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