Thursday, February 17, 2011
Saturday, January 8, 2011
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:
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.
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.
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'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.
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.
Thursday, October 28, 2010
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?
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
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