Week Five: Dome of the Rock and Lots of Science

Well, we certainly fit a lot into this week!  We finished our core subjects each day and did tons of extras.

Math

Emily's been slowly working on her Math Mammoth unit on telling time.  She's also been doing lots of tricky word problems in Singapore Intensive Practice.  At the beginning of the week she was just flying through her work, but she got almost every one wrong!  I made her go back and read each problem over again to see what, exactly, they were asking her to find.  She's doing much better now but I do have to sit with her and guide her through the trickier ones.

Cami completed lessons 31 and 32 in RightStart this week.  She's getting pretty good at identifying coins and counting money.  She also learned a few new shapes and reviewed some old ones.  We played around with paper ellipses, hexagons, pentagons, octagons, semicircles, and parallelograms, and practiced dividing them into halves.  Emily sat in on this activity as a refresher.

The girls played lots of RightStart card games, which we all love.  This tournament was overseen by a fair and impartial judge:

Phonics/Reading

  

I'm sad to report Cami's outgrown McGruffy Phonics K.  I've looked through the whole program and she's miles beyond even the last lesson.  At this point it just feels like busywork.  We've moved on to Explode the Code 2 and we're also using Phonics Pathways, which she loves.

Emily finished reading Prince Caspian and started both Ribsy and Gulliver's Travels, Classic Starts edition.  I don't really read any abridged classics to the girls but have no problem with them reading them on their own. 

History

We didn't start a new chapter of Story of the World.  We had one last project to wrap up from last week.  I am so glad we did.  The girls were so proud of their hard work!

We finally finished our model Dome of the Rock.  The Dome of the Rock is a Muslim shrine in Jerusalem.  It's the oldest Islamic monument standing today.

The girls had a lot of fun with this.  When we started, Cami asked, "Will this be edible?"  Ha ha, I guess we have been doing a lot of edible history projects lately.  First our graham cracker/M&M mosaic, then our oasis.  When we finished, Cami decided that it had been fun after all.  She said, "This was our funnest history lesson ever, even though we couldn't eat it!"

Art

We worked on shapes in art this week to go along with Cami's math lessons.  They did a shape search and recorded their findings.

Science

In science we learned that air is not just empty space.  We did lots of experiments this week.  We crumpled paper and put in it the bottom of a glass, then turned the glass upside down and dunked it in a bowl of water, leaving the paper dry.

The girls had fun "pouring air".

We made art with watered down paint and straws.

We made pinwheels and gliders and tested them out at the park on Friday.   Cami's going through this weird phase where she poses like a princess in all her pictures.  I have to be sneaky and take it when she least expects it if I want to get a real smile.

And of course, our week wouldn't be complete without sailboat races in our baby tub. 

It was a good week.

 

Week Four: More of the Same

Emily worked on catching up in her Intensive Practice book again this week in math.  I also added in the Math Mammoth unit on telling time for review.

Cami completed Lessons 29 and 30 in RightStart A.  She learned about nickels, dimes and pennies, and practiced estimation using color tiles.  She estimated that there were sixty and there turned out to be sixty-seven.  Not bad for a first try!   

We started Bastien piano lessons this week.  The girls outlined their hand and numbered each finger, then did some finger exercises.  Yes, those are Harry Potter scars on their foreheads.

We talked again about the water cycle in science, and created our very own water cycle using a big bowl, some colored salt water and plastic wrap.   First we filled the outer ring of a chip and dip platter with water and added some salt and food coloring.

Then we covered it in plastic wrap, placed a rock above the empty center bowl and set it outside in a sunny location.  Now, the instructions said it should take a couple of hours for the water to start evaporating, but it took ours a whopping 5 days to show even a slight mist on the plastic. 

After it rained into the center cup, the kids taste-tested the blue water and the clear water, concluding that the food dye and salt were both left behind during evaporation.

We read Chapter 7 in Story of the World this week, in which Islam becomes an empire.  The girls made scimitars out of foam board and painted them.  Cami learned the hard way that foam scimitars don't hold up well if used for serious sword fighting.

We also started a mystery project that we didn't get around to finishing this week due to unforeseen circumstances. 

Learning to Sew

Week Three: Yummy History

None of us were really feeling it this week.  The girls had a lot of independent projects going on and had trouble staying focused on schoolwork.  I had a few sleepless nights with a teething baby and had trouble focusing on schoolwork.  Some weeks are just like that.  Luckily most of the girls projects were educational in nature.

Math

Emily learned about kilograms in Singapore 2A and practiced weighing things with our cool new kitchen scale. We started Intensive Practice 2A later than the 2A workbook so we're doing extra Intensive Practice each week to catch up. She uses graph paper for working her problems out to help her line up her numbers and keep them from taking up the whole page.

Cami worked on reflections and symmetry in RightStart A.  She also practiced adding tens on the abacus and skip counting by twos and tens.  We usually do half a lesson a day but this week we only finished one lesson total.  We spent the rest of the week playing math games.

Cami made reflections on a geoboard and checked them with the geometry reflector.

Then she made a symmetrical butterfly.

History

This week in SOTW we did chapter 6, the rise of Islam part 2 since we didn't finish all our work last week.  The girls did mapwork, we did some history reading, then finished off the week with an edible oasis.  

First we crushed up graham crackers for sand...

 Then we added blue M&Ms for water...

 Emily painted gum leaves with green food coloring...

We used tootsie rolls for the tree stumps and icing to hold them in place.  I had a hard time finding animal crackers with camels.  I had three Publix employees searching for them and finally found some organic Arrowroot cookies that worked.

And of course our oasis wouldn't be complete without Emily's Prince of Persia lego people...

I don't remember history being so much fun when I was in school.

Nothing too exciting happened in the other subjects.  Emily started Growing With Grammar 2 on Monday.  It seems pretty boring but she really likes to write so she doesn't mind doing it.  Next year we'll do MCT Grammar Island so really I'm using Growing With Grammar as a sort of introduction.  In a few weeks we'll add in Writing Tales.  

Science didn't really get done yet but I'm planning on doing our last Water Cycle experiment this weekend.

They did make water cycle flipbooks on Monday that I printed out from this awesome book.

It's out of print but I was lucky enough to find it on Amazon for a good price.  We'll be incorporating most of these activities into our earth science this year.  

In other news, Ian had his first taste of avocado...

Books we read this week:

Muhammad by Demi

Sindbad's Secret by Ludmila Zeman

Aladdin and Other Tales from the Arabian Nights by Rosalind Kerven

Water, Water Everywhere: A Book about the Water Cycle by Melvin Berger

Down Comes the Rain by Franklyn M. Branley

Thinking Caps...