Homecoming

We all went to visit Steph for her school’s Homecoming Day.   It was a beautiful Fall day full of fun, starting with a pancake breakfast and finishing up with some Football!

 

Weekly Wrap-Up

We had a short week since I’ve been fighting off a bout of bronchitis that left me barely able to talk and definitely unable to yell.  And of course, it’s impossible to homeschool if you can’t yell.  ;-)

We did okay considering we only did two days of school, one of which featured a little girl who was in tears more than she wasn’t, and one of which featured a little boy who didn’t think we should be doing school since daddy was home.

Vicki is almost done with her Pre-K Handwriting without Tears so I went ahead and ordered her the Kindergarten level book.  In addition, I bought the double-lined chalkboard and supplies.   She was very excited when the box arrived and wanted to try it out right away.  I used the chalkboard to have her work on her name using the wet-dry-try method.    I wrote her name in chalk, let her go over it using a slightly wet sponge, and then write it herself.

She also continued to work on the last few pages in her Pre-K book.

For phonics, I introduced the –et and –ed word families to Vicki.   Since the sentence chart worked so well last week, I set up a new one using the new words. 

She is still reviewing short /a/ words in Explode the Code and put together another flower using –an words. 

Vicki’s reading is coming along well.  She isn’t as quick as Georgie was but she has been moving along at a steady pace.    She seems to have a lot of trouble with sight words but knows “the”, “and”, “is”, “on”, and “I” so far.

She is doing very well with math.  She enjoys doing the Evan Moor Skill Sharpeners Kindergarten math and so far hasn’t had any problems she couldn’t do.  She is on Week 2 in the Evan Moor Daily Math Practice First Grade.   She hasn’t had any trouble with these either but we are taking them very slowly.  I still don’t think she’s ready for Math Mammoth 1 but she may be shortly after the new year.

I bought Cuisenaire rods a few weeks ago since I frequently saw them recommended as one of the best math manipulatives.  They can be used to understand values, addition, subtraction, fractions, and many other ideas.  Unfortunately, after playing with them a few times, Vicki seemed to hate them.  This week I decided to take them out of school-time and move them into the living room with the rest of our school toys.   But first, I sat down on the floor and played with them myself, building steps.   It didn’t take long before Vicki took over.  Hopefully these will end up being worthwhile.

 

As usual, Georgie spent a lot of time complaining about the work being too easy.  

He spent some time reading from the Beast Academy book instead of doing his work and read quite a bit of ahead of where we are working.    We are taking BA very slow so we are just on the second section – triangles.   He did two of the practice pages this week and will finish this section up next week. 

 

Also in math, we are continuing along with the various chapters of Math Mammoth.  We are far enough along in multiplication that I pulled out a blank multiplication chart and we filled it out together.   The 0’s, 1’s, 2’s, 5’s and 10’s were (of course) “too easy”.  He had to think a little harder with the 9’s but understood the pattern pretty quickly.  We will continue filling in the chart and then work on memorizing it.

He is doing very well with his Algebra Readiness Made Easy and I really need to move him up to the Grade 3 book very shortly.   He enjoys doing these and it’s one of the few things he’s willing to do completely on his own

We spent just one day working on All About Spelling 2, Step 3.    He felt all the words were “baby words”, since they were mostly three letter words (using y as a vowel making the long /i/ sounds.   I’ll probably start moving faster with this and emphasis the rules since he often has no trouble spelling the words.

Georgie is still enjoying the Evan Moor reading comprehension units.  This week we did “The Tortoise and the Hare” and “The Fisherman and His Wife”.  

“The Tortoise and the Hare” exercises included vocabulary words like tortoise (obviously), congratulated, embarrassed and boasted, and some activities with antonyms.

“The Fisherman and His Wife” including exercises in sequencing, and comprehension questions.   One of the questions asked “What would you ask for if you caught an enchanted fish?”  Georgie said he would “wish that Pokemon were real and that I had a Wiggly Puff.  That could help me with my sleeping a lot because it has a sleep power.”   His vocabulary words for this story included enchanted, contented, and unusual. 

While Vicki was playing with the Cuisenaire rods, Georgie asked to play with his yellow block things.  After I figured out he was talking about the Base 10 blocks, I pulled them out for him.  They actually played very nicely together until they started having battles.

We finished up our Rock and Mineral study this week by learning about Metamorphic Rocks and the Rock Cycle.

We did enjoy some nice, but chilly, fall weather in between the rainy days.  Vicki discovered she could pump enough to swing “super HIGH!” and they had bubble wars on the patio.

 

Metamorphic Rocks & The Rock Cycle

We finished up our Rock and Mineral study!!

Metamorphic rocks are formed when other rocks – which could be igneous, sedimentary or metamorphic – are exposed to heat and pressure, changing them into different rocks.   I read the description of metamorphic rocks from our RSO to the kids and we discussed how these were different from igneous and sedimentary rocks.

We took a close up look at our three rocks and used the identification key to decide what they were.

 

Marble (13 – above) is made from the metamorphism of sedimentary carbonate rocks – limestone and dolomite.  It is nonfoliated, which means it does not form layers.

Slate (14 – above) is made when shale is metamorphosed.   It has very tiny particles, and an even appearance although the color can vary.  Usually it will be dark gray or black but it can be greenish, reddish or brownish.  Our outside patio is made with slate in a variety of colors so the kids are used to seeing it.  Slate is foliated (layered) allowing it to be split into flat pieces, which are used for roof tiles, chalkboards and stepping stones.


Schist (15 – above) is formed in visible layers – foliated – with large crystals that are formed due to high heat.    It can have many different looks depending on what minerals are found in it.

After we were able to identify our three rocks, we made cookies to demonstrate how rocks are formed.  We divided sugar cookie dough into three separate bowls, and colored each one a different color.   The main comment at this point was “GROSS!” and I can’t say I disagreed.



We took a little bit from each color (each “mineral”) and formed them into rocks.



I asked the kids what they thought was going to happen when we baked them.  Georgie thought they would melt completely and we would have brown cookies.  Vicki thought they would only melt a little bit and we would have multi-colored cookies.   And, of course, the winner was…….



everyone in the house who likes sugar cookies. ;-)

After we finished our discussion of Metamorphic rocks, we discussed the Rock Cycle. We pulled out all nine of the rocks from our RSO rock and mineral kit and used a diagram of the rock cycle to place them in the correct places.  I did refer back to the identification pages from each of our previous units to help us with this.  Georgie remembered right away that obsidian and granite were igneous and that the "sandy" one was sedimentary. 

Georgie then played the Level 2 Rock Cycle game at The Learning Zone from the Oxford Museum of Natural History

Since he was able to complete the game without any problems, it appears he actually learned something from our study.

We will now be taking a short break from science to start our US Geography and US History studies.

Weekly Wrap-up

I love MEP.  I love the mix of activities.  I love the multiple ways it introduces concepts.  I love that each lesson will have some new stuff and some review.

My kids hate it.  I am now a 3 time (4 time?) MEP drop-out.   They don’t handle the transition from movement to writing well.  They don’t like doing counting, then patterns, then comparisons all on the same page.

So I spent a bunch of time last weekend looking for a new math alternative for Vicki.   I checked reviews, curriculum websites, Amazon, and even went to Barnes & Nobles to look at the Spectrum, Sylvan, and various other workbooks.   The problem I kept running into was that Vicki already knows about 60% of what is covered in most kindergarten workbooks/ curriculums, yet isn’t ready for 1st grade materials (I plan to start her on Math Mammoth when she’s ready).  She also evidently hates Cuisenaire rods (although I will keep working on that).  I ended up settling on printing out some materials from Evan Moor Teacher’s File Box.  I’m really trying to remember I have this whenever I need worksheets or activities to do. 

So, for math Vicki is using pages from Evan Moor Skill Sharpeners Kindergarten Math, and a few pages from the beginning of the first grade level of Daily Math Practice.   The first few weeks of these seem to be a lot of review of kindergarten math, with just a few new concepts thrown in.

Vicki did well with these so far.   She even got excited about writing numbers on one of the pages.  “I wrote a 2 for the first time!”.  Even though she’s done some simple addition, when I asked her what 3+1 is, she decided she needed to go get her laptop to figure it out and that was the end of worksheets for that day. 

One day’s worksheet had the opportunity for cutting and gluing.  After doing her worksheet, she spent the rest of the morning making art with scissors and glue.

We moved on to short /e/ words in phonics.  Vicki spent the entire weekend reading from her sentence poster (can be seen in last week’s wrap-up) and definitely has all the short /a/ words down.   She went through a few –ed words (that she was able to pronounce) and then started crossing them out because she didn’t want to read them anymore.  We did eventually get through all the words by using index cards instead of the chalk board.

She did some drawing on the chalkboard instead.

  

For the rest of the time she kept busy with play-doh…

and making shapes using the Handwriting without Tears capital letter pieces.

Georgie is still driving me crazy with his interesting mix of “I can’t do it” and “that’s too easy, it’s a baby question”.  Especially with math.

All his Algebra Readiness puzzles for this week were “too easy”.  May be time to pull out the third grade book.

We are continuing with subtraction with borrowing.  He understands the concept and solved a few in his head but couldn’t seem to demonstrate the steps.  I pulled out the Base 10 blocks to go over it, then asked him to show me.  His answer?  “I need to show you?  Don’t you know how to do it?”  <<head bang>>   He did manage to demonstrate how to do it before the end of the week.

Since he was in a manipulative mood (in more ways than one) this week, when we worked on making change, I pulled out the toy cash register.   He was able to answer questions about how much money is left from a given amount after purchasing something, but had trouble with what coins to use and how to make change.  We will continue working on this with the cash register.

We went over addition doubles and they were “easy peasy lemon squeezy”.  We worked on multiplying by 10’s and it was “too easy”. 

Yet he would not answer some basic problems, so I pulled out the flash cards.  As long as he was given the cards he answered correctly, he was willing to spend some time doing these.  He was making some connections that allowed him to answer what I thought of as harder questions - “6+7, that’s a baby questions as long as you know another baby question -  6+6 is 12”.   Yet he would miss most of the plus or minus 9 questions.  And even though he had just answered 12-5 = 7 (and had it sitting right in front of him), he couldn’t tell me what 5+7 equals.  Some of this was definitely him being uncooperative, but some was the usual asynchrony – he understands multiplication, fractions and place value but hasn’t memorized his addition and subtraction facts.  We will continue working on all of these.

He is doing well with the Reading Comprehension activities from Evan Moor.  This week he read two stories “The Three Sisters” and “Off to California”.

“The Three Sisters” is a Native American legend about growing corn, beans, and squash.   He liked the story although definitely had his own ideas about it while we were doing the discussion questions.  He is definitely my literal one.

“What is Squash’s Job?”  His answer: “to stay at their feet to protect them but what can squash do?  It’s a plant.”

What parts of the story could not be true?  answer:  “There is no Father Sun, only Mother Nature.  And I bet that’s not the only part not true.  Almost nothing in this story is true.”

So, we ended up having a discussion about what a legend is.

He must be starting to enjoy these because when he read the second story he asked “isn’t there anything more to the story?”.

He didn’t have any trouble doing the various vocabulary activities that came along with the stories.

We moved on to Step 2 in All About Spelling.  He had no problem with any of the words.  He likes getting the cards after he spells a word correctly.  After finishing the lesson, he played with the tiles making up his own stories for awhile.

We worked on adjectives in his Spectrum Writing workbook.   As usual he had to be different and not use the suggested words list.  Instead of playful, small, or funny dogs we had one that was “cool” and another that was “crazy”.  Instead of pretty bows, we had “icky” ones.

Together we started learning Spanish this week.   We are using a combination of The Complete Book of Spanish and free Instant Replay videos.

I played the First Step Espanol video by hooking my computer up to our television.  Vicki was very interested in watching and was repeating words along with the video. Georgie wasn’t as interested and wandered off a few times.

After the video, I hung up the vocabulary pages from The Complete Book of Spanish and went over them with the kids.  I used a small pocket chart (from Target’s Dollar Spot) to hold some index cards with the words on them.  We used these during the week to play some games – I would say a word in English and they would choose the right card (Georgie) or point to the right picture (Vicki) and say the Spanish word.

Georgie learned enough to say “I feel asi asi, but I feel mal about school”.

Also new this week was Literature studies of Aesop’s Fables.  I’m using some Literature Pockets from Evan Moor and a Scholastic book Teaching with Aesop’s Fables.  We started with The Boy Who Cried Wolf.   We read the story from our What Your First Grader Needs to Know and discussed the moral of the story, how we think the villagers felt being lied to, what we would have done differently if we were the shepherd, and what we would have done differently as a villager.   Georgie said he would beat up the wolf as the shepherd and keep coming even after being lied to as a villager.

We finished two more sections of our Rock & Minerals study this week – Igneous Rocks and Sedimentary Rocks.

Sedimentary Rocks

Continuing along in our Rocks & Minerals study, we learned about Sedimentary Rocks. 

First we did a demonstration to show the difference between sedimentary and metamorphic rocks, and to show how the same minerals put together in different ways can form into different rocks.

First, I made two piles of crayon shavings in two very different colors.  This was actually the hardest part since I evidently don’t have a crayon sharpener and my pencil sharpener kept getting clogged.

 

We put a little of each color on to small pieces of foil and wrapped them into little packets….

then we squished one of them (by having Vicki jump on an old baking sheet laid on top of the packet)

the other packet I heated for a few seconds over the stove and let it cool.  We unwrapped and examined our two new “rocks”.   The one that only had pressure applied had the same starting and ending colors, the texture was still rough with some larger pieces visible.   The one that had heat applied had some yellow and red chunks still but was mostly orange and smooth.  

We then took a close look at the sedimentary rocks from our collection and used the key in REAL Science Odyssey to identify them.

The conglomerate was easiest to identify by it’s visible pebbles held together by material.

  

The sandstone is rough (like sandpaper) and grains can be rubbed off easily.

Our last sedimentary rock, shale, had very tiny grains and had visible layers.

We then made our own sedimentary rock.  My original intention was to have the kids collect things to add to our jar but we had our fourth straight day of rain, so instead I popped outside to gather some materials.  We added some dirt, leaves, pebbles and even a shell to our jar.  We then added Epsom salts and water, screwed the top on and shook it up.  We observed the jar as the various materials settled and discussed how it settled into layers and why.  We poured off the excess water and left it to dry.   I have a feeling it’s going to take a few days before our “rock” is ready.  (This demonstration is from “Geology Rocks”).

We finished up with the kids playing a rock cycle game found at The Learning Zone for the Oxford University Museum of Natural History.

  

I was hoping to finish up our Rock & Minerals study this week but it looks like Metamorphic rocks will need to wait until next week.