Weekly Report 5/8/09

Wet! That sums up this week! We had rain every day with thunderstorms and tornado watches all week. When we had a break in the weather, we went to Waterfest and got wet again! This week was a tiring week too. We had a lot of field trips. On the homefront, my husband came home extremely sick on Monday. It turned out that he has Rocky Mounted Spotted Fever. I have to tell you that it's not easy homeschooling at home with a sick husband who is trying to work from home (aka we had to be very, very quiet).

Literature: We finished reading Lamb's version of Midsummer Night's Dream and watched the BBC animated version. We read some more of the Princess and the Goblin. We listened to more of Wind and the Willows.

Reading: Melissa finally finished Spy for the Night Riders. She ended up liking it even though I had to assign it to get her to read it. This week, I gave her one of my childhood books, Mandy by Julia Edwards (aka Mary Poppins). It still had my name in it from when I was a child. I had her write her name under mine and told her that she could give it to her daughter one day. She read the book in one day! She also read Nixie's Song (Beyond the Spiderwick Chronicles). Harrison was in a reading funk this week. He didn't want to read The Two Towers and just wanted to reread Lord of the Rings: Weapons and Warfare. We finally found him a new book. It was a Choose Your Own Adventure type book with a Roleplaying/Fantasy slant.

Writing: We did copywork this week and played a round of Legends of Druidawn. Melissa sent off a few emails to some friends and Harrison did a comparison chart for Deadliest Warrior.

Language Arts: They did Word Roots, Rosetta Stone Spanish, and Typing on the computer. They played some Boggle. We went over some spelling and grammar rules.

Math: Melissa worked on Area and Perimeter and finished up Singapore 3B. Harrison was busy multiplying decimals this week. He did some Challenge Word Problems too. He had a lot of practicing adding and subtracting in his roleplaying book.

Logic: Melissa did some analogies from Logic Countdown. Harrison played strategy games.

Nature Studies: We learned a lot about nature this week! We read some more of Tales of Jasper Jay. We went out and observed the clouds and weather patterns and animal behavior to predict the weather. We took a class on worms and composting. We took a class on Woodpeckers and went bird watching at a county park. We saw four red-headed woodpeckers and two flickers and found evidence of a yellow-bellied sapsucker. We also saw cowbirds, robins, wrens, a bluebird and a chickadee. Great day for our E-bird account. The kids made suet for the birds too.

Science: We went to Waterfest this week. Waterfest is a yearly festival about water and it's uses held by the the local water treatment plant. We didn't get to do all the activities but we enjoyed the ones we did. The kids rode a open air bus through a bus wash and got soaking wet. That was the most favorite activity lol. They did learn things though. They split a water molecule, looked at ecoli under ultra violet light, learned how filters work, climbed all over a fire truck, pet a police dog and police horse, climbed through tunnels and dug for fossils. We also watched Before the Dinosaurs and another Dinosaur documentary that was on the History channel about how the dinosaurs may have been killed off by insects and not the meteor.

Geography: We read more in our Marco Polo book. We also learned about the Chinese New Year and Chinese Operas. We watched Mulan and ate Chinese food with chopsticks. The kids wrote their own Opera based on the legend of Mulan (lots of fighting and acrobatics). We also read about the Netherlands in regards to our Renaissance studies, including the Little Dutch boy, dikes and canals, windmills, tulips, dutch linen and herrings. We did quite a bit of mapwork this week because our studies of Balboa led us on a rabbit trail of the Panama Canal and Melissa wondered if there was a bridge that allowed you to cross over it. This led to a discussion of the Pan American Highway so we traced it's route from Alaska to Argentina. (We also brought in math skills to calculate how long it would take to drive the entire length at speed of 60 MPH and driving 10 hours a day).

History: We continue learning about various explorers. We into more depth with John Cabot and Amerigo Vespucci and learned about Balboa.

Art: We looked at St. Peter's Cathedral designed by Michelangelo. We also made stained glass suncatchers. Melissa practiced photography too.

Music: We listened to Bach this week. Harrison continued practicing guitar and we listened to several versions of Worried Man Blues this week since he had just learned that song.

Religion: Harrison and I co-read Pilgrim's Progress. We all had a big discussion on evolution and creation and why it's not a conflict for me as it for many of our friends. We didn't make it to church or Awanas this week due to the thunderstorms and sickness

PE: Well, my kids ended up doing quite a bit of pushups this week. Both had some honesty issues that they needed to "work out". They also did gymanstics, trampoline play and several hikes. Melissa had tumbling and Harrison had football and baseball.

Social: I don't usually include social but since it's one that non-homeschoolers worry about....

Both kids had lots of time playing with neighborhood friends in the afternoons and over the weekend (including a sleepover). We didn't have a playdate over this week due to Daddy being sick and didn't go out to one due to the numerous field trips. However, we met several of our friends at Waterfest and did activities with them there. Melissa made a new friend at the Worm class and chatted away with the girls in her tumbling class. She was glad to find that she wasn't only girl whose mother wouldn't allow her to do the cheer program there due to the midriff revealing uniforms. Harrison didn't make a new friend but interact well with his peers in the class. I am working on him with to recognize his annoying behaviors and trying to replace them with less annoying ones. We've made a lot of progress with his table manners and we've finally gotten the use of the fork down pat!! They went to the kids night out program that our church has for families with special needs and played with quite a few of their friends there.

Other: Melissa played vet and detective games with her sleepover friends. She also volunteered at the dog park, filling water dishes, pools, and gathering toys as well as playing with the dogs while she was there. Harrison built several things with K'Nex.