Down on the Farm with ChiknGirl

Weekly Wrap-Up Week 5 Sep 26 - Sep 30

That was a fast week.  I'm shocked that it is October already.

Math: Anneliese completed lessons 19 - 21 about rounding, estimating and comparing numbers.  She had a light bulb moment and now understands rounding and estimating.  She scored 96% on quiz 3.  She read chapters 15 - 18 of Life and Fred: Apples and has finished the book.  Trevor completed lessons 20 - 22 about pictographs and addition.  He scored 100% on quiz 3.

Language Arts: Anneliese is still plugging away at Grammar Island and read pages 92 - 113 last week.  She reviewed the eight parts of speech, learned about subjects, predicates and direct objects.  She started Music of the Hemisphere for poetry study and  read pages 4 - 31.  I picked up a copy of Editor in Chief A1 and she completed editing the first document.  She also completed step 13 in spelling and learned the 1-1-1 rule for adding vowel suffixes.  Trevor completed pages 24 - 27 of Printing Power and step 4 of spelling learning strategies to spell multi-syllabic words.  They both completed their literature study by reading various Aesop's Fables and narrating with words or pictures.  We all watched A Bug's Life, a take-off of the fable The Ants and the Grasshopper.

Social Studies: Anneliese and Trevor both completed week 5 in their respective Daily Geography books.  We worked on part 2 of lesson 3 for History Odyssey: Ancients.  We read a few pages of the Usborne Encyclopedia of World History about Sumer, we did a Sumerian math project and Anneliese started a weaving project since the Sumerians were some of the first people to weave cloth.

Science:We continued on with unit 3 of Chemistry learning about atomic numbers.  We tested milk to see if it is an element, it is not, and we made a flip-book of the first 1 elements, drawing all the neurons, protons, and electrons.  Trevor read Simply Science: Atoms by Stewart to us.  Trevor attended the Budding Scientist class at the Tacoma Nature Center and learned about some local birds.

Electives: Anneliese completed lessons 9 - 12 of Getting Started with Latin as well as completing chapter 3 of Song School Latin with Trevor.  They both converse in Latin regularly and are enjoying their studies.  We had relatives from Germany in town last week and the kids had a conversation in Latin with them.  We read The Five Chinese Brothers and answered the questions listed in Suppose the Wolf Were an Octopus.  We completed lessons 4 of Artistic Pursuits learning about how pictures tell stories.  Trevor learned to ride his bike without training wheels early this week and we spent every afternoon riding bikes.  :)  Anneliese attended her first Girl Scout meeting of the school year.

Field Trips: No field trips this week.

 

Weekly Wrap-Up Week 4 Sep 19 - Sep 23

Is it horrible that I'm ready for a vacation already?  It isn't that school is going poorly or that I don't want to "do school" it's that I'm so busy and so tired all the time.  I need a break from life in general.  :)  Since I do not have pictures to share this week I'm including links.  Yay!  :(

Math:  Anneliese completed lessons 15 - 18 of Teaching Textbooks 4 covering rounding, estimating, pictographs, bar graphs and adding three or more numbers.  She read chapters 11 - 14 of Life of Fred: Apples .  Trevor completed lessons 16 - 19 of Teaching Textbooks 3 covering subtracting 10, adding nine, subtracting nine, rounding and estimating.

Language Arts:  Anneliese completed step 12 in All About Spelling Level 3 about vowel suffixes and Trevor  completed step 3 in All About Spelling level 2 about words ending with y.  Anneliese read pages 76 - 91 of Grammar Island .  She learned about prepositions, prepositional phrases and interjections.  Trevor completed pages 20 - 23 of Printing Power covering punctuation, Uu, Ii and Ee.  They both played at Kabongo.com which has reading comprehension games.

Social Studies:  Anneliese and Trevor completed Part 1 of Lesson 3 in History Odyssey - Ancients.  We read chapter 5 of Story of the World, completed pocket 2, Ancient Mesopotamia, in History Pockets: Ancient Civilizations, , watched a video about Ancient Mesopotamia, listened to The Mesopotamians by They Might Be Giants, made models of Sargon from Famous Figures of Ancient Times: Movable Paper Figures to Cut, Color, and Assemble , built a model of a ziggeraut from Ancient Egyptians and Their Neighbors: An Activity Guide and looked up and copied definitions for cuneiform and Mes0potamia.  They both completed week 4 in their Daily Geography Practice books.

Science:  Both children started unit 3, The Periodic Table, of RSO - Chemistry.  We started making our own periodic tables, matched element symbols to their names by finding them on the periodic table and attempted to write the symbol for our favorite element in lemon juice to keep it secret.  We could not get the lemon juice to discolor from heat and show up.  :(  We learned that not all experiments work out.

Electives:  Trevor completed chapter 2 of Song School Latin .  Anneliese has decided to tag along and now both of them are singing Latin songs all day.  I have to admit that the songs are catchy, I find myself singing them too.  Anneliese completed lessons 5 - 8 of Getting Started with Latin and learned farmer, I and and/both in Latin.  They both completed lesson 3 of Artistic Pursuits Book 1 about observation.  We read Cinderella by Marcia Brown and answered the questions from Suppose the Wolf were a Octopus.

Field Trips:  We took a field trip to Lattin's Country Cider Mill this week.  The kids got to try some fresh apple cider and a apple cider doughnut.  We fed goats, ducks, chickens, pheasant, peacocks, turkeys, pigs, sheep and goats.  I forgot to bring my camera.  :(

 

 

 

Weekly Wrap-Up Week 3 Sep 12 - Sep 16

I'm starting to feel like a broken record.  We had another fabulous week.  We hit a few bumps when the kids didn't feel well on Tuesday and Wednesday and we missed Girl Scouts and our planned field trip and then Thursday and Friday my mother was in town so we were a bit distracted.

Math:  Trevor completed lessons 12 - 15 in Teaching Textbooks 3 and quiz 2 with a score of 100%.  Anneliese completed lessons 12 - 14 in Teaching Textbooks 4 and quiz 2 with a score of 100%.  She also read chapters 4 - 10 of Life of Fred: Apples and completed all the problems at the end of the chapters.  Trevor has hit a small amount of new material, being angles, otherwise his work has all be review and Anneliese has all been review.  I hope we get to some new material soon.

Language Arts:  We read The Egyptian Cinderella and Temple Cat in our Classical House of Learning Literature program.  The kids did narration pages with pictures and brief descriptions.  Anneliese completed step 11 of All About Spelling 3 and Trevor completed step 2 of All About Spelling 2.  They both read for more than 30 minutes each day.  Trevor completed pages 16 - 19 of Printing Power, reviewing letters Aa, Dd and Gg.  Anneliese read and completed the work on pages 56 - 75 of Grammar Island.  She truly loves this program and is learning a lot.  I am too.  I didn't have any grammar in public school or in college.  :(

Science:  We completed unit 2 of RSO Chemistry.  We did labs called Parts of an Atom, Let's Be Positive and The First Ten.  In The First Ten the kids made atoms for the first ten elements on the peridodic table.  They showed their knowledge of neutrons and protons inthe nucleus and how the electrons are spaced on the energy levels.  We watched a video by They Might Be Giants to learn the colors of the spectrum, Roy G. Biv.

Social Studies:  Both children completed week 3 of their respective Daily Geography books.  For History Odyssey we read chapter 1 of Story of the World: Ancients, pages 4 & 5 of The Atlas of Ancient Civilizations about the birth of civilization and pages 42 & 43 in DK Prehistory about Catal Hoyuk.  We found Catal Hoyuk and Jericho on our map from the previous lesson and circled them.  We added a "first farmers" sticker to our timeline.  Trevor copied the word town into his notebook and Anneliese looked up the definition in the dictionary and copied it into her notebook.

Electives:  Anneliese completed lessons 1 - 4 of Getting Started with Latin.  She learned the words nauta and sum, that words can go in any order and that there are no articles in Latin.  Trevor completed lesson 1 of Song School Latin.  He loves this program and has been using the words he learned every day.  He learned salve, vale, magistra/magister and discipuli.  Both children completed lesson 2 in Artistic Pursuits book 1 about imagination.  They used watercolor crayons for the first time.

Field Trips:  We had a field trip to a local fire station that was planned by our local homeschool group to attend, but the children were feeling under the weather and we missed it.

Weekly Wrap-Up Week 2 Sep 5 - Sep 9

We had another fabulous week.  Every day my heart is warmed as my children say, "This is the best year of school ever, Mom!"  Their positive attitudes are encouraging me to continue working hard to find fun field trips and activities.  I hope the rest of our year goes this well.

Math:  Anneliese and Trevor both completed lessons 8 - 11 in their respective Teaching Textbook programs.  My order of Life of Fred book arrived this week and Anneliese jumped right into them.  She says she loves Fred.  I have read a chapter aloud to her and Trevor and Anneliese has read a few chapters to herself.  She is answering the questions after each chapter on a piece of graph paper that she keeps in the math section of her notebook.

Language Arts:  This week Anneliese read pages 30 - 54 of Grammar Island.  She read about adjectives, definite and indefinite articles, the sides of a sentence and verbs.  She began diagramming sentences with the knowledge she has so far.  Anneliese still loves grammar and she has started doing some notebooking about grammar definitions.  Anneliese completed lesson 10 of All About Spelling Level 3 and Trevor completed lesson 1 of All About Spelling 2.  He completed pages 12 - 15 in Printing Power, practicing his capital letters, numbers and the letters T & t.  They both listened to me read Mummies, Pyramids, and Pharaohs by gail Gibbons and Mummies in the Morning by Mary Pope Osborne.  They both drew a picture of a scene from Mummies in the Morning.

Science:  Trevor and Anneliese started unit 2 of chemistry which is about atoms.  They completed a lab about how small atoms are by putting scents in balloons and seeing if they could be smelled through the balloon and a lab about whether atoms move by watching food coloring diffuse in three different temperatures of water.  We read Atoms by Trumbauer and What's Smaller than a Pygmy Shrew? by Wells.

 Social Studies:  Anneliese and Trevor completed the first half of lesson 2 in History Odyssey - Ancients.  We read pages 108 & 109 of the Usborne Internet-Linked Encyclopedia of World History and The Best Book of Early People by Hynes.  They completed a map about the fertile crescent and found that area on our globe and wall map.  They both drew a picture of something they learned in this lesson, Anneliese drew early people in an igloo-shaped house and Trevor drew neanderthals in a cave with cave paintings.  They both observed the picture of the Lascaux cave paintings in the Essential History of Art.  Anneliese looked up and copied the definition of the word tribe and Trevor practiced his handwriting copying tribe.  Our geography books arrived this week.  Anneliese and Trevor completed weeks 1 and 2 for Daily Geography Practice grade 3 and grade 1, respectively.

Electives:  Our art supplies and curriculum arrived and we completed lesson 1 of Artistic Pursuits K-3 Book 1.  They used an ebony pencil and drew something they saw today or yesterday.  They both chose to draw pictures of each other riding their bikes yesterday.  We will start our Latin lessons next week.  Anneliese and Trevor listened to me read Stone Soup by Marcia Brown and answered the questions in Suppose the Wolf Were an Octopus K to 2.

Field Trips:  Friday our family went to the Washington State History Museum to view the exhibit Wrapped: The Search for the Essential Mummy.  We had lots of fun making rubbings of hieroglyphs, examining the sarcophagus and looking at the coffin that has prayers from the Book of the Dead written all over it.  He saw some hieroglyphs we recognized from Mummies in the Morning.  The kids completed the scavenger hunt in the Washington State history portion of the museum and got neat log pencils.  We picnicked on the steps of the UW Tacoma campus afterwards.  They both want to go back again soon.  Thank you to the King County Library for providing our pass.

PS  The pictures are terrible because they don't allow flash photography in the museum and no photography was allowed in the mummy exhibit.  Sorry.  :(

 

Weekly Wrap-Up Week 1 Aug 29 - Sep 2

Our first week of school is complete and it was fantastic.  We have all enjoyed the curriculum choices I made and each of us has been excited to get started every morning.

Math:  Anneliese and Trevor completed lessons 1 - 7 and quiz 1 in their respective Teaching Textbooks programs.  I ordered Life of Fred Apples, Butterflies, Cats and Dogs to supplement with.  They should arrive next week.  I've heard so many glowing reviews of the Life of Fred math program, we are excited to give it a try.

Language Arts:  Trevor worked in his Handwriting Without Tears Printing Power book.  He is working on making his print smaller.  They both reviewed the spelling rules they learned last year and all their phonograms from All About Spelling.  Anneliese has started reading Grammar Island.  She has memorized the 8 types of words and the subject and object pronouns.  She says this is her favorite subject.  Anneliese and Trevor completed lesson 1 of Classical House of Learning Literature's Ancient program.  We read eight different creation myths from In the Beginning by Virginia Hamilton and completed narration pages.  We completed two crafts for lesson 1; they both "carved" a world out of clay and they "made man" from beans and noodles.  They both spent a few minutes each day going over their memory work from last year.  Next week we will add in new things to memorize.

Science: Anneliese and Trevor completed unit 1 "What is Chemistry?" of REAL Science Odyssey's Chemistry program.  We did two labs - learning about chemicals and how to perform physical and chemical tests.

Social Studies: We read chapter 1 of The Story of the World: Ancient Times, Archaeologists Dig for Clues and Time Warp Trio: Your Mother Was a Neanderthal.  Anneliese and Trevor completed pocket 1 "What is History?" of History Pockets: Ancient Civilizations, drew a picture of archaeology and looked up and copied down the definition of archaeology.  They watched episode 1 & 2 of Walking With Prehistoric Beasts.

Field Trips:  Friday, Anneliese and Trevor went to the zoo with Dad!

I'm including this post in Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers' Weekly Wrap-Up.