Week Eleven: Science, Finally!

It's hard to believe it's November already!  This week was very productive and the weather was amazing.  After putting science off for over a month(!), we did experiments three days this week.  I really don't know what my problem is.  We always have a lot of fun and the setup's usually pretty minimal.

In math this week, Emily finished up the unit on division in Singapore 2A.   Cami started learning about hundreds in RightStart.  She counted out one hundred color tiles and built an abacus with them, frame and all.

Cami played with the abacus tiles and practiced counting and adding hundreds.  She figured out how to stack them so we know how many are there without counting.

Check out the guy in the back.

Cami's made huge leaps in reading lately.  She picked out the book The Clay Boy from the library.  When we got home she told me she wanted to read to me, picked up the book and read the whole thing.  It was crazy!  She was reading words like fashioned, suddenly, swallowed, and peasant without batting an eye.  We're still doing two pages of Phonics Pathways daily and I really think it's helping tremendously with speed and fluency.

Emily finished Classic Starts Gulliver's Travels and started Poppy.  She's also reading Tum Tum and Nutmeg on her own.

In grammar, Emily's been learning about adjectives and how adding an apostrophe-s turns a noun into an adjective.  She was very impressed and enjoys diagramming sentences.  Looks like she'll love grammar and writing just as much as I did when I was in school.  They've both started their novels for NaNoWriMo and I have to say, they're doing very well.  Cami dictates her story to me and I write it down.  I always have to stop her or she'll just keep on going all day.  This is what Emily has so far:

The Adventures of Haditalot the Knight

Chapter One

     Once a poor serf was working when a voice shouted, "Make way for the king!"  The serf was named Haditalot.  The king shouted, "Stop the carraige!"  The guards stopped the carraige and the king got out.  He went up to Had's house and knocked on the door.  Had came to the door and opened it.  The king was the first to speak.  Had stared.  "You are now a knight!"  They went back to the castle together.  When they reached the throne room the king sat down on the throne.  He took out his sword and tapped his head with it.  He was now a knight.

Chapter Two

     The next day he was called to the throne room.  "You must go save Gummy the baby dragon, " the king said, "who is going to die if you don't."  So Had set off without a word.  After awhile, he came to a cave to rest, but giant swords were guarding it.  He needed to knock them out of the air and grab them. The cave was big, and giant swords were on the floor.  When he had knocked them all down, he stopped to rest.  He became hungry.  He came to a pool and drank some water from it.
     He came to a farm where there were cows and goats that make milk and cheese.  The farmer came out and ran after him, and when he caught up he said, "Here is a jug of milk, cheese, meat, bread, carrots, peppers, tomatoes, and a jug of soup."  Had was so surprised that he couldn't speak.
     When he could talk, he said, "You shall come with me, and thank you.  What is your name?" 
     "My name is Gooditalot.  What's yours?"
     "Haditalot...wait!  You're my brother!  You can have my extra suit of armor and be a knight!"  They traveled for a long time.


I love to see her enjoy writing.  Such a change from last year.

In science we learned that air has mass.

The girls did a globe-toss experiment to find out what percentage of the earth is covered with water.  Emily's hypothesis was pretty close. 

 

Then we guessed how much of the earth's water is drinkable.  They both guessed fifty percent, but really only .02 percent of the earth's water is drinkable.

We didn't do anything new in history this week, but we did dig a little deeper into last week's lesson on New Zealand.  We did some Maori face painting and ate some "moth mix".  

Emily spotted this guy in the backyard on Friday morning.

Halloween!!

Definitely my favorite holiday!  Cami wanted to be Harry Potter himself, and Emily's Hermione when she turned herself into a cat.  We went trick-or-treating with some friends and the girls filled their cauldrons TWICE with candy.  I asked them if they were going to be able to eat all that candy and Cami answered, "No way!  Nobody should eat that much candy. It would make them sick!"  She was right.  Most of it went to work with my husband a couple days later.

A Patriotic Journal Entry

So last night after I tucked the girls in bed and was leaving the room for the night, I hear a little giggle and Emily casually says to me, "Hey mom, you might want to check page 3 in my journal.  There's an interesting song you might enjoy."  Then more giggles.  This is what I find.

Stars and Stripes Forever

by John Philip Susa

Hial to the stars and the stripes, may the simbol of Peace be forever, set high by buttocks on the flag, John Philip Susa the king of buts, oh hail to the stars and the stripes, may the simbol of Peace be forever, set high by buttocks on the flag, we'r on the march, we're on the march we'r on the march.

Weeks Eight, Nine, and Ten

These last few weeks have been insanely busy with field trips, a birthday, doctors appointments and career changes, so I'll just do a quick recap of all three weeks.

Math

Emily started multiplication, finished multiplication, and moved on to division in Singapore 2A.  I'm really hoping to finished 2A before Christmas break so we can start 2B in January.

Cami's been working on her addition facts to 10 in RightStart.  She's picked up on these really fast, I think because she can visualize it so well from working with the abacus so much.    

Language Arts

Cami finished working on CVC words and words that begin and end in the /k/ sound in Phonics Pathways.  I love that I can teach spelling right along with it so easily.  She usually does two pages every day and one page of Explode the Code.  I'm so proud of how much her fluency's improved.  A couple months ago she was struggling with BOB readers but now she's reading Henry and Mudge with ease.  Yay, Cami!

Emily finished reading Ribsy and started Gulliver's Travels (Classic Starts).  She's also reading ahead in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader in her own time.  You wouldn't believe how many times a day I catch her in the bathroom reading when she's supposed to be doing schoolwork!

We've worked through Lesson 14 in First Language Lessons 3.  So far we've covered common and proper nouns, verbs, pronouns and adjectives.  We've also memorized Robert Louis Stevenson's poem, The Land of Nod and started diagramming sentences.

We're taking a break from Writing Tales until December for NaNoWriMo.  The girls have been developing the main characters for their novels and have come up with some, um, interesting ideas.  It took awhile to convince Cami that she can't just rip off the storyline of Harry Potter and put her name on it.  So she settled on a princess for her main character named Fire Blue Basil.  She came up with this name two years ago when she was three and has used it for every single stuffed animal and barbie she's ever had since then, so it was the obvious choice. 

History

 

We learned about the Yamato Dynasty in Japan in Story of the World.  We got out our markers, glitter, paint, fabric scraps, and magazines and decorated a giant paper kimono.  The girls got pretty creative with it.

Later in the week we made fish kites for Japan's Boy Day.

This week we're learning about Australia and New Zealand.  

Science

Nothing to report here.  We haven't done science in at least a month.  I think I'll start making Saturday science day.  We did go to Chemistry Club with our homeschooling group once last week, which was very cool.

Let's see...Emily went to Chess Club and both girls went to their first First Junior Lego League meeting.  Their challenge is Biomedical Engineering and the team decided to build an ambulance.  On Tuesday we went on a field trip to the Sheriff's office where the kids all got fingerprinted and got to check out a police cruiser. 

Other than that we've been getting ready for Halloween. We tie-dyed some shirts orange and decorated them with a Sharpie. The kids usually pick characters from whatever book we're reading at the time and this year's no different.  Cami's going as Harry Potter and Emily's Hermione when she turned herself into a cat.  Ian's going as Dobby the House-Elf, of course, who else?

Cami found this tiny praying mantis

Week Seven: Jade Jewelry and a Rough Giraffe

This week, for the sake of Education, we made a delicious American flag cake.  

The girls also mastered the States Song this week and learned about two new states: Rhode Island and Massachusetts.  Every time I ask the capital of New Hampshire Cami answers, "Constantinople!"  Silly girl.

Emily completed five grammar lessons this week because we love love love First Language Lessons level 3.  Strange since I dreaded pulling out levels 1 and 2 last year.  I think the workbook makes all the difference.  We're also loving the optional activities and for some reason Emily really enjoyed memorizing her pronoun list.

When I told Emily she'd be writing a rough draft on Monday she got really excited and couldn't wait to begin.  Apparently she thought I said "rough giraffe" and she said it sounded like "great fun".  She did a good job on it and wants to write more rough giraffes for history and science.

 Cami learned to add tally marks in math using her parts-to-whole page.  She's also been practicing counting money and has gotten to be pretty good at it.  I let the girls have my extra change sometimes if they can identify the coins and tell me how much money it is. 

Emily finished up weighing and measuring this week and next week she'll start multiplying.  I can tell she's understanding what we're covering but she's still rushing through her work and making silly mistakes because of it.

I'm still using Phonics Pathways with Cami and I'm really surprised she likes it so much.  It seems so boring and she usually goes for bright colors and games.  Her speed is really picking up since we started though.  

 Emily finished reading Ribsy this week and started The Secret Garden.

 

We read about the Sui and Tang dynasties in history this week and the girls made their own "jade" beads out of Sculpey clay.

A very special bunny was lost for almost two weeks.  I thought he was gone for good this time but he popped up today in a basket of yarn.  

Science hasn't happened around here for the last two weeks, but Cami found a really cool moth.  We'll call that nature study.

Books we read this week:

The Story about Ping by Marjorie Flack

Tikki Tikki Tembo by Arlene Mosel

Ma Jiang and the Orange Ants by Barbara Ann Porte

Mei-Mei Loves the Morning by Margaret Holloway Tsubakiyama

My Family from WiddlyTinks.com

Week Six

We missed two fun field trips because I was sick with a bad cold three out of five days this week. We didn't  do any history or science either.  This week was sort of a blur and I don't remember much of it but I know some things got done because they're checked off my list.

Math and phonics proceeded as usual.  Emily practiced measuring using kilograms, grams, pounds and ounces.  Cami's reading skills are really improving lately.  She's reading the Nora Gaydos level 2 readers.  I like them more than the BOB books and Cami loves putting the stickers in the books once she's read them.  

On Monday Emily started First Language Lessons 3, which seems to be just the right level for her.  We also started Writing Tales on Wednesday.  So far I like the look of it, but if it gets to be too much for her we'll put it aside til next year.

We started learning about the US states this week, which I'm very excited about.  We're learning the old Schoolhouse Rock song, Fifty Nifty United States.  For each state the girls do a coloring page, we read a little bit about it, and we're memorizing capitals.  They also have a US map with a sticker to put up each time they learn about a state.  They love this and beg to do more states all day long, but for now we're doing two states a week.  I bought a pretty neat game called The Scrambled States of America.  We all love this game and it's hilarious listening to little kids who can read well but aren't yet familiar with all the states calling out some of these names.  So far we've had Ee-oh-wa, Arkan-sauce and New Handsfire, and I overheard Emily explaining to Cami that it's pronounced Uh-tuh (Utah).

Since I was pretty much feeling back to normal Friday we decided to have a fun game day.  We spent the morning playing Sum Swamp and set up a store to practice counting money.  The girls were feeling extra silly today and both had a recurring case of the giggles so we didn't get much serious work done today.  My sister, who's also a homeschooler, showed me this game.  Emily and Cami took turns playing it and actually did pretty well.  I found out that I don't really know the states as well as I thought I did!  I'm not going to admit how much of my Friday night was spent trying to beat that game or how ridiculously excited I was when I finally did it.

Cami disappeared into the classroom at one point during the day and came out with these:

steem reizez!

pumcns and wodrmelons!

She is very much into exclamation marks lately.  It's funny to hear her read.  She reads the whole sentence in a normal voice but she says that last word so enthusiastically when she gets to the end and sees the exclamation mark.  So thankful I don't have to miss out on these moments.

In baby news, Little Guy learned to crawl this week!  Yay, Ian!



My Family from WiddlyTinks.com