Thursday, September 8, 2011

Week 2

I'm posting early this week because we're heading for the Puyallup Fair tomorrow.  Fortunately, my big kids were able to finish all of their school work for the week today, so there won't be anything hanging over our heads this weekend.

Language Arts

Mika read all about verbs in her grammar this week.  The book covered verbs, verb tenses, irregular verbs, active vs. passive voice, and mood.  This book is designed to be read through quickly; then you spend the rest of the year in practical application.  That's why she is covering so much so quickly.  She completed the first lesson in vocabulary and took her test, which I still need to grade.  It was all review of last year's words.  In poetry, she read about alliteration, assonance, and consonance.  She also had the assignment to pick a revolutionary figure to do her next writing assignment on and to search for books at the library for sources.  She chose Abigail Adams.

Sam read about verb tense, verb agreement, adverbs, conjunctions and interjections in his grammar book.  Like Mika's book, it is designed to read through quickly before spending the rest of the year in practical application.  He finishes his second lesson in vocabulary which covered five words: placate, derision, vivacious, procure, retort.  In poetry, he read about alliteration and assonance.  He chose Thomas Jefferson as his revolutionary figure; he had a lot more source options at the library to choose from.


Mika completed a lesson on probability and started a lesson on points, lines, rays, and line segments.

We found out that Sam's curriculum has videos by the author for each section.  We spent the week watching the first chapter videos and working on one challenge problem a day.


Both kids read about the French Revolution, Marie-Antoinette, and the Fall of the Bastille.  


In Astronomy, Mika took a test I wrote for the first chapter* and began the second chapter on the sun.  Meanwhile, Sam reviewed his first chapter; he has two weeks to complete each chapter.  Our lab this week was making a quadrant with a paper cutout, string, and washer and practice taking altitude readings in the house.

In Meteorology, they read about air pressure and completed three simple demonstrations.  One demonstration involved laying a ruler hanging slightly off the edge of the table, laying a piece of typing paper on the ruler, and lifting it by pushing on the part of the ruler hanging off the table.  Pretty easy.  But then, they replaced the typing paper with newspaper and tried again.  Both agreed that the two papers felt fairly equal in weight, but the newspaper was harder to lift because the air couldn't get under it to equalize the pressure.  The second demo was to lay two empty soda cans about an inch each other, getting down to their level, and blowing between them.  The results aren't what they expected.  The third involved putting some hot water into two 2-liter soda bottles, shaking them to warm up the air, and capping one of them to see what happened.

In Geology, they inspected course sand to look for translucent (quartz), opaque, and flat and shiny mica samples.  

Foreign Language

They got their Rosetta Stone log-ins and started up where they left off last year.  Mika is about 25% through Spanish 2, and Sam is about 65% through Korean 1.

Fine Arts

We completed awesome projects with some black paper, Elmer's glue, and chalk pastels.

I told them to do some sort of stylized version of their name with all of the letters connecting or overlapping each other and/or the border.  The traced their lightly penciled name with Elmer's glue.  After it dried, they colored it with chalk pastels and blended.

Tot School - Week 2 is here.

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Daisy said...

I love that art project. We may have to try that.

Your science sounds like so much fun!