After being able to catch up on everything Monday, I added in a week's worth of grammar, Latin and Writing with Ease for the rest of the week. Chicklette took hours to get ready for the day. She just didn't want to get started on her work. She finally got started when Racer was half done with his day's worth of work.
Religion - The kids made a Pearl of Great Price factbook together. Racer wrote a sentence about each book in the Pearl of Great Price and Chicklette drew a picture. Math - Racer did half of Review 5 and is still doing really well with his Xtramath. Chicklette did some more money problems. She's hanging in there with Xtramath but she still gets distracted even when she's by herself doing it! Don't ask me how, it's a special talent. Physics - Racer read the physics pages by himself while Chicklette was doing piano, but when I asked him to teach Chicklette what her learned, he couldn't remember anything, so I read the pages again with them and we did a summary of some of the information. History - We read about the American Indians on Utah's I Love History website. We had a little bit of a discussion about how the Indians were treated before my piano student showed up. Latin - The kids watched the video lesson, but I had to keep chasing Chicklette back to her work because she was really having focus problems today. Daily 6-Trait Writing - We are working this week on using specific on nouns in our writing and avoiding generic nouns that do not give a good picture of what the writer wants to convey. Racer is doing pretty good with it, but he definitely has to think about choosing new words. Well, it's been a while since I posted. We kind of took the last two weeks as a bit of a relaxed vacation. We still did some school, but not as much and not as intensively. We had some company and that was lots of fun.
Religion - We read a fact sheet about the Pearl of Great Price and I had the kids tell me back a couple of important facts. We also did our scripture memorization. We added in our last scripture for the year. Math - Racer finished up a review and Chicklette worked some more on money. Racer is now on 2 second subtraction facts in Xtramath. He just finished the 2 second addition facts. Chicklette is still plugging away at her 3 second addition facts. If she didn't get so distracted, I'm sure she would be done. Science - We tried to create a rubber band racer car. The instructions weren't very good and I think our rubber band was lacking so it didn't really work well. I might try to see if DH wants to try making it with the kids. It's the kind of thing that he would like usually. He's so busy with his Elder's Quorum stuff and putting vents in the roof and other things. History - We had a fun time reading our dinosaur books. We read How the Dinosaur Got to the Museum and Dinosaur Mountain. How the Dinosaur. . . is structured like The House that Jack Built so it was a fun read. We also read about the beginning of the century in Utah. We had a good discussion about some of the things that changed in that very dynamic first period of statehood for Utah. We also got to talk about unions and managers and safety. We have a geography fair coming up on May 12 where the kids in our homeschool co-op will show all the things they have learned this year through following the Road Trip USA curriculum. I'm excited for it. It is going to be a lot of fun for all our kids and us moms. Writing with Ease - We caught up on all our Writing with Ease assignments that had slipped over the past two weeks. Now we are all ready to go on to the next week's worth of work. First Language Lessons - We also caught up on our grammar lessons. Racer learned about comparative and superlative adjectives. Chicklette practiced summarizing the story of "The Boy Who Cried Wolf." Spelling - Racer talked about homographs. He has four in his spelling list for the week. He has lots of words that end with ct this week. Chicklette and I had to review all the syllable tags because she didn't remember any of them. After we did all that review, we learned about the /ee/ phonogram. We talked about the rule breaker "been" which is only a rule breaker in America. I love the All About Spelling program. I think the lessons are laid out really well. Today was a beautiful day and we had a great time. History/Religion - In an interesting combo of history and religion, we were studying Brigham Young today because he got Utah started off. We went to tour the Beehive house and got a treat at the Lion House as well. The cashier was so nice; she gave us free truffles to go with the cookies we bought. It was really sweet of her. Because I've been there before, I knew that we could never get a stroller through the Beehive House so I figured I would load one Bubbers on Racer's back in a backpack and carry the other Bubbers. Racer gave it his best effort, but it was a little too much for him so I ended up with both Bubbers and Racer carried our supplies backpack. Like I said, it was a beautiful day. We had a fun time touring the Beehive House and trekking through Temple Square. The Bubbers didn't like the tour as well, but they got through it. Religion - This week is Holy Week. Even though our church does not celebrate a liturgical Holy Week, I like to take the time to study the last week of our Savior's life. Truly, Easter is a more important holiday than Christmas and I want the kids to have excitement and a sense of expectation when Easter is coming up as well. I'm thinking of getting an "Easter creche." Have you seen those? I'm thinking of something like this - Or maybe this - There's a couple others I like too. Anyways, on Palm Sunday we talked about Easter and the upcoming week. We put up pictures on our wall to illustrate our Holy Week. I didn't have pictures of the Triumphal Entry so I had the kids color those for our Family Home Evening Activity. I'm also missing a picture of Jesus' burial. I'll have to go to the Distribution center sometime and see if I can get a cheap print of those too. This is how our front entry looks now. I like it.
We were also able to get math done and Racer's Daily 6-trait Writing as well as watching the first lesson of Latina Christiana I. We shall have to make up some work over the next few days. Latina Christiana I is a little more of a review from Prima Latina than I had expected but, as I told the kids, they obviously didn't learn it completely in Prima Latina or else they would have scored much better on their last test. Racer's workbook should get here in the next couple days. Today was one of the days that just reinforces to me and the kids how much we love homeschooling and being together. So, I was actually kind of crafty today! Only kind of because the kids really did most of the work and prep, but I actually set them up with a big crafty activity. I'll share pictures later. Religion - Because I haven't really figured out a good schedule with the twins being awake, we've been missing our religion a lot. Racer can do his by himself and Chicklette can sometimes, but it's not the discussion and teaching that I want to have happen. I just need to sit down and really figure out how we can do these. We did do our memorization and prayer and I know Racer read the section he was supposed to read. I think Chicklette did too. Math - Racer has almost finished all his 2 second addition tables for Xtramath. He is still doing great in his math workbook, still dislikes showing his work, and gets his stuff done quickly. Chicklette just started doing dollars and cents this week. Physics - We are learning about magnets and electricity this unit. This week we have combined the two topics with electromagnetism. History - Here is where we were crafty thanks to Road Trip USA! Racer followed the directions for making the salt dough. As you can see, we definitely needed more blue than we started with. I am going to try to save this for our geography fair with our co-op. Hopefully, it will last under our bed until then. I'm really proud of how the kids did. Racer made waves in the ocean and they put in mountains and the Great Salt Lake. Racer even remembered enough to put in the Great Lakes while I would have forgotten and wondered what was missing later. We weren't going to put in Mexico and Canada, but the map looked strange without them, so we just made a defined boundary and put in some of their land.
We also read a section in I Love History about the Mormon pioneers. If we have time this Saturday, maybe we can go to one of the many pioneer museums or monuments around here. I'd like to visit some of the ruts on our way out to Minnesota but they seem to be either out of our way by quite a bit, or I know it will be dark when we are getting there. But, maybe while we are in North Platte, we can stop at the Sand Hill Ruts. They are supposed to be fairly dramatic, I think. Writing with Ease - We caught Chicklette up on a couple days worth of her Writing with Ease. Racer has pretty much stayed on track with his because he is desperate not to lose his screentime. Latin - We are finishing up the last test in Prima Latina tomorrow and I did decide to buy Latina Christiana I. I had a little money left in Racer's account for Latin and it will just about cover it, minus about $5. So we will start that as soon as it comes. I decided today to opt Racer out of the state SAGE tests. I was okay with him taking them. I'm not opposed to most of the Common Core standards, although I did have a problem with the creator of the SAGE tests and some of the rumblings I had heard from parents of students who had taken them. The main two reasons I opted him out were because 1) it was a ways for me to travel for him to take the tests and although it was workable, it wasn't ideal and 2) he has already been tested with the ITBS test this year and a test for our state's gifted and talented program. I didn't want to bombard him with tests and I felt this one was unnecessary. So, that's that.
We also found out yesterday that we have been waitlisted for our first choice school. We shall see in about a month or two if Chicklette or Racer made it into our state's gifted and talented program. If they don't get a spot in there then we will be sending them to our neighborhood school which is still a good school. They could walk, which would be very convenient. And, as I keep telling people, if I feel I need to supplement their education, I can definitely do that. Religion - All that was on the schedule again was to read one chapter. This chapter happened to be "The Saints Leave Jackson County Missouri." We have talked this year about slavery, so I explained to Chicklette that another reason the people of Missouri were very upset with the Saints had to do with slavery. Many people in Missouri were slaveholders and they did not want the bloc voting of the Latter-day Saints to disrupt that way of life. Later we will talk about some of the other problems that came up between the Saints and the people of Missouri but I didn't bring them up today. Math - Chicklette was upset that she had to do a review page in her texbook and a review in her workbook. I knew it looked like a lot, but I also knew that it wouldn't take her that long. It mostly had to do with multiplying and dividing tens and those are pretty easy. Racer had some more word problems to do today and I still need to check those. Turtle is still going full force on his Funnix Math and is doing great. Physics - We talked about magnetism and electromagnets today. The kids found a fun game on the computer where you looked at what an electromagnet could pick up and then you stuck it to a fence. They thought it was hilarious. I didn't think it was quite that exciting, but if they are learning, I'm happy. Spelling - Racer and Chicklette wrote sentences using their spelling words and Turtle practiced his sound cards. Then he brought the All About Spelling 1 book to me and we worked on identifying first sounds of words and last sounds of words. He does fine on the first sounds, but he gets a little mixed up on the last sounds. I'm not too worried because I agree with him that identifying the last sounds are more challenging. Besides, he's five. History - We read a Shoshone tale today about how Coyote stole fire. Everybody liked it. I got really excited when I found a CD in the back of the book because I thought they would read the story in English and the kids could hear the proper pronunciation of the words. Nope, it had a dance song at the beginning and then they read the book in Shoshone. Maybe after the read it in Shoshone they read it in English, but I couldn't see the kids sitting through that so we stopped it. The dance song was interesting though. We also took out our huge state flashcards and reviewed all the states and capitals. Racer does really well, of course, but Chicklette knew a few that surprised me also. I really like these huge flashcards. On one side they had an outline of the state with a major river and a few major cities marked but not labeled and the boundary states are labeled. On the other side, the cities, capital, and the state itself are written in. I've enjoyed using them and so do the kids. We were able to get caught up on quite a bit today. If we continue the trend throughout the week, we'll be doing well. Religion - All that was on the schedule today was to read "God Warns the People of Zion" so that went pretty easy. I just finished reading Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling. It was a difficult book for me to read because I like my prophets nice and polished and Joseph Smith, like Abraham, Jonah, and others, was not a perfect, polished person. However, he was faithful and dedicated. I was really happy to hear the talk at General Conference about him. Math - Racer got to do word problems today and, of course, he finished very quickly. He was so motivated today that he even did his Xtramath during breakfast. Chicklette learned that she had to do a few practice pages in her textbook and pitched such a fit over it. However, the pages went quite a bit faster than she thought they would. I think she spent more time complaining about them than it took her to actually sit down and do them.
Physics - We talked about how electricity produces magnetism. I had the kids copy one sentence from the book that was most important into their summary pages. Grammar - Racer recopied his friendly letter that he wrote on Friday and corrected any spelling or other errors he saw. Chicklette worked on memorizing "Mr. Nobody" and started learning the rules of capitalization in poetry. I think she will have an easier time memorizing "Mr. Nobody" than Racer since she heard us working on it for so long a few years ago. It is also a funny poem so we enjoyed reciting it even after we were done learning it. History - We are on the last little bit of Road Trip USA this week and next week so today we reviewed the states and capitals that make up the western region of the United States. Chicklette and I also read Pia Toya: A Goshute Tale. Racer read it on his own last Friday. One thing I really liked about this book was that the artwork was done by children at a school in the Goshute region. I thought they did a great job on it. Latin - We are on our last week of lessons in Prima Latina. I have maybe two weeks to decide if I want to push through and get Latina Christiana I. I'm thinking that I wouldn't get Chicklette the student book and she could do stuff orally. She has had a hard enough time writing Prima Latina words and Latina Christiana is written for grades 3 and up. I'll have to talk to DH about it. Daily 6-trait Writing - This week we will be talking about verb choice. Today we talked about avoiding the overused words of go and went. We discussed instead, using words like raced, zoomed, drove, and other verbs that are more descriptive and exciting. He gets excited like he understands and agrees with the concept. We shall see if it carries over into his writing. Religion - We had a really fun time today. I made up a scavenger hunt about President Monson using facts from this website. If I had been thinking ahead, I would have concluded it like she did with taking treats over to someone's house or doing an act of service. Unfortunately, that's not how it worked out, but we had fun and I think the kids might have learned something about President Monson. Math - Chicklette practiced dividing by 10 and Racer practiced dividing using decimals and then rounding the answer to the correct decimal place. He thought he had the answer picture all figured out, but then the last problem changed it all on him. He and Chicklette got A+ on their math today. Turtle did Lesson 19 in his Funnix Math.
Daily 6-trait Writing - We are on our last week in this curriculum of organizing our writing. Today he had to pick a topic and decide which graphic organizer to use to put down his ideas. He decided to compare and contrast a bull shark with an octopus. I think he got the bull shark idea from the I Survived . . . book that talks about some shark attacks in 1916, but I'm not sure where the octopus came from. Tomorrow he will research just a little bit more about the two animals to find some compelling facts and then he will write a paragraph about the two animals. Physics - I'm leaving this week's experiment up to DH, partly because I am wiped out today, but also because I think he would enjoy doing it with the kids. They are supposed to build a potato clock or potato light. I will post later on how it turns out. I'll start making up our Road Trip USA next week probably. We missed out on co-op today because the twins have a cough that I thought was a little more than I wanted to share with all our co-op friends. I thought Racer was getting it too this morning, but he was sounding fine this evening. Racer and Chicklette were pretty disappointed to miss co-op, but I know Turtle was very happy to stay home. He has a hard time with his introverted personality being around lots of people so today was a happy break for him. As it will surprise no one who knows me well, I forgot my camera today. However here are pictures from the week and the rest of the day that we were at home. |
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