Weekly Wrap-up Week 6: AMNH, Prehistory, and Writing Troubles

I still don't quite feel like we have a good routine going, but I feel like we are on our way so I guess that's progress.

Our big highlight for this week was finishing up our Prehistory/Evolution study with a trip into NYC to the American Museum of Natural History.  Details on that can be seen here (or you can just scroll to the post right before this one).

We had a few struggles this week.

I put aside the Spectrum Writing for both kids, at least for now.  Both levels started with different kinds of paragraphs and how to improve paragraphs by adding more detail.  Unfortunately it seems both kids need more work on how to write a basic paragraph.  I pulled out a couple of composition books, wrote some notes in the beginning about how to write a good sentence and how to write a basic paragraph.  Each day I will provide a writing prompt for them to work from.  In the past, this type of journal writing was not corrected or graded.  These will be reviewed, corrected and discussed with them.  Not every prompt will be a paragraph and some will be fun lists or charts.

Vicki is struggling a little bit with math.  Mostly from not paying attention to what's being asked or trying to rush through it.  When she misses problems in Math Mammoth, I've been giving her an extra page of similar problems to practice.  MM does provide extra practice problems but I've just been writing a few on a blank sheet of paper. She worked on Order of Operations and Bar Graphs this week.  Order of operations, she understands the concept fine but every third or fourth problem, she would just ignore it completely.  Doing bar graphs she got upset over the size of the grid provided in the workbook.  Anything she has trouble with, we work through together.  I am wondering if the busy pages of MM are part of the problem.  She seems to get overwhelmed just looking at them, and I've seen people complain about 4th grade taking a jump in the amount of text per page.   If the problems persist, we may have to look at different options.

She read the last of our Prehistory books - We, Who Discovered Natural Selection, and Billions of Years, Amazing Changes this week, as well as started on Little House on the Prairie after finishing Redwall.

  

Squidy is doing really well with pre-algebra.  He sailing through Math Mammoth, is really enjoying Zaccaro Challenge, and likes Jousting Armadillos okay.   He's LOVING the Beast Academy logic puzzle sections in 4B the most.  

He finished reading The Secret Garden, as well as the selections for Prehistory, this week.   One I had him read but didn't give to Vicki was DK The Human Story.  He found it disturbing, especially the parts at the end about manipulating DNA.  I thought it might be too much for Vicki.   As I was doing some reorganizing this week, I had put all his and Vicki's upcoming reading selections into one basket.  He went to get something new to read and chose Mr. Popper's Penguins and The Mouse and the Motorcycle.  Both are selections he read a few years ago and were meant to be only on Vicki's list, but I decided to just let him go ahead and reread them to give him a break after some of the heavier books.

One of the writing prompts for this week was "Write a paragraph telling your favorite things about Fall".  His paragraph:

     These are my favorite things about Fall.  Actually, to be honest, it's a bland month.  It gets colder yet no snow, school starts up again, and plants begin to die.  Still, Fall is a pretty....COOL month!  *BaDumTss**

Not exactly what I was looking for but it is a paragraph.

Wrapping up Prehistory/Evolution: Field Trip to AMNH

We took a trip into New York City to the American Museum of Natural History to finish off our study of Prehistory/Evolution.  We are lucky to live close enough that we can go into the city for a day trip.

Since this was an "official" school trip, I wanted to make sure the kids paid extra attention to the exhibits (and I was really annoyed the last time we went to a museum and they did nothing but rush through).  So, I did some Google-ing and found some resources they could use as we walked around the museum.  I pulled some questions from a scavenger hunt site (just those about dinosaurs) and also printed out the educational materials available on the AMNH website.  They had great materials for the Hall of Human Origins exhibit, and the Dinosaurs Among Us special exhibit.

They brought along their storage clipboards to use during the trip. Vicki managed to leave hers behind twice but both times remembered fairly quickly and was able to run back and grab it.

Squidy added drawings to his answers.

The questions definitely served their purpose.  The kids were much more deliberate about looking at the exhibits and reading the informational signs.

Trilobites are Vicki's favorites.  Ever since I rehung our Charlie's Playhouse timeline, she's been fascinated with them.  She did a poster for the 4-H Fair over the summer and will be doing a presentation at an upcoming meeting.

Did you know you can actually find stuffed trilobites (and hallucigenia and pteryglotus and dunkleosteus) on Amazon?  Christmas Presents!

The kids weren't really thrilled with the Hall of Human Origins. Vicki found the skeletons and most of the dioramas "creepy".  She was still able to answer some of the questions on her worksheet but unfortunately for her, we had to walk through the hall twice since we had to retrace our steps after visiting the meteorite and gems/mineral halls.

We had afternoon tickets for the Dinosaurs Among Us exhibit.  It would have been better if we had done this earlier in the day because by that time they were getting tired and were ready to head home.

I'm planning to head back again when we start studying habitats, and possibly take a trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to visit their Greek, Roman and Egyptian exhibits as we go through Ancient History.

Weekly Wrap-up Week 5: Spanish, Pens, and Whiteboards

We finally started Spanish this week (Yippee).  Even though they have done some Spanish in the past, I'm starting from the very beginning (a very good place to start!)  We are using Getting Started with Spanish as our main program.  Each day, I write the lesson(s) on a chalkboard, go over the vocabulary with the kids, discuss pronunciation and spelling (especially the unusual things like tildes ~), and they copy everything into their notebooks.  I'm hoping the combination of looking, reading and writing will help retention.  In addition, they are playing on Duolingo for 10 minutes each day and we will be watching episodes of Spongebob and Pokemon in Spanish on Hulu.  

I have them set up as my "friends" on Duolingo so I can see their progress.  I'm still trying to decide if I want to set them up to be friends with each other.  On the one hand, the competitiveness may have them working harder.  On the other hand, they already compete about EVERYTHING and I'm not sure I want to encourage that with school.

We had a meeting of our 4-H STEM club this week.  The kids did a catapult/trebuchet challenge.  We had some amazing designs that can be seen here.

The kids have been taking swim lessons at our local Y for the past few years, but of course until now I haven't really had the opportunity to be there during their lessons.  We don't do lessons over the summer and last spring was a little chaotic.  So, I was very interested to see how lessons were going this year, especially for Vicki after her amazing summer on swim team.  And I wasn't happy.  Both of their classes were very full (9-10 kids), they spent a lot of time waiting for their turn to start laps or waiting for the rest of the group to finish, and there wasn't a lot of instruction.  Vicki's class was better than Squidy's, but not by much.

We decided to try lessons through a local aquatic club.  They were less expensive and promised smaller classes.  Plus instead of 30 minutes like the Y, they were 60 minute lessons - 30 minutes as a group and 30 minutes of individualized help.   The main thing we asked them to work on was Vicki's diving (because this is the main thing holding her back on team), and Squidy's comfort and strokes.  It's been two weeks and it's been going really well.  They were even able to get Squidy to give diving a try!

The rest of Vicki's week:

As I mentioned previously, I decided let Vicki do her spelling test on the whiteboard this week instead of orally.  It definitely went much better and she enjoyed it.

She only had two more units left in the Grade 5 Evan Moor Spell & Write.  Once she finishes, we'll start right in with the Grade 6 book.  When she finishes that, we are done with spelling except for corrections in other work.

I let her switch from pencil to pen for all her schoolwork.  I originally offered her a pen because she broke the point off her pencil twice in five minutes.  Then she couldn't find the sharpener that she had just used.  Then the pencil didn't have an eraser (because she basically eats them off).   Then she didn't have another pencil.   She decided she liked using pen - "I like writing with a pen.  It gives it more official meaning."   I like that we won't be going through 10 pencils a week.

Neither of the kids is struggling at all with Vocabulary from Classical Roots.  Vicki is doing the 4th grade book and so far all the words have been familiar to her.  We are alternating this with Spectrum Writing since neither program will take all year.  I'm not sure if we will start the next levels if they finish early or just move on to other activities.  I am hoping to incorporate some Brave Writer this year.

Vicki just started the 4th grade book for Math Mammoth and keeps complaining that it's "soooooo HARD!".  She seems to have trouble mainly with the mental math "tricks" and with reading the instructions carefully.  When we sit together, she is able to do it without any problem.

She is still really enjoying the stories in Mosdos Press Ruby but isn't appreciating the workbook assignments quite as much.  ;-)

She spent this week reading Redwall.

Squidy's week:

Unlike his sister, Squidy does NOT want to use pen.  The idea of making a mistake and not being able to erase it bothers him a LOT.  :-)

He is finding Math Mammoth 6 easy so far.   It's mainly been a review of the four operations and place value.   He made up his own mnemonic for the order of operations - Pete Eats Many Daisies At Supper.

Zacarro Challenge and Jousting Armadillos have been a little bit more challenging.  He's finding Zacarro the easier of the two and actually corrected me on the Venn Diagram questions (I was thinking the "only" was implied, as in "there are only 4 kids who like dogs".

He has hit the Logic chapter in Beast Academy 4B and LOVES it.  He has always loved logic puzzles, so this chapter should go fairly quickly.   This is the last chapter in 4B and we'll start right up with 4C.  I like working with Beast Academy behind their main program (Math Mammoth) because it's such a different approach, but he also hasn't used it that much in the past couple of years.  I'm not sure if we'll continue once he finishes 4D since we may be fully into Algebra at that point.

He finished reading Caddie Woodlawn ("eh, it was okay"), started and finished Homer Price (took him one day), and started The Secret Garden.

Next week we are taking a field trip to the American Museum of Natural History in NYC to finish up our Prehistory/Evolution study.   By the end of October, I'm hoping to start Ancient History and Microscopy.