Week Two: Hexagons and Honeybees

Wow, what an amazing week.  We finished everything I had planned which is a huge accomplishment around here lately.  The weather's finally cooling off so we were able to get out of the house a lot this week.

Math

Emily practiced measuring again this week.  She measured in inches, feet, yards, centimeters and meters.  She did a few pages in her Intensive Practice book too. Those problems are challenging! Gone are the days I can check her work by just looking.  Now I either have to work the problems out myself or check the answer key.    

Cami had fun learning about shapes in RightStart.  Emily sat in on this lesson too, as a refresher.  They learned about ellipses and hexagons.  We finally got to play with the geometry reflector and learned about lines of symmetry.  To go along with the hexagons we read a few books about honeybees and the girls had a snack of toast and "royal jelly" (creamed honey we got from a local bee farm) to turn them both into queen bees.

Handwriting and phonics are going well.  Cami's still plugging away at McRuffy.  I wonder if we should even keep going with this, though.  We're on Lesson 56 and still working on CVC words.  I'm thinking about dropping it and going with Explode the Code or just skipping ahead.

Science

In science we learned about the three states of matter.  The girls had fun playing with ice and water.  We turned steam back into liquid by holding a cookie sheet with ice on it above boiling water.  They were floored by it and couldn't believe we could make our own rain.

History

In chapter 6 of Story of the World we read about the rise of Islam.  We read the story of Muhammad the prophet and learned about Ramadan and the five pillars of Islam.

  We ended the week by heading to the park for an art lesson on top of a big hill.  The girls made landscape drawings with oil pastels and Ian just rolled around on the grass.  We ended up meeting some friends afterward for a nature walk by the lake.

Books we read this week:

The White Nights of Ramadan by Maha Addasi

I Am Muslim by Jessica Chalfonte

Muslim Holidays by Faith Winchester

The Three Princes: A Tale from the Middle East by Eric Kimmel

Muhammad by Demi
Honey in a Hive by Anne Rockwell
In the Trees, Honey Bees by Lori Mortensen 
The Bumblebee Queen by April Pulley Sayre

Week One: Measuring and Indian Monks

We had a pretty good week, although we didn't get to even half the things I had planned.  At least we got the basics done.

Math

Emily learned about the metric system during the first half of the week and measured using inches and feet for the second half.  This week was a breeze for her since she's always loved measuring things.

Here she is measuring Cami.

Cami made huge strides in math this week.  We love RightStart Math here and Cami's such a hands-on learner that it suits her personality perfectly.  We worked with the abacus a lot this week and practiced adding with it and entering tens.  She was finally able to understand how to count to high numbers and was so excited about it that she counted up to one hundred using the abacus all by herself!

She also learned how to do simple addition using the Parts-to-Whole diagram.

Phonics/Reading

Cami finished Lessons 56-59 in McRuffy Phonics K.  In truth, we don't use much of the program anymore.  She basically does a worksheet a day and she takes the spelling tests.  I think it's a great program, but it moves awfully slow and Cami's skill level has surpassed it.  I'm still having her do the worksheets though, because she enjoys them and it cements what she's learned and gives her extra practice.  

In addition to McRuffy, she reads at least two short readers each day.  This week she read some Cool Cats books and a few McRuffy readers.  She also started her first REAL book today, Green Eggs and Ham.  Yay, Cami!

Emily's reading Prince Caspian for the second time and isn't bored with it yet.  She's also reading the Secrets of Droon books on her own, which I'm not crazy about, but with all the reading this kid does I can't really complain.  

History

 We read about monks in India in Story of the World this week.  Emily seemed to lose interest and gave me that blank stare when I asked the review questions at the end of the chapter.  Cami was right on though.  She had an answer every time, and if she didn't know the answer she made it up.

We did get a very timely issue of Appleseeds Magazine in the mail on Monday though.   

 It had articles on falconry, stained glass in monasteries, medieval illuminations, and dirty jobs in the middle ages.  There was also an article on designing your own coat of arms and the girls spent an entire afternoon making their own on newsprint.  That counts as school, right?

The girls did handwriting every day and we even squeezed in a few spelling lessons.  Next week I'll try to fit in some fun projects.