The book makes note-taking easy because each chapter begins with a list of objectives. I had him write each objective on a separate sheet of paper and write notes under the appropriate objective. He ended up getting 87% on the test when he retook it.
Both kids read about air pressure and created a barometer. We've been watching the pressure changes the rest of the week.
Mikaela made a wet barometer. It was the more difficult one to make, and it failed overnight. At least we learned how they are suppose to work, right?
Sam made a dry barometer. His is still working. According to his barometer, the wet weather we got right after will only last a short while. The weather forecast agrees.
In geology, we examined sugar in three different solid states: as it came, crushed, and re-solidified after being melted. The point was to show that the same "element" can be solid yet still look dramatically different. We learned two weeks ago that most common rocks have eight different elements. If each of those eight elements can look dramatically different, how many different looking rocks can there be? Lots. Actually, we pulled out some of Sam's math from last week and did a theoretical problem to find that the number of possibilities is very high.
Here's Sam examining the sugars at 10x magnification.
Here's the sugar closeup.
Foreign Language:
Mikaela and Samuel each completed three thirty-minute sessions on Rosetta Stone.
Fine Art:
I got busy, and we didn't get around to doing our drawing lesson this week.
PE
Mikaela didn't do PE this week. She'll start an 8 week session of flag football soon, but other than that, we don't have PE plans for her at this point.
Samuel participated in his tae kwon do classes and completed an hour of his assistant instructor requirements for his next belt level.
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1 Comments:
I too haven't go the "before school starts" stuff all done. But things seem to be going ok I guess. :-) It looks like you are doing so much and so many fun things though too.
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