Saturday, November 6, 2010

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.

Friday, November 5, 2010

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.