Week 4 Wrap Up: September 8-12, 2014

This week started her first extra-curricular activity that she absolutely ADORES: Little Flowers.  Here is a link to see a little bit about what it is and what they do:

http://beholdpublications.com/LFGC_home.htm

“Little Flowers Girls’ Club is a Catholic club for girls ages 5 and up that teaches virtues through scripture, saints’ biographies and the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Based on the 1906 Catholic classic “The Catholic Girls’ Guide” by Fr. F.X. Lasance, and the spirituality of St. Therese, the Little Flower of Liseux, this beautiful, authentically Catholic program, has delighted and instilled in our girls a love of our Catholic Faith for nearly 20 years.”

Melissa wanted to be a girl scout until she knew this existed and our local home education group runs one. She’s in the older girl group (10 and up) and her friends are in the younger group (9 and under), but she really likes the girls in the older group, so I can see her making friends with the older girls too.

Here she is, dressed and ready to go on the first day. We had a little hiccup because we had her outfit all planned and ready with a khaki uniform skirt that she wore all last year, but apparently there was a dress code that I didn’t know about and no one told me last year. The night before, the email came in that they couldn’t wear any skirts above the knee, and all Melissa’s skirts are above or just at the knee. We found this skirt that a friend handed down to us, so she wore it. I’ll have to search around and find more long skirts. I know she’ll get bored wearing the same thing all the time.

I’m also unimpressed with the quality of the polo. It shrunk inches in the length but stayed wide, so it looks really sloppy to me. Bah.

She is also signed up for a Sewing clinic once a month, and we have a field trip to an orchard/pumpkin patch later in October. There are others scheduled, but this year they don’t seem as interesting as last year. We’ll see which we join up with.

On to our week of academics:

Art:  We took a week off of formal art and just allowed her to color, draw, or do whatever crafty things she wanted to do, which this week wound up being nothing. Yesterday, she picked up her colored pencils and colored a page in her Little Flowers Wreath 3 Guide.

The facing page are the things she needs to do to earn her badge for the virtue, which is Eutrapelia. Mouthful, eh?  Eutrapelia comes from the Greek for ‘wittiness’, referring to pleasantness in conversation. It is one of Aristotle’s virtues, the “golden mean” between boorishness and buffoonery. Later on it came to mostly signify jokes that were obscene and coarse. …figures right? We turn things that start out good into base humor. UGH.

English: Still in Noun City. 🙂 We learned about the Nominative Case and how to identify the Subject in the Nominative Case. She practiced identifying them and then diagramming them. We moved into the Subjective Complement, and spent most of the week on this aspect. She was not doing well with identifying which word is the complement, so first we talked about what the word actually meant, which is not compl-I-ment, which was messing her up. She was thinking it was a word that described it positively (like giving someone a compliment.) When I explained what a compl-E-ment was, it was much easier to grasp. Instead of just circling the subject and underlining the complement, I had her first identify everything as if she was diagramming it, and THEN choose the complement. By the end of 42 examples (WHEW!!!!!0 she got it.  I was getting worried for a minute.

Better Handwriting: She completed 5 pages. She is still working on a review of all the letter forms.

History: We started Chapter 3 – Thomas Jefferson, Defender of Liberty. We read about how and when he was elected and the election of his cabinet. We then talked about the Louisiana Purchase, and the Lewis and Clark Expedition.  The book also talked about Sacajawea and her part in helping Lewis and Clark on their second expedition, going into the War with the Moslem Pirates, and then went into Jefferson’s second term as President. We talked a little about The Embargo Act, which really wound up hurting a lot of Americans instead of helping, and then the duel between Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr which left Hamilton dead.  She completed the Chapter Review questions.

We watched the DVDs:

Liberty’s Kids Episodes 1-6 (She wanted to start them over from the beginning and watch them in order. Who am I to say no? 😉 )

Drive Thru History America: The episode on Montpelier and Mount Vernon and the surrounding areas.

A & E Biography on Ben Franklin

She read:

Getting to Know the Presidents: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson

Maps, Charts, and Graphs This week was a lesson on Finding Directions and using the Cardinal and Intermediate directions. She also had a refresher about the compass rose and where to find it.

Saxon 6/5 Math: Lessons 23-27 (Halves, Fourths, Tenths, Dollars, Parentheses, Listing the Factors of Whole Numbers, Practicing the Division Algorithm, and Solving Problems about Divisions of Time).

She completed Tests #3 and #4, receiving 100% on both.

Music: Latin Hymns study at Adoration with the Home School group. We are going to start a Classical Composers class, but I haven’t gotten the free worksheets and lesson plans via email yet.

PE: 30 minutes of walking with Momma. It’s funny, I thought I would hold her back, but she talks so much that she gets breathless. My daughter likes to talk.

Reading: It was a little slight this week and I’m not sure why?

This is Our Heritage:  The Poem, “Our Lady’s Dying”; The story “The Day the Sisters Went Away” and the reasoning/comprehension questions.

Reading for Young Catholics, Comprehension. : Lessons 7-9

Book Report: she read 4 chapters of “Swiss Family Robinson”. I also found out something maddening: I checked every page of the intro, back cover, front cover to see if the version we bought was the full unabridged version. It wasn’t. UGH. So, I took it out of the library for her and we’re going to keep renewing it until she finishes it. It is different in many ways, unfortunately. She’s caught up now, I think and will be reading the FULL version from here on out. I don’t see a need to make her read the beginning again, she gets the idea and I don’t think the minutia of language and detail is that big of a difference.

Reading and Reasoning:  Cause and Effect, Comparison, Examples, and Key Words, and Judging Sentences by using all, some, most, few, or no to make each sentence true.

Religion: This week in the text she focused on Actual Sin and the Incarnation.

Bible History For Young Catholics: Abraham’s Sacrifice of Isaac and Isaac’s marriage to Rachel

Baltimore Catechism: Lessons 6 and 7 on Actual Sin and The Incarnation. Funny how that works, eh? 😉

I decided to do something a bit differently with Baltimore Catechism, and it seems to have worked much better and with infinitely less resistance. She read the Lessons and we discussed them. I gave her a typed up list of the Catechism answers that she needed to memorize. She could do however many she wanted at once, but on Friday her quiz would be from that list. She counted how many there were and divided them by 4 and did that many each day. I was proud she took the initiative and she did wonderfully on them, memorizing them all word for word.

What she doesn’t know is that I am also keeping in mind which ones are on her test and I’m being very picky with spelling and punctuation as well on those ones in particular during the week.

Science:

She has decided once and for all that she is uninterested in the Science book. I am SO GLAD that we decided to do the Earth Science concurrently! I told her about an option that we have for Third Quarter and she is sold on it:

Archimedes and the Door of Science, by Jeanne Bendick

http://www.setonbooks.com/viewone.php?ToView=P-SCBK-22

“History/science novel from Bethlehem Books. Jeanne Bendick, through text and pictures, admirably succeeds in bringing to life the ancient Greek mathematician who enriched mathematics and all branches of science. Against the backdrop of Archimedes’s life and culture, the author discusses the man’s work, his discoveries and the knowledge later based upon it. The simple, often humorous, illustrations and diagrams greatly enhance the text.”

She got hooked into Archimedes from a mod pack in Minecraft, which allowed her to use Math to build a hot air balloon and a boat!

I’m going with it! LOL

God’s Marvelous Works Book 2 : We are blasting through the material very quickly for this quarter. We are already on Week 6 of the book and will probably finish it a few weeks early for this quarter. She’s just not into it. She will read it, she will do the exercises and give her attention, but she is not captured by anything she’s learning.  She did the chapter review of 5 and 6, and wrote and defined terms in her science notebook. The topics she covered this week were Lichens and Fungi, and a small bit on antibiotics and penicillin.

Earth Science:  We started the week with studying the Sea Floor Spreading, and did an experiment showing how new crust is formed through the mid oceanic ridge, and subduction, which pulls the old crust back into the mantle.  We then studied Plate Tectonics, and moved into Earthquakes, Seismic waves, different types of fault lines – all of which is where we will be focusing on all next week.

Here is her experiment on ocean floor plate movement from the book. Don’t mind my chipped nails – I haven’t taken the time to do a new manicure lately.

And her version. She cut the whole a little too small and one side kept getting caught. You can see the rip where she got frustrated.

Spelling:  Lesson 4 21/20 A+ 105%

We also decided that we wanted to do the extra Crossword Puzzles from the website, so I printed it up and she did it. She loves Crossword Puzzles.

Vocabulary:We slowly and P-A-I-N-S-T-A-K-I-N-G-L-Y worked through Lesson 3 of Vocabulary. I can see she was skating up until this year and she doesn’t like it. Too bad, I think it’s great that she can learn to work hard NOW before High School comes and freaks her totally out. Everything has been pretty much age level, but this is stretching her.

Mommy learned that I can’t do it all – especially when I am worried or stressed out about things. I have to be tender to myself too and know my limits.  It ry so hard to take care of everyone else, but really, it’s sort of like when you’re on a plane and the air masks come down. They tell Moms and Dads or people traveling with children to afix your air mask first so that you can be able to help them. If I’m not together, school will DEFINITELY not be together, and things will go wrong.

I also learned that I cannot expect my daughter to not be a sack rat and stay up late if I am doing the same thing. We don’t go to bed early, and I don’t get up early. Why should she? I am not being a good model of morning routines, so this is our goal for the week: to have a start time of the day be 9:00 wake up and 9:30 beginning of school. Last week it was 10 am.

I am a night owl. I hate having to change that, but I have to. I can see how it’s not working for our family anymore. I see my husband falling asleep on the couch at 10 and trying to stay up with us, and just getting more and more tired.

I’ll weigh in on how we did in our next wrap up. Thank you for visiting !

Week 3 Wrap Up: September 1-5, 2014

We are starting to settle in a little better and have finished our third week! WE have yet to do experiments or fun things outside of the lesson plans, but now that we have an idea of how much work is involved to get the basics done, I think it’s time to add in experiments and extra curricular activities. I know we are going to do a pumpkin patch / orchard trip with the home school group in October. I am looking forward to it!

Let’s get down to business:

Art:  This subject had a big overhaul this week. It will now be taught by my husband, and he has TWO students: Melissa and Mommy!

Art is a subject where a personality quirk of Melissa’s has really shown up. She can’t stand to not do something perfectly the first time, so many times she won’t even attempt something and say it’s too hard.

The lesson was to draw a picture by using a grid. Mike made a computer grid for us and we did it in three sessions this week.

Day one, 3 rows:

Day two, 6 rows:

Day three, 4 rows and finished!

The sessions were meant to help her work through her frustration, and it really didn’t matter how well the grid was copied. She finished, and that deserves the accolades. We’ll work on the “craft” of art as time goes by.

In a way, I am relieved that Daddy is taking over. For heaven’s sake, he’s a graduate of Art Center College of Design – he can handle teaching a non artsy Mom and his child how to draw. I have more faith in his ability to teach than I have in my ability to learn at 50 years old, but I’m willing to make my best effort!

English: We continued our journey through nouns, specifically forming the plurals of compound nouns. For example, sister-in-law turns to sisters-in-law. She reviewed the Qualities of Nouns – singular/plural, exceptions to the rule, compound nouns, and all the different types of nouns and how to make them plural, and did a review test.

She moved into the Gender Quality of Nouns – and how to tell the difference between masculine, feminine, and neuter nouns. I found this lesson a little bit unclear, as they said architect, senator, firefighter, and emperor masculine – but they could be feminine too. I truly don’t know how they expect one to choose if it’s masculine or neuter.  I am thinking of writing to the English department and asking them for more clarification on this situation. It is on the quarter final, so it’s not like I can just skip it.

Better Handwriting: She again completed 5 pages in her book. This week was still a continuation of reviewing letter forms. If I rail on her constantly, she will write neatly. I have to remind her every single time. I just can’t understand why it’s such a big deal to write neatly.

History:  This week was mostly a focus on George Washington and the time in his life when he was the first President. We read about how he set up the presidency and the Supreme Court, , settling into Washington DC as the capital. We also learned about Alexander Hamilton, the first Secretary of the Treasury, and learned about excise tax, tariffs. We learned about each of Washington’s helpers and then went into the Presidency of John Adams, and the two events that marred or marked depending on your perspective his legacy: the X-Y-Z affair, and the Alien and Sedition Acts.

She did her chapter review.

We watched a movie on “George Washington, and a video presentation off of History Channel about John Adams’ presidency.

http://www.history.com/topics/us-presidents/john-adams

I think this will be a good source for us. I am concerned about bias and agenda in History, so I have to be very careful about what we use.

<Soapbox> I was very excited to find that Disney had a series on the Presidents. I happily clicked on one of the shows to watch it. I am glad I previewed it first. I found that the producers of the videos are the former producers of “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report”. This is not a political statement about them, but the fact that this just perpetuates the myth that our society thinks: that these two shows actually are factual and a great source of news and political climate. They are not. They are comedy satirical shows. They also have Mo Rocca talking about the presidents, but he’s a comedian from “I love the 80’s”. He is listed as a political commentator.  Each one is short (under 3 minutes) with silly cartoony type graphics and really fast moving talking and images. It seems to subscribe to the theory that kids can’t just watch something without it being exciting, fresh, fast moving, and fun. We’re selling our kids short by doing this and not allowing them to digest the information in a more “sane” fashion. We wonder why our kids are so “ON” all the time.  </Soapbox>

So…this series is out for us. We’ll stick with “Liberty’s Kids” and “History Channel” for now. I’m up for any ideas!

Maps, Charts, and Graphs Lesson 3: Using a Map Key.

I was happy to see her put more effort into both finding the answer and being neat. She even asked me what a resource was on the map (Chicle) and a wood (Mahogany). This doesn’t seem like much, but in the past she has been known to just skip over that which she doesn’t recognize or understand, and hope I will miss it when I correct her work.  Could we be crossing into a better understanding of what’s expected of her? I hope so.

Saxon 6/5 Math: Lesson 19-22, Learning Division Facts, Three ways to show division, Equal Groups stories, and Dividing and Writing a Remainder. Yes, again, these are all review, but she’s gaining much more strength in her math.

She finished Test #2 and Test #3 this week and received a grade of 100% on both.

Music: Latin Hymns study at Adoration with the Home School group.

PE: Swimming, walking, and we will try to get to Boot Camp this Friday. We will also be taking Gramma to the pool to do walking exercise for strengthening for her. She has a compression fracture of the L3 vertebrae and needs something really mild.

Reading: She has been reading “Swiss Family Robinson” for 30 minutes a day. She’s getting into the schedule of just grabbing the dictionary along with her book and I have actually learned a few new words this week: raillery for one. I now understand the meaning better when people say, “I was railing on him!” It means a good natured jabbing.

This is Our Heritage:  She read the story “Lucia Finds the Way” and did an oral quiz for comprehension and an exercise on putting the story in order..

She is still fighting the 30 minutes of reading, but since she likes “Swiss Family Robinson”, it’s getting a bit easier.

Reading for Young Catholics, Comprehension. : She only did Lesson 6 this week. She is getting deeper in her answers – yay!!!!

Reading and Reasoning:  This week, the lessons were on small words and word order in sentences and how changing words positions in the sentence, one can change the entire meaning of that same sentence. She also worked with a group of sentences and answering questions about them – whether you can say it’s a true statement, a false statement, or Can’t tell. The week was rounded out by a lesson on time order – before, after.

Religion: This week in the text she focused on Creation and the Fall of Man.

Bible History For Young Catholics: Chapter 3, The Father of Nations: Abraham. The text focused on Abraham meeting Melchizedek, God’s promise to Abraham, The Angel Visitors, the Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, and Lot’s flight from the city culminating in his wife looking back and being turned into a pillar of salt.

Baltimore Catechism: This week in the text she focused on Creation and the Angels, and the Creation and the Fall of Man. She had a really tough time being mad that they kept saying “Eve’s Sin”. She felt they were equal in their sin.  We did the questions, discussions, and she memorized the answers to various catechism questions.

Science:

God’s Marvelous Works Book 2 : Chapter 3, Wide Water Pastures, about algae, and Chapter 4, The Toughest Plants, about Lichens. She read a library book on algae and Lichen and we watched a youtube video on Lichens. She had never seen them in real life before and the book is nothing but black and white line drawings. We are flying through this book. We’re on Week 5 of the lesson plan already. We will be done within a couple of weeks. She’s really enjoying Earth Science so much more.

Earth Science: We started Section 2 Models of the Earth and did a review on Maps, Globes, and the history of Map Making. We then reviewed The Equator, Prime Meridian, Latitude, Longitude, and the Hemispheres.  Section 3 dealt with Maps in the Computer age and satellite images and mapping. Section 4 dealt with Mapping the Earth’s topography and we talked about scale, coverage, symbols, relief, elevation, and contour maps.  We studied contour maps and contour intervals and saw how to read them, and rounded out the unity with a short introduction to GPS.

We skipped the chapters on Rocks and Minerals as we did those the end of last year. We will review if needed.

The week was rounded up by introducing Plate Tectonics, and convection currents in the mantle.

We REALLY need to get our experiments going. There’s so much fun to be had and our schedule is just not getting started early enough in the day.

Spelling:  Lesson 3 21/20 A+ 105%

Vocabulary: We still have been working on Lesson 2 this week. Until she starts catching on and not “getting er done” about exercise D, we will move glacially slow. If she doesn’t know how to use a word, she just writes one in and guesses. For instance, this week she used “unique” in this sentence. It doesn’t even read right and she knew it.

“Next, we will unique a story about little St. Therese.”

I sat down with her and went through the steps to accomplish this exercise again, and I will do so every day until I see her doing it.

On to an old feature that I used 2 years ago, that I think I want to employ again: What Mommy Learned.

 I learned that if school does not start at a reasonable hour, it will not END at a reasonable hour. If it doesn’t end at a reasonable hour, I’m not a reasonable person. I turn into a “JUST GET IN YOUR CHAIR AND FINISH” mad woman. That can’t continue to be. If she is still doing work while I’m making dinner, there’s something WAY wrong with our schedule.  We HAVE to start by at least 10 am or we’re cooked.I learned that my daughter is very similar to me. My mom used to tell me that I was such a perfectionist for myself, that I would rather not try something than risk failing. I felt I had to do everything right, and everything perfect at first try. Guess who is the same way? Yep. My kid. Through tears, she told me that she has to get things right the first time. SIGH…I still battle with this myself, but I have an adult understanding of WHY I am like this. She doesn’t have 40 years of figuring it out. I hope that I can help her to navigate through this.

I learned that it’s okay to ask for help, and turn the reigns of control over to someone else when I’m not in my element. My husband is perfect to teach art, and I have always wanted to take an art class of some kind Win win.

I learned that I can persevere and have a passable art project at the end. I was proud of how well I did on the grid exercise.

Finally, I learned that it’s okay to veer from the lesson plan and follow a rabbit trail. I plan on doing this more. Once my rabbit learns to concentrate just a little bit more!

Week 2 Wrap Up: August 25-29, 2014

Time is just FLYING!! I can’t believe I’m writing the week 2 wrap up already! Before I know it, the first quarter tests will be around the corner. EEK!

We had a good week. I am really enjoying the intelligent young lady she is becoming. I’m not thrilled with some Tween attitude coming through, but I know that’s to be expected.

Here’s what we did:

Art:  We did one art project this week from the book, but we did have some drawing and diagrams in Science, so I count those as well. Lesson 3 had her making a grid, setting herself up for Lesson 4, which will be drawing St. George Slaying the Dragon in the grid method. She took a ruler and made the margins and set up a 10 x 7 grid.  Not the most thrilling method for my artsy girl.

English: We continued our journey through nouns, specifically singular and plural and studying all the rules and exceptions to the rules to identify whether a noun is singular or plural, and how to make them plural by using the rules.  We also continued to read through the Paragraph Writing Handbook, of which we will start using to actually write paragraphs next week.

Better Handwriting: She completed 5 pages in her book. This week was reviewing letter forms. Her writing is still so messy. Maybe she’s meant to be a doctor or something.

History:  This week was spent learning how to outline and pick out important names and events from the text book. I should have told her to choose ONE color of high lighter and either underline, or highlight. LOL

She also read about George Washington from a library book, and focused on the time when he became president. She doesn’t like much war, so she avoided the time when he was a general.

We watched the Mike Venezia’s “Getting to Know the U.S. Presidents”; the episode on the life of George Washington. This was very enjoyable to the entire family and I think I will do my best to find more of these episodes to watch!

Maps, Charts, and Graphs Lesson 2: Map Keys on Land Claims in North America and Mineral resources.

Saxon 6/5 Math: Lesson 13-18, Multiplying to Perform Repeated Addition, dollars and cents, Missing numbers in Subtraction, Making a Multiplication Table, Horizontal, Oblique, and Vertical lines, Some Went Away stories, Multiplying by one digit numbers. Yes, these are all review, but she’s gaining much more strength in her math.

She still likes the DIVE CD, but she says she wishes I would do math with her more, so we will work the practice sets together.

We forgot to do the test after Lesson 15, so we will do that on Monday.

Music: Latin Hymns study at Adoration with the Home School group.

PE: Swimming, walking.

Reading:

Bye Bye to Beorn the Proud. She tried. On Tuesday, we drove to Barnes and Noble and picked up “Swiss Family Robinson” to replace “Beorn, the Proud”. She just could not get into it.  Two weeks in and she asked PLEASE to change from Beorn the Proud to Swiss Family Robinson. She tried – I give her credit. She promised to read 4 Chapters and she did. At first she was okay with it, but then she just really doesn’t like the attitude of the Vikings. She says that they just have joy in killing and she can’t get past that. I can’t blame her, and I have to value that. So, we are switching to SFR, and it’s HUGE and LONG, and she knows it, but that’s what she is going to do. I think perhaps we will do it as a family read aloud each night – she really does enjoy it when we do them.  We are on Chapter 3 of 61 (EEEK!!!) and so far she really enjoys the story.

One thing I am noticing is that it is chock FULL of archaic words and she has to have a dictionary next to her as she reads it, or she would be asking me every paragraph twice or MORE what a word means.  She is motivated and interested…so I’m striking when the iron is hot.

This is Our Heritage: 

We went through the poem “Damascus Road”, by Sister M. Dorothy Anne and talked about stanzas and rhyme and meter.

We then read the story “Prisoner on Patmos” and took a short quiz on comprehension of the concepts.

Finally, we read the poem “The Right Must Win”, about working in the battlefield for God.

She is “supposed” to do 30 minutes of reading a day. We set a timer, but there always seems to be a bathroom trip, some water, some kind of squirrel question that takes up the time. I’m still grappling with the fact that I have given birth to a non reader. Oh, the humanity.

Reading for Young Catholics, Comprehension. : We did three Lessons all about Fr. Padilla and his sacrifice.

Reading Detective: None this week..

Reading and Reasoning:  After this class, she came up to me and said, “Mom, NEVER have a day when we don’t do this book!!! I LOVE IT!!”. Okay…I won’t! 😉

This week was on Sentences – how to make a sentence, the parts necessary for a complete sentence. She did exercises on getting the point of a sentence, and had a great time working with jumbled order sentences.  We closed out the week with a review of over/under and positional words.

Religion: This week in the text she focused on The Unity and Trinity of God, Creation, Creation and the Angels.

Bible History For Young Catholics: Chapter 2, Man’s Sin and God’s Punishment and quiz.  I really like how this book is set up. It makes the Bible come alive with the colorful pictures

Baltimore Catechism: Lesson 3 and 4: The Unity and Trinity of God and Creation and the Angels. We did the questions, discussions, and she memorized the answers to various catechism questions.

Science:

God’s Marvelous Works Book 2 : Chapter 2, Mushrooms without Gills, wrote terms in her Science notebook, and did the review in the book. She read a library book on Mushrooms and drew a diagram of a mushroom.

Earth Science: We finished up the Scientific Method Notebook and started with the introductory pages of the book.  We read about Dr. Jane Luu, who discovered the Kuiper Belt and then read a short history of Science.  We then explored the different careers one could have in Earth Science, and ended the week with topography and mapping the earth’s surface. She did a diagram on the layers of the earth and topography.

Spelling:  Lesson 2 21/20 A+ 105%

Vocabulary: Worked on Lesson 2.

The words are a bit more difficult this year, so I have slowed it down to defining and understanding 5 words a day instead of 8. We go through exercise B and C together, and I try to use the words during the week. Some of them are hard!! LOL

We have about 2 weeks before the extracurricular activities come in, so I am working on getting our schedule going well.

See you next week!

Week 1 Wrap Up: August 15 – 22nd

First Day of 6th Grade – 11 years 6 months. 

It blows my mind that we have already finished week one of 6th grade. I know, I know. I have been talking about it, planning, worrying, and planning some more for the entire summer. We had planned on tomorrow being our first day, but I just couldn’t see waiting when we had all the books, it was getting hot again, and I could tell our days were getting somewhat boring. We have been fighting over the computer, and she actually said she was getting a bit bored. I jumped. LOL

Every week I will do a wrap up of what we have accomplished, and during the week it will be sort of a free for all of what we’ve done on that day, or my thoughts about what’s going on at that particular time. Some things might be repeated in our wrap up.

Here goes:

We started on Friday the 15th by browsing all of our books and going over the lesson plans. We talked about how things would stay the same, and some things would change, and she did the Introduction to Saxon 6/5 DIVE CD.  Other than that, and a bit of reading, there was nothing super complicated. I just wanted to dip our feet in and get back into the schedule of things.

Here’s our Week 1:

Art:  Art is going to be different this year, and I’m not sure exactly how it’s going to look in the end. The lessons are so unbelievably short and, well, a bit dry so far. Her first lesson for the entire week was to learn how to use a ruler to draw a 1″ border on a sheet of paper. Yep. Wow. What a challenge. We did Lesson 1, and Lesson 2, which was simply to write objects and squiggles within the lines she drew in lesson 1.

I have a feeling we will most definitely find a different art program – or at least supplement a LOT. This is one of her favorite subjects, and so far it’s a big goose egg.

English: We started the English book with a review of Nouns and worked on Proper and Common nouns, collective nouns, abstract nouns, and person, 1st, 2nd, or 3rd.

Better Handwriting: We decided together that she still needed to work on her cursive writing, so we chose to do the optional Handwriting book. She will be doing copy work and did 10 pages in the book.

History:  We started out this year with a review of some of the things we learned two years ago so that we could get back into studying America. Last year we took a break and did World History.  We read the introduction and the first chapter, “The States Form a Strong Union”. We talked about the Articles of Confederation and their inadequacies, a little bit on the history of money and how there were different currencies in each state. She got a kick out of one that was, instead of being backed by silver or gold, was backed by HOGS.  We talked about the Northwest Ordinance, and then rounded out the chapter talking about the Constitutional Convention and the Three Compromises: The Great Compromise (3 Branches of Government and checks and balances system) The 3/5th Compromise (Slaves would be counted as 3/5ths of a white man) and The Third Compromise, the regulation of trade by the Federal Government instead of each state.  Finally, we read about the journey of the Constitution to be ratified.

We also watched the “Liberty’s Kids” episode on the Constitutional Convention.

Maps, Charts, and Graphs Lesson 1: Maps and Pictures. She was happy because it was about the Hoover Dam, a place she has actually been and could visualize it.

Saxon 6/5 Math: This year we splurged and purchased the DIVE teacher CD to go with the text book. I think it will be a good thing. We could have moved her up to 7/6, but if you’ve been following our Math journey, you will know that we are happier with her moving slow and steady and re-learning the concepts she missed along the way. We have a semi math phobic child, so we need to sneak up on it and build her confidence.  I truly don’t care about grade level here. I care about giving Melissa what she needs.

Back to why we are using the CD this year:

When I was in school, I got regular teaching with Math, but somewhere around 6th or 7th grade, our small Catholic school lost their teacher who was experienced in Math. When they finally hired another teacher, he was a Science teacher, and had NO experience in Math.  He actually read a chapter ahead of us each night and taught us the lessons right after HE learned them. One problem: He would figure out how to do something and think some steps were extraneous – and not teach them to us. When I got into High School, this came back to bite me as I was accused of cheating in my Freshman Algebra class. I had the right answers, but my steps were all funny. I had to re-take my first quarter exam and do it in front of the teacher to prove that I was doing my own work. We realized then that I wasn’t taught correctly and I would need remediation.

I am concerned that some of my holes will start to show up, and I don’t want that to happen. SOO, Melissa and I BOTH will watch the DIVE CD together for each lesson, and then we will work the practice sets together, and then she will do her problem sets. I think it’s a win win.

We did lessons 1-12 this week along with the first milestone test for Lessons 1-10. 100% on the test and she only missed a few problems on the problem sets we did. I know it will get harder…I’m letting her take all the props she can get right now.

Music: We started the music book and then we both realized we didn’t like doing it. I signed up for an online music course and it will start mid September, so no real Music to speak of right now.

PE: Just walking and some calisthenics with Mom. We will have her do the boot camp again with the home school group when it starts up again.

Reading:  She started to read her Book Report book, “Beorn, the Proud”. She likes it, but she’s not enthralled by it. I’m giving it another week and if she doesn’t engage, we will switch to “Swiss Family Robinson”. It’s hugely long, but she likes the story a lot more than “Beorn the Proud”. We’ll see.

Our reader is called “This is Our Heritage”, and she read one story and took a quiz on it for comprehension. She did great on it. Weird that she did so horribly on the Reading Detective, which she LOVES. Hmmm…

I am reinstating 30 minutes a day free reading and it’s going…slow…painfully slow…and frustrating. She just shuts down when I ask her to read – even a book SHE wants to read. She just isn’t a reader. Sigh…I adore reading, and I have to shut off that part of me and realize she is different than I was at that age.

We did two Lessons in Reading for Young Catholics, Comprehension. 

Reading Detective: She did 1 lesson and got 50%. Sigh…we have a lot of work to do with comprehension, I see.

Reading and Reasoning: We worked on definitions and realizing that there are words that have more than one meaning and how to identify them. She wrote some of her own definitions to gain understanding of other words, and if she didn’t know, she had to go look them up. You’d thought I assigned her a research paper. LOL

Religion: This week in the text she focused on The Apostle’s Creed and God and His Perfections.

Bible History For Young Catholics: Chapter 1, The Creation of the World and quiz.  She really likes this book better than last year’s book. It’s bigger, full color, and some really wonderful art pieces described in it. She misses our Rosary in Art book from last year, so I will do my best to talk about some of the art pieces in her other books to make up for it.

Baltimore Catechism: Lesson 1 and 2: The Purpose of Man’s Existence and God and His Perfections. We did the questions, discussions, and she memorized the answers to various catechism questions.

Science: We are doing two science books this year. Melissa did not want to do Seton’s book, but we’re just cursorily doing it, and focusing on Earth Science instead this year. So, we read Chapter 1 in God’s Marvelous Works Book 2 on mushrooms and did the review questions.

In Earth Science, we started out reading the back Appendix , The Scientific Skills Notebook. She enjoyed learning more about the scientific method, something we haven’t put too much attention on.

Science with Daddy is always fun!

Spelling:  Lesson 1 21/20 A+ 105%

Vocabulary: Worked on Lesson 1.

We have finally hit her level. She has been skating in Vocabulary all this time, but these words are more difficult for her to do and she struggled.  She missed all of Exercises B and C, and struggled mightily with Exercise D. We erased them all and I showed her the “new” way of doing Vocabulary that included a thesaurus and a dictionary and deductive reasoning after writing in what she knows. It’s going to be a difficult year for Vocabulary, but she’s up for it.

So that’s it – our wrap up of Week 1!

1 Down, 180 to Go!

Today was our first day of school for the year 2014-2015. We were going to start on August 25th, but the books came, I had read through the lesson plans and planned the first day, so why wait? The books were just sitting there, beckoning me to start!

Here is the new 6th grader with her spread of books. SQUIRREL!!!! Man do we have a big shoe pile behind her. We’ll have to figure out a new way of dealing with that shoe pile.

Oops, I’m back.

Looking through the books, I realize that this year is going to be more jam packed than last year, and I promised, and will fulfill that promise, that we would break out of the lesson plan mold and have more fun ways of learning the materials. Pray for us. 🙂

Here is the official “First Day of School” picture. She wanted to make the sign and she was so excited that she didn’t see that she wrote “Frist Day of School” instead of First. LOL

We weren’t going to start until the 25th, but as I was planning our first day, I realized that most of it was reviewing the books and going through their table of contents and just getting a feel for each subject. It seems to me that those things could be done as preparatory work and not really counted in the first day of subjects, so that’s why I chose a Friday to start. We read all the introductions, looked through the books, and made sure we had everything we needed to have a successful year.

We did decide to do a day of Math today – moreso for her to get a feel for what she will be doing differently this year and how to use the DIVE CD. We are using Saxon Math (second edition because I really admire John Saxon, and the 2nd edition is the last he had full control over. ) and we are adding the teacher CD to it this year. When I first told Melissa that we were going to use the CD, she was upset and wanted me to still teach her. She misunderstood and thought that this CD was going to replace our math discussions. No way.

BTW, this is the CD we are using:

http://www.diveintomath.com/digital-download-for-dive-math-6-5-2nd-edition/

Seton uses 6/5 for 6th grade. We could have moved her up to 7/6, but if you’ve been following our Math journey, you will know that we are happier with her moving slow and steady and re-learning the concepts she missed along the way. We have a semi math phobic child, so we need to sneak up on it and build her confidence.  I truly don’t care about grade level here. I care about giving Melissa what she needs.

Back to why we are using the CD this year:

When I was in school, I got regular teaching with Math, but somewhere around 6th or 7th grade, our small Catholic school lost their teacher who was experienced in Math. When they finally hired another teacher, he was a Science teacher, and had NO experience in Math.  He actually read a chapter ahead of us each night and taught us the lessons right after HE learned them. One problem: He would figure out how to do something and think some steps were extraneous – and not teach them to us. When I got into High School, this came back to bite me as I was accused of cheating in my Freshman Algebra class. I had the right answers, but my steps were all funny. I had to re-take my first quarter exam and do it in front of the teacher to prove that I was doing my own work. We realized then that I wasn’t taught correctly and I would need remediation.

I am concerned that some of my holes will start to show up, and I don’t want that to happen. SOO, Melissa and I BOTH will watch the DIVE CD together for each lesson, and then we will work the practice sets together, and then she will do her problem sets. I think it’s a win win.

So there it is, our wrap up of Day 1. All we have left to do is to snuggle up on the couch and read the first chapter of “Beorn the Proud”, her first quarter book report book. She really doesn’t find it interesting, so I’m hoping that reading it aloud will help engage her. She promised to read the first 3 chapters, and if she really hates it, I promised her she could switch to “Swiss Family Robinson”.

Off we go to the journey of 6th grade!! I can’t wait to see what it will bring!

Planning Earth Science for Next Year!

Science 6 – Prentice Hall Earth Science Lesson Plan

 

Quarter 1

 

Week 1 Introduction to Earth Science

Day 1- pp xxii – 13; Skills Handbook pp 745-755

Day 2 – pp 18-24; Skills Handbook pp 756-757

Day 3 – pp 25-31; Skills Handbook pp 758-759

Day 4 – pp 32-39; Skills Handbook pp 760-761

Day 5 – pp 41- 43 Discussion; Skills Handbook 762-763

 

Week 2 Review of Minerals

Day 1 – Skills Handbook 764-766

Day 2 – Review Skills Handbook and Introduction. Test for Understanding.

Review of Minerals

Day 3 Properties of Minerals pp 46-54

Day 4 – How Minerals Form pp 56-61

Day 5 – Mineral Resources pp 62-68

 

Week 3

Day 1 – Review pp 69-71; check for understanding

Day 2 – Chapter 3 – Classifying Rocks pp 74-77

Day 3 – Igneous Rocks pp 78 -81

Day 4 – Sedimentary Rocks pp 82-86

Day 5 – Rocks from Reefs pp 87-89

 

Week 4 

Day 1 – Metamorphic Rocks pp 90 – 93

Day 2 – The Rock Cycle – pp 94-96

Day 3 – Review Study Guide pp 97-99

Day 4 – Interdisciplinary Exploration: Gold pp 100-105

Day 5 – Safety Tips for the Laboratory p 767

 

 

Chapter 4 – Plate Tectonics

Day 1 – Science Safety Rules – pp 768-769

Day 2- Earth’s Interior pp 108-114

Day 3 – Design or Draw a model of the Earth’s Interior

Day 4 – Discover Activity p 115, read pp 115-118

Day 5 – Drifting Continents – pp 118-122; Science at home p 122      Map – need a map, scissors and make Pangea.

 

Week 5

Day 1 – Sea Floor Spreading – Discover Activity p 123; read pp        123-129

Day 2 – pp 130 – 131 Sea Floor Spreading Model

Day 3 – pp 132-138 Hot Plates Skills Lab

Items needed: 1 aluminum roasting pan, 2 10cm candles, clay, bricks, 10 map pins, 2 liters of water.

Day 4- Review Study Guide; Check for understanding pp 139-141

Day 5 – Chapter 5 – Earthquakes  pp 144-151 Netflix EarthQuakes video

 

Week 6

Day 1 – Measuring Earthquakes pp 154-159

Day 2 – Earthquake Hazards and Safety pp 162-167

Day 3 – Monitoring Faults pp 168-172

Day 4 – Review Study Guide; check for understanding pp 173-175

Day 5 – Chapter 6 – Volcanos pp 178-181

 

Week 7

Day 1 – Volcanic Activity pp 183-192

Day 2 – Volcanic Land forms pp 193-197

Day 3 – Volcanos in the Solar System – pp 200-202

Day 4 – Review Study Guide; check for understanding pp 203-205

Day 5 – Nature of Science Focus on Faults – pp 206 – 209

 

Week 8

Day 1 – Chapter 7 – Weathering and Soil Formation pp 210-217

Day 2 –  p 219 Preserving Stone Monuments… DVD on Sphinx

Day 3 – Soil Formation and Composition pp 221 – 227

Day 4 – Conserving Land and Soil pp 229-234

Day 5 – Waste Disposal and Recycling pp 235-240; Study Guide pp 241-243 Check for understanding.

 

Week 9 – Chapter 8 – Erosion and Deposition

Day 1 – Changing Earth’s Surface pp 246 – 249

Day 2 – Water Erosion pp 252-261 (Review) Watch Caves DVD

Day 3 – The Force of Moving Water and Glaciers pp 265 – 273 DVD on Glaciers

Day 4 – Waves and Wind pp 274-280

Day 5 – Study Guide 281-283; Check for understanding

Weekly Wrap Up: May 23, 2014

This week was a really good week – we both felt really accomplished and it was a good week. Too bad we seem to get into the swing of things really well at the END of the year, then we lose it. I’m hoping that since we’re doing reading and Math over the summer, that we won’t get too out of the swing of things this year.

I think that we will be done by the end of next week except for the … dum dum dum  BOOK REPORT!!!!!!!!

Here’s our Week 36:

Art:  Chapter Twenty: The Institution of the Holy Eucharist, finishing up the Luminous Mysteries.  We studied paintings from Fra Angelico, Dieric Bouts the Elder, Leonardo da Vinci, Cosimo Rosselli, Juan de Juanes, Peter Paul Rubens, and Carl H. Bloch.  Her favorite: Carl H. Bloch The Last Supper. I actually think if I go back and look, she’s chosen him a few times. She just is really fascinated about how the painter can show, just by light, that Jesus is Lord and the focal point of the paintings. DONE for the year! 🙂

English: We are still working through the unit on Sentences. We continued to work on Compound Subjects: Predicates and Objects, Natural and Inverted order, Kinds of Sentences (declarative, interrogative, imperative, exclamatory), and a review of diagramming.

Cursive: Copy work on Virginia’s First Catholic Church, Washington, and Our Lady of Perpetual Help Shrine. She did her final copywork to go into the proof packet for this year. DONE! 🙂

History:  She completed her test on Chapter 27, and we moved into Chapter 28, The Age of Discovery, and took it’s test as well. This was a really short sum up of where the world was at the threshold of the Age of discovery of the americas. We learned about the Silk Road, the routes to the East, and Marco Polo. We learned about Portugal and their schools of navigation that spawned a great interest in maps and mapping the known world, and also finding a route around the coast of Africa. We ended with Columbus. DONE 🙂

Maps, Charts, and Graphs Lesson 34 – Reading Timelines. I almost had to laugh – she had a mini melt down because they asked her to finish a timeline of the Presidents and she, in all her glory, said indignantly, “I don’t KNOW the Presidents by heart…how can I do this??????” I stifled a laugh and said, “If you don’t know something, what do you do? ” She said, “Ask you!” and I said “Try again”. She weakly said, “Google?” and I touched the tip of my nose and said “BINGO!!!” and walked out of the room. I heard her huffing. LOL. She completed it and then said, sheepishly, I might add, “I don’t know why I made such a big deal of this. ” DONE 🙂

Math: She did Tests #4 – #7 which covered up to Lesson 40. I had her review the lessons in question first and then take the tests. I realized through browsing that even though she’s done concepts, it IS approached differently and a little more complex in the 6/5 book, so we stopped testing through.

We started on Friday doing lessons at #37, Using Fraction Manipulatives, Part 1. She made Fraction Masters for halfs, quarters, and tenths. She had a lot of fun doing it. My kid loves cut and paste and color. LOL We did the practice to show how the denominators and percentages are the same, how they are different, and how you can make a whole with a combination of what she has.

Music: All Done for the Year.

Phonics: Took the final test, 98%. She missed one problem: descendants. She said it had one suffix, when it had two: ant and s. DONE 🙂

PE: Friday with the home school group.

Reading: She finished the “Book of Gratitude” and did her Reading Final online. We are still waiting for it to be graded. but from what I read, it seems like she did perfectly fine.

She is continuing to read “St Rose of Lima” for her final Book Report of the year.

Reading Detective: She did 2 lessons a day. She seems to get 70-80% on each of them so I am really glad we started this. I’m not seeing her getting better yet though.

Thinking skills: Lesson 34. AAAAAND we are finished!!

Religion: This week in the text she focused on How to Confess, Indulgences, Three Sacraments, Sacramentals.

Concise Bible History: Studying for the test.

Baltimore Catechism: Studying for the test.

Science: We worked through the chapter on Erosion – Water Erosion, The Force of Moving Water, Glaciers, Waves, and Wind. She watched a DVD on Erosion, and we also watched Jurassic Park. LOL All 3. She said it corresponds to her learning about the earth. We let her think it was part of the “fun” part of science.

We also went on a field trip to Red Rock Canyon Visitor Center. We learned about the geology of the area and Melissa was able to touch different rocks: Brecccia, conglomerate, shale, limestone, gypsum, and petrified wood. She  also was able to see different seeds and bees under magnification.

She was really intrigued with the wall topographic math.

We listened to a geologist give us a time record of the rocks and how the formations were formed.

Looking out at the valley:

Spelling:  Lesson 34 21/20 A+ 105%

Vocabulary: Worked on Lesson 24.

Weekly Wrap Up: May 9, 2014

I can’t believe we are etching in on the close of the 5th grade school year! It went by SO FAST.  I am starting to think of how well/not well things worked this year, and how this coming year is going to be better still. I want more than anything for this education time to be the best it can be. Yes, I know I will make mistakes. Yes, I know Melissa will fight me just like any normal kid would do, but I have to learn to let go and let what happens happen more organically than I have been doing.

This summer Melissa and I will be planning our science TOGETHER. I can’t wait to see how it will turn out and what it will look like. I’m also curious to see if when she has more control, she will show more interest.

Here’s our Week 34:

Art:  Chapter Eighteen: The Proclamation of the Kingdom, continuing through the Luminous Mysteries.  We studied paintings from Fra Angelico, Cosimo Rosselli, James Tisot, Gustave Doré, and Carl H. Bloch.  Her favorite: Jesus Preaching on the Mount, By Gustave Doré. She seems to like this kind of painting: Where the main figure is bright, and the rest of the picture is more muted. She says it makes Jesus stand out.

 

English: We are now in the unit on Sentences. We continued to work on  Identifying the essential parts of a sentence (subject, predicate.), simple and complete subject, simple and complete verb, and continuing to diagram them all.

I found a really great online diagramming tool:

http://1aiway.com/nlp4net/services/enparser/

I have her plug her diagramming in to check and see how she did. She’s still not quite understanding how to decide if something is an adjective or a phrase that needs to be diagrammed differently. She is getting stuck on “It’s after the verb, so it’s a direct object. “

Cursive: Copy work on Tennessee, The Virgin of the Poor, Texas, and The First Sisters in Texas.

History:  She completed her test on Chapter 25, and we moved into Chapter 26, The Renaissance. Of course, you can’t encapsulate the Renaissance in a short chapter, so it was just a very quick review on the renewed interest in learning about the past and our world. The Crusades had opened up a new world to Europe, and a new fascination with global issues. We touched on Italy, the architecture changes, sculptures, and great painters. Some of the great people we talked about were Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Michaelangelo, Hubert and jan van Eyck, Peter Paul Rubens. There was also a pagan Renaissance, where there was a movement to bring back the Glory of Rome and Greece, including their gods. We learned about the invention of Gutenberg’s printing press and that the oldest and largest book printed by it was the Latin Vulgate. Science and Astronomy and navigation bloomed at this time.

Maps, Charts, and Graphs Lesson 29 and Lesson 30 – Reading Line Graphs and Reading Tables.

Math: We did lessons 133-137 and we worked together closely this week. She’s missing less on the first round if I have her do 5 problems at a time. We can’t keep going like this though. We have to find the key to help her concentrate.

We are almost done with the book, and then we’ll start doing the tests to see where she will start the 6/5 book. By August we will know if I should continue with 6/5 or move her up to 7/6 and get all the info for that from Seton. Pray for us to make the best decision.

Music: All Done for the Year.

Phonics: Lessons 146-151:  A wrap up of syllables, plurals, Phonics practice, alphabetizing, Dictionary Guide Words, and a Dictionary Pronunciation Key.

PE: Friday with the home school group. They want to go thorugh the summer, but I don’t know that I can handle it. LOL

Reading: “The Book of Gratitude” we read “The Mountain Pasture” (an excerpt from “Heidi”), “In the Fields” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, “Easter” by Christina Rosetti, “Easter”, by Joyce Kilmer, “Sheep and Lambs”, by Katharine Tynan, “How Phideas Helped the Image Maker”, by Beatrice Harraden, “The Saint of Gardeners” , and “Beautiful Things” by Ann Taylor.

She continued to read “St Rose of Lima” for her final Book Report of the year.

Thinking skills: Lesson 27-30. She enjoyed the analogies a lot and wished we had more!

Religion: This week in the text she focused on Holy Eucharist, and  started on the sacrament of Penance.

Concise Bible History: Holy Saturday and Easter Morning.

Baltimore Catechism: Lesson 28-29, Holy Communion and Penance.

Science: We are working through the Science Text books we got out of the library still – Grades 6-9 Prentice Hall “Science Explorer, Inside Earth”, Exploring Earth Science, 1999 Edition Grade 7.

She did a diagram of the Interior of the Earth as a wrap up of last week, and then we moved into rocks and minerals. We struggled through learning the definition of a mineral: a naturally occurring, inorganic solid with a crystalline structure and a definite chemical composition. See, even I know it by heart now!  We studied how to identify minerals by their hardness, color, streak, luster, Density, Crystal system, cleavage or fracture, and special properties.

We then moved on to rocks and learned the three major classifications of rocks: their texture, their grain, mineral composition, and origin.  Within origin, we learned that rocks come from one of three groups: Igneous, sedimentary, or metamorphic rock.

We also watched a Discover School DVD on Earth Science with Bill Nye as the host. We will be starting on a DVD Series called “How the Earth was Formed” next week.

I also had a grandiose plan of reading “Journey to the Center of the Earth” by Jules Verne, but that went out the window. Maybe we’ll watch the movie.

Spelling:  Lesson 32 21/20 A+ 105%

Vocabulary: Finished Lesson 22.

Weekly Wrap Up: May 2, 2014

This was a really tough week. It’s getting warmer and summer fever is starting. We will make it!!!!!!! We have finished a few subjects and are a bit ahead with some, and a little behind with others.

Art:  Chapter Seventeen: The Wedding at Cana, continuing through the Luminous Mysteries.  We studied paintings from Giotto, Master of the Catholic Kings, Gerard David, Paolo Veronese, Guiseppe Maria Crespi, and Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld..  Her favorite: The Wedding at Cana, By Giuseppe Maria Crespi.

English: We are now in the unit on Sentences. We continued to work on  Adjectival and Adverbial Phrases. We then moved into crafting sentences and recognizing full and complete sentences, building a sentence, and completing a sentence. There was a great deal of diagramming and she did a bit better on knowing where to place the phrases. She’s still not identifying prepositions well.

Cursive: Copy work on South Carolina, The Diocese of Charleston, South Dakota, and The House of Mary.

History:  Chapter 25, The Growth of Towns and Trade was all about the Towns. They went through how towns became free to govern themselves, what was within the town walls, Amusements, fairs, Craft Guilds, the training of Craftsmen, and the rise of Trade routes.

Maps, Charts, and Graphs Lesson 28 – Comparing Graphs.

Math: We did lessons 129-131. I do like spiral math. I notice that now she is SO MUCH BETTER at fractions than at the beginning of the year. I have seen her mind grow and expand!

Music: We finished the text book.

Phonics: Lessons 139-145:  Plural Forms for Words Ending in O, a Word Search, Plural Forms of words, Identifying Syllables by vowel sounds, Syllables, and compound words.

PE Walk with Mommy, PE on Friday with the home school group. We are going to get healthy before it gets too hot.

Reading: “The Book of Gladness” we read The First Saint of the Americas, The First Birthday, A Carol for Sleepy Children.

She started “St Rose of Lima” for her final Book Report of the year!

Thinking skills: Lesson 25-26. I had to have her re-do Lesson 26, not because she didn’t get the concepts in the story, but that she did not use complete sentences.

Religion: This week in the text she focused on The Holy Mass, and finished the Holy Eucharist.

Children’s Bible History: The Burial of Jesus.

Baltimore Catechism: Lesson 27, The Sacrifice of the Mass.

Science:  Since we are finished with Seton’s Science, I decided to let Melissa pick the topic she wanted to learn about next, so she chose Earth Science, specifically the insides of the earth, and then the minerals. We watched “Bill Nye – Rocks and Soil” and “All About the Earth – Volcanoes”. She read the library book “Earth’s Crust”

and I got two text books out of the library, Grades 6-9 Prentice Hall “Science Explorer, Inside Earth”,

and

Exploring Earth Science, 1999 Edition Grade 7.  I despise Prentice Hall’s changes for Common Core, so I make sure to use their old books and pre-read. 🙂

Soooo….this week we read the pages in each book that introduced the crust, the mantle, and the inner and outer core of the earth, and reviewed the continents, the oceans, and the job of the Geologist.

Spelling:  Lesson 31 21/20 A+ 105%

Vocabulary: Finished Lesson 21 and started Lesson 22.

Weekly Wrap Up: April 4, 2014

This week was finishing Quarter 3 and Doing the Quarter 3 tests. It’s a hodgepodge of classes – some were particularly heavy to catch up, and some were off or light because we were done.

Art:  She still worked on Little Flowers and did a lot of coloring. Nothing planned because she’s still two weeks ahead in Art.

English: She continued in her workbook to work and choosing the correct word with the meaning of the sentence: Their and There, Real and Very, Two, Too, and To, No, Not, and Never,  and then a review of Adverbs and diagramming for the Quarter final test.

We decided to do the test online and see how it worked. She LOVED it. She’s my techno-geek. She especially loved doing the diagramming on the computer. It was clearly laid out and a big perk – immediate grading! She got a 96% A on it. She missed identifying intransitive versus transitive verbs. I have to admit that I would have missed those items as well, so we are going to review and see where the understanding was lost.  We were focusing on the action aspect of it, but it’s actually that intransitive verbs do not have a receiver of the action. It’s not that the action is impassive.

Cursive: We started the Quarter 4 copy work and chose which handwriting sample we were going to send in to Seton. She did copy work on New Mexico, El Santuario de Chimayo, New York, and Our Lady of Victory Basilica.

History:  She did the review of Chapter 21 and started Chapter 22, The Crusades. I decided to slow way down as this is a period in history full of historic encounters between the East and the West. I think it’s important to understand this time period from both points of view.  We talked about the Turks and the Eastern Schism in the church. We talked about the Turks and then spent some time on what a Pilgrimage is. We talked about how the crusades began and who the principal players were. We spent a little time talking about the Muslim empire and the similarities and differences in our faiths.  We talked about the Knights Templar, and King Richard the Lionhearted.  The chapter ended with the results of the Crusades and the growth of new ideas.  She did the review and took the test, Quarter 3 Done!

Maps, Charts, and Graphs Lesson 25 – Reading Bar Graphs. It was funny – in Math this week she learned about reading graphs and circle graphs as well!

Math: We did lessons 106-111 and this starts Quarter 4!

We started getting the “not paying attention” bug again this week, so we slowed down again. She is understanding Math better and I’m holding my breath…some new to her material was brought up and she didn’t freak. LOL

Music: Done for Quarter 3. We’ll start up again next week.

Phonics: Lessons 117-122, which is the start of Quarter 4, -able vas -ible, _ion, -ation -ition, and -tion; -ance, -ence, -ive, and -ity.

PE Park time.

Reading: “The Book of Gladness” and read “Our Lady and the Aztec”(about Our Lady of Guadalupe) , and the Poem “Madonna Remembers”, a sweet poem about Mary remembering Jesus as a child bringing her flowers.

Thinking skills: Lessons 15 through 18. She LOVED Venn Diagrams and Logic puzzles. 🙂

Oh my gosh – we FINALLY finished the Book Report book –  “Elizabeth and the Three Crowns” !!!! Now to get the report written. Pray for us. That torture will happen tomorrow.  She completed the Reading Quarter 3 test online. Did I say she likes doing computer tests? LOL

Religion: We reviewed the third quarter chapters of the text for the Quarter Final Test.

Children’s Bible History we browsed and pulled out important facts for the Quarter final test, and then took it after we reviewed everything.

Baltimore Catechism,We reviewed all of the third quarter memorization questions and took the test.

Science:  We are now doing Quarter 3, as we did Quarter 4 last time. We started out with the chapters on arachnids and my squeamish child was NOT happy. So I pulled some Flower studies in between. We did this chart.

Spelling:  Studied for the final and got 20/20 100% A+

Vocabulary: Finished Quarter 3 Final.

We Tried a Flower Study…

It probably wasn’t the best day to try it, but we had a choice of going into the Flower Unit, or the Arachnid unit. BOTH of us were perfectly happy to start the Flowers. It was windy and cold, but the weather report said only a 40% chance of rain. Well…we got about 15 minutes before a splash hit the diagram she was coloring…

We started by cutting a rose that was already way open and on the way to it’s natural death and put it on a TV tray outside. I printed out a diagram and as we talked about each part, she colored in the corresponding part on the diagram and colored the word the same color to make a color coding key.

Another view

She always looks so SERIOUS, even if she’s enjoying herself.

We went inside and waited a bit for the raindrops to stop and finish the diagram.

About an half hour later, went to the front yard with the intention of walking around the neighborhood and getting some pictures of the flora around us. Here are a few we got before the rain came down again:

And our victim…sweet rose. She is in a cup of water now. Her sacrifice is noted and appreciated.

We read the chapter and answered the chapter review questions. It was a very nice, fun day until the specter of ENGLISH came…and she is now frustrated with adverbs of time, manner, or place.

So…into frustration city I go. See you on the flip side.

Weekly Wrap Up: March 7, 2014

Art: Art was amazing this week. We had a field trip to the Springs Preserve to see the exhibit Leonardo da Vinci’s “Machines in Motion”. This is a project that started in Florence, Italy. A group of people decided to take the original plans of many of the machines that Leonardo da Vinci created and they produced them in real life, using only materials that would have been available to Leonardo in his time. We went with the home schooling group and more specifically, the Art Class kids and teacher. We spent 4 hours looking and touching it all and could have spent more, but the exhibit was only open until 4 pm. Here are some pictures:

This is the tank he designed:

Melissa and I inside the tank… They had chucks in the gears so we couldn’t actually turn the wheels.

English: We still worked on Transitive and Intransitive Verbs, and then we moved into making sure about the agreement of Subject with verbs, and worked lessons on the verb Am, Is, and Are, then Was and Were, and then Doesn’t and Don’t. This was just a review and done very easily and quickly.

Cursive: She did copy work on Michigan, The Wonders of Detroit, The State of Minnesota, and The National Shrine of St. Odilia.

History:  We reviewed the chapter on England under the Norman Kings – touching on Henry II, The Jury System, Thomas A Becket and the Canterbury Tales, King Richard the Lion Hearted, King John, the Magna Carta, the rise of Parliament, and expansion into Wales, and the attempts at Ireland and Scotland. She underlined the salient points throughout the chapter and then did the chapter test.

Maps, Charts, and Graphs Lesson 19 – Reading and Using a Historical Map.

Math: We did lessons 80-82 and Test #15. We are working on timed drills for her 8x tables, and review of the 7s. Topics covered this week were Fractions in a Group, Division with two digit numbers with Zeros and Finding Information to Solve Problems.

As you can see, we slowed down again. Not because she was misunderstanding anything, but she’s been getting sloppy and distracted again. So, we took our time and I sat next to her with each problem and made sure to keep her on track. I’m tired. LOL

Music: Lenten Songs “Sabat Mater”.

Phonics: Lessons 99-102.  She was happy this week because it was all review of concepts she knows backwards and forwards. We did lessons on Possessives, Contractions, and sentence writing and diagramming.

Reading: We spent the week reading her book report book, “St. Elizabeth’s Three Crowns”. She had a 1 page paper to do on an Encyclopedia entry of her choice: Horses. She had to write a quick outline, then a real outline, then flesh it out, and revise and correct it 3 times. We’re still at “Flesh it out”. She also did Lesson 8 and 9 of Thinking Skills.

Religion: The text focused on the Eighth and Ninth Commandments. It’s important to be honest and trustworthy in our thoughts and words. We are to be pure and holy. The lesson was also about keeping our word and our promises.  The Ninth commandment is harder to teach than the 8th, since children really aren’t coveting someone else’s wife at this age. They taught it as more the skill of resisting temptation when it comes about: Self Denial, Keeping Busy, and Daily Prayers.

In Children’s Bible History we are reading about The Ruler’s Son, Preaching at Nazereth, Miraculous Catch of Fish, Sabbath at Capernaum, The Paralytic, Cure on the Sabbath Feast, Choosing the Apostles, Choosing the Apostles , The Sermon on the Mount, The Storm on the Lake, and the Legion of Devils.

In the Baltimore Catechism, she worked on Lesson 20. She (hopefully) memorized the questions on the Eighth and Ninth commandments.

Science:  She took the Chapter 2 test and then moved into the Eye.  She did “The Miracle of Sight, The Structure of Your Eyes, The Tear Glands, a diagram of the eye, and Focusing issues, problems and ways to take care of your eyes. We also did 2 Lessons from Dr. Jay’s book. She did Lessons 9 and 10 and did the exercises on the Human Blind spot and reflection and absorption. We did an experiment filling a bowl with water and a fork and seeing where in the vision field it disappears.

Spelling:  Took the spelling test – A+  20/20 100%

Vocabulary: Lesson 16

Weekly Wrap Up: February 28, 2014

Art: The Mystery of The Ascension.   We studied briefly the artists Johann Koerbecke, Hans Memling, Andrea Mantegna, Rembrandt, Perugino, John Singleton Copley, and Evelyn de Morgan.  All the paintings this chapter were either oil on canvas or tempera. Melissa’s favorite paintings were by Evelyn de Morgan, oil on canvas called “Our Lady of Peace”, 1902 and an oil on canvas called “The Red Cross”, 1916

Our Lady of Peace: 

The Red Cross:

She was transfixed at the way the artist captured the shine on the armor and the angels and the colors. 

English: We started working on linking verbs, subjective complements and understanding how to diagram them. We moved into being verbs and then transitive and intransitive verbs.   

Cursive:Copy work on the states of Maryland, Massachusetts, and the story of our Lady of Salette. 

History:  We worked through the chapter on England under the Norman Kings – touching on Henry II, The Jury System, Thomas A Becket and the Canterbury Tales, King Richard the Lion Hearted, King John, the Magna Carta, the rise of Parliament, and expansion into Wales, and the attempts at Ireland and Scotland. 

Maps, Charts, and Graphs Lesson 18 – Using Map Projections.

Math: We did lessons 75-79 and Test #14. Division with two digit answers, Area Part 1, Multiplying with Multiples of 10 (letting the zero hang out was new to me. LOL ) Division with Two Digit answers and a remainder and Millimeters. 

I found out one of the reasons she was not doing as well as she seemed to be doing: She wasn’t checking her answers by using the inverse operation. She was just doing the problems and not catching her silly mistakes. Once I figured that out today, she did fine! This child needs to be watched to get her work done thoroughly. I don’t know what I need to do to help her understand that she must do her work thoroughly because its’ the right thing to do! 

Music: We are off until next week, when we will start the Lenten songs. 

Phonics: Lessons 94-98.  The week was filled with Roots review and identifying which part of the word is a prefix, a root, or a suffix.  She ended up the week with a review on compound words. 

Reading: The quarter seems very light on Reading. Since we finished the reader, there’s not as much going on. She’s reading her book report book, ” St. Elizabeth’s Three Crowns”.  She also did Thinking Skills 7 and 8. She also wrote answers to questions about Matthew 6:25-34. 

Religion: The text focused on the Seventh and Eighth  Commandments. We also had a lesson on moral relativism  – there ARE absolute truths whether our society wants to admit it or not. 

In Children’s Bible History we are reading about The Cleansing of the Temple, Nicodemus, Samaria, The Ruler’s Son, Preaching at Nazereth, Miraculous Catch of Fish, Sabbath at Capernaum, and The Paralytic.

In the Baltimore Catechism, she worked on Lesson 19. She memorized the questions on the Seventh and Eighth commandments. 

Science:  She finished the chapter on the Mouth and did the chapter reviews and questions. She will take the test on Chapter 2 on Monday. 

Spelling:  Took the spelling test – A+  21/20 106%

Vocabulary: Lesson 15

 

Weekly Wrap Up: February 21, 2014

Art: We moved into the Glorious Mysteries, and did The Resurrection.   We studied briefly the artists Raffaelino del Garbo, Pinturicchio, Grunewald, Van Dyck, and Bloch. We talked about the mediums of oil on walls, and fresco. Melissa’s favorite painting was also by Carl H. Bloch, painted on a Chapel wall in Denmark called “The Resurrection”, 1873

I asked her what it was that moved her about Bloch’s paintings in particular and she said that it was the way he used light. She loved that each of his paintings some how illuminate the feeling of the painting. In this one, Jesus and the Angels were blindingly pure white – showing the glory!

English: We continued in the different irregular verb forms: See, Forms of Go, Forms of Choose, Forms of Take, Forms of Do, Forms of Throw, and then we worked on Present, Past, and Future tenses.

Cursive:Copy work on the state of Maryland and Maine, and some facts about St. Anthony’s Monastery and Shrines, and facts about Maryland and Maine.

History:  Chapter 17 was on The Norman Invasion, starting from the death of King Canute and through William and Harold. We learned about the Battle of Hastings and the Political and Social Changes the Norman Conquest brought to England.

Math: We did lessons 72-74: Multiplying Three Factors, Exponents, Polygons, Division with Two Digit Answers Part 1. There were no real issues on anything new, but still the same issues with Rate Problems. I need to find a different way to teach them to her.

Surprise, surprise, Melissa LOVES timed drills!!!!!! I really got sick of her not knowing her times tables and her cousin came over this week (who is younger than she is) and he knew them much better than she did. He told her they do drills with 50 facts each day, so she asked me if she could do them.

My Times Table-phobic child got 100% on her 7’s this week. Every day I gave her a sheet and she took 6 minutes the first day, 3.5 the second, 3:10 the third, and 2:46 today! She was proud and she chose to do 8’s next week.

Music: We knew all the songs so we just sorta rushed through them. I reinforced the time signature.

Phonics: Lessons 90-93.  This week was a challenge for her, and I’m proud of her that she worked through it instead of fighting it. We worked on the Roots duct, duc, scribe, script, spec, spect, mitt, miss, face, fect, fix & fit. She had to write the correct word next to the definition, and then write sentences of her own using the roots. At the end she had to recognize the words in a word search puzzle without a word bank, and write sentences. Phonics took a long time each day, but she really did learn some things totally new this week.

PE: Exercises in the living room.

Reading: Reading was very light this week again as she had to finish the book report. She did Thinking Skills Lessons 5 and 6 and we had a library tour. She’s been going to the library for a good year and she pretty much knew how to find anything.

Religion: The text focused on the Sixth and Seventh Commandments and how to identify them and live them out in our lives.

In Children’s Bible History we started the New Testament, reading about Baptism of Jesus, In the Desert, The First Disciples, The Marriage at Cana, The Cleansing of the Temple.

In the Baltimore Catechism, she worked on Lesson 20 – The Sixth and Seventh commandments.

Science:  She studied Teeth, The structure of teeth, your first teeth, Your Permanent TEeth, and the Teeth at Different Stages in life and learned about the Teeth of the Pre-born Child, the Newborn, and the Elderly.

Spelling:  Took the spelling test – A+  21/20 106%

Vocabulary: Lesson 15

 

Misconceptions on Home Education – Yet Again.

WIll these people EVER give up?

This book “Successful College Writing”, by Kathleen T. McWhorter has this page on the DISADVANTAGES of Home Schooling.  I grow very tired of all the examples about why anything BUT public schooling in a brick and mortar school is acceptable to academia. If they’re going to have opinions like this, why not at least back them up with evidence?

What I have found is that lately it doesn’t matter about your facts, it matters if you can emotionally get people on your side. Denigrating the other side is their modus operandi.

I decided rather than lose my cookies over this in an online forum, I would simply write my responses as a home educator as to why these reasons are RIDICULOUS reasons and untrue in the home schooling community.

So, here we go, point by point.

1. Parent may not be an expert in each subject. 

Duh. Not many teachers are experts. This diploma we receive? It’s the proof that we went through all the information the school system thinks we should know.

I went through education training. Most of it was on classroom management, discipline, educational theories, and IF, and that’s a big IF, the student was going to specialize in one subject, they would have some training in the topic, but not much more.

SO, if I as a parent want to teach my child, I should be smart enough to at least teach the elementary grades without  much refresher. I also have the smarts to look for help, to research things I don’t remember, and to ask for help if I get over my head. I can also outsource a subject if I don’t feel I am strong in it. I can do an online class, or a co-op.

I am, however, something a teacher is not: an expert on MY child.

Point 1 for Parents and Home Education.

2. Libraries not easily accessible.

This one is laughable. Libraries are in nearly every single town. You can get books online. You can even do e-Books.

Point 2 for Parents and Home Education.

{I’d actualy like to take a point away from Public Schooling for even thinking this is a real concern. }

3. Wide Ranges of Equipment, resources not available. 

I have to admit that this one I am not even sure what they are talking about. Are they saying we can’t have a computer, a microscope with slides for science, exercise equipment, etc… Are we not able to access well thought out lesson plans, curriculum, and books? Do we not have access to the internet for research? Do we not have the ability to read research papers and find the best learning style for our child?  Do we not have the capacity to seek out help for our child if we see they are dyslexic, or allergic, or just plain shy?

Point 3 goes to Parents and Home Education.

4. Child may be confused by parent playing the role of teacher. 

Huh? Are they serious? Parents are “teachers” from the moment the child is born. We orient, guide and direct them to proper behavior, for growth, to learn how to walk, to talk, to use utensils when the child eats, tie their shoes, get dressed, etc.

Plain ridiculous.

Point 4 goes to Parents and Home Education.

5. Child does not learn to interact with other children.

This one is patently absurd as well. Do people ACTUALLY THINK that a home educated child NEVER gets out and plays with others? No park dates? No swim lessons? No Girl Scouts? No library programs?

Are all home educated children onlies? How about interacting with brothers and sisters?

Our society has been so thoroughly brainwashed that the general population can’t seem to think that school based interaction is a very NEW phenomenon! Compulsory schooling came about in the early 20’s and 30’s. Did the entire history of the whole human race have children unable to interact with others? No.

Point 5 goes to Parents and Home Education.

6. Child does not learn to compete against others.

Is school the ONLY place competition happens? No. It doesn’t need any more descriptions than this.

Point 6 goes to Parents and Home Education.

7. Parents may not enforce standards. 

True. Parents may not enforce standards. However, that’s not always a bad thing. Standard for whom? Who is it based on? Is it appropriate for my child? Can s/he accomplish this at the time the government thinks my child should accomplish it? Is it appropriate for this grade level? Do I trust the DoE as an expert in education?  Do I believe in standards based education anyway?

Parents may not understand the standards, and may not base their curriculum on those standards.  In that respect, for SOME, there is validity to this question. However, very few parents take on the responsibility of home education without doing research. I don’t know anyone who takes any of this lightly.

A parent can choose an accredited school to get their well balanced curriculum from. They can do k-12 at home through a virtual public school. They can research the standards (if they agree with them) and find books that teach them.

Point 7 – no clear winner because there may be some parents who do not research. However, IME those are VERY FEW and far between.

8. Parents may not be objective about child’s strengths and weaknesses. 

This person may not have been around home educating parents. Seriously. We question every move we make, everything our children are doing, and are generally on top of everything because of all the criticism we get thrown at us. Our children see their pediatrician, they are in the community.  An involved parent will see these things.

Point 8 Even because some children may slip through the cracks, but not the vast majority. They also slip through the cracks in Public School and CPS – See the scary “Teddy’s Law” case. Teddy didn’t die because of home education. He died because the school and CPS failed him, and then his parents chose abuse.

9. Child may learn only parent’s viewpoint – not exposed to a wide range of options. 

Sorry, unless a child is kept in the house and never allowed to interact with anyone else, a child is exposed to all kinds of people, beliefs, thought processes, and view points. Heck, just think of all they come across in watching TV or surfing the web for information.  My daughter runs across all kinds at the library programs, home schooling field trips, her scouting troup, art class…oh that is in the next section. OOPS. LOL

Point 9 to Parents and Home Education.

10. Special programs (art, music) may be omitted. 

Can you show me where art and music are taught in every single school and grade in the district? Most schools have dropped art and music, or if they have it, it’s extremely expensive. My daughter has music and art class every year. She’s gone to an outside art class (Gasp – another adult teaching my child). Most every home schooled kid I know has some sort of musical instruction.

Point 10 to Parents and Home Education.

11. Services of school nurse, counselors, reading specialists are not available. 

Not true. Parents are “nurse” every other part of the day, why are they unable to do so during school hours? This one is firmly in the “it doesn’t even deserve any attention”category. Moving on…parents most certainly DO have access to counselors through their pediatrician AND the school district. Reading specialists are available at Sylvan Learning Centers and the like, and if they test through the district, they are most CERTAINLY allowed to access the specialists.

Point 11 firmly in the Parent Home education camp.

Is it too much to ask for people to be intellectually honest? I am beginning to wonder if it is…

Weekly Wrap Up 2.14.14

Art: The Mystery of The Crucifixion.   We studied briefly the artists Giotto, Raphael, Signorelli, Joos van Cleve, Rubens, Van Dyk, and Carl Bloch All the paintings this chapter were oil on canvas. Melissa’s favorite painting was by Carl H. Bloch, oil on canvas called “The Crucifixion of Christ”, 1870

She says that the use of light is making her feel the weight of the Crucifixion – and that the light of Christ is disappearing as Christ dies.

English: We moved into Verb Forms – Regular and Irregular verbs, and learned about the tenses of present, past, and past participle and how the past participle needs a helper of has, have, or had. She also did an exercise on identifying the times when one uses “break” and one uses “burst”. 

Cursive:Copy work on the state of Kentucky and Louisiana, and some fun facts and points of interest from each state.

History:  We started the chapter on Early England, and learned about the geography of The British Isles and the Celtic religion. We then learned about the Roman influence and Emperor Hadrian’s Wall, and when they left, the Anglo Saxons raided the coasts.  We then read about how the Church helped to unify Britain, The invasions of the Vikings, and Alfred the Great. We finished up with the Beginning of the English nation under the Danish King Canute. 

Maps, Charts, and Graphs Lesson 17 – World Time Zones.

It’s interesting how a simple Map lesson can show a big hole in understanding. I’ve realized that unless the book TELLS her to do something step by step, she gets flustered. She needs help breaking down more than 3 step questions when they involve math. Oh Math. Next up – our hell week in Math.

Math: We did lessons 68-71 and test 13 over again this week – Multiplying 3 digit numbers, two step equations, Estimating Arithmetic Answers, More about Rate, Remaining Fractions.  

This week we had a total and complete MELTDOWN over math. She just had a really bad totally awful day. She couldn’t settle into math yesterday. The lesson was super easy. She missed 16 out of 26 answers. She couldn’t explain why, but even simple arithmetic didn’t work out for her. I should have left it and moved on, but I made her redo it again. She missed 14 of them. We sat side by side and did all the problems together step by step, having her tell me what to do. She knew how. She just didn’t do it. 

Today? She was fine. I need to learn to let it go and move on when it gets this bad. Crashing through it and forcing it never works out for the better. 

Music: We sang different patriotic songs and used Daddy’s new iPad to plunk out the tune of the songs we didn’t know. I am very rusty at my musical note reading. We will have to start doing that again. 

Phonics: Lessons 85-89.  This section of the book is set up to make definitions with the prefixes and write sentences using them completely. We studied the roots pos and pel, port and jet, aud and dict.  She is supposed to look the words up in the dictionary and infer what they mean in conjunction with their prefixes and suffixes. This was more difficult for her than Phonics usually is, so I think we’ve finally hit her “grade level” to work. 

PE: Hoola Hooping, archery with Daddy, and target practice with her cousins. 

Reading: Reading was very light this week as I had her concentrate on finishing her book report book. She did some readings in her reader, and wrote out the poem “America the Beautiful”. She did Lesson 4 in Thinking Skills and we worked together making sure she answered the question they asked in the depth that they want by talking it through. She needs to learn that skill of talking things through with herself before she starts writing. 

Religion: The text focused on the Fifth Commandments and how to identify them and live them out in our lives.

In Children’s Bible History we started the New Testament, reading about The Circumcision, The Presentation, the Adoration of the Magi, The Holy Innocents, The Flight into Egypt, Loss of Jesus, and The Hidden Life. 

In the Baltimore Catechism, she worked on Lesson 19 – Fifth, and Sixth Commandments. She memorized the questions on the fourth, fifth and sixth commandments. 

Science:  She studied the mouth at Different Stages in life and learned about the mouth of the Pre-born Child, the Newborn, and the Elderly. She learned about the sense of taste and how we learn to talk. She took the Chapter 1 review and test and got them all right.

Spelling:  Took the spelling test – A+  21/20 106%

Vocabulary: Lesson 14

 And a happy 11th birthday to my baby girl and my 52 year old hubby!

Weekly Round Up – February 7, 2014

Art: With the new quarter, we started back with “The Rosary in Art” textbook, reading the chapter on the Carrying of the Cross.  We studied briefly the artists Ugolino di Nerio, Hans Memling, Jan van Eyck, Michelangelo, Jacopo Bassano, Gustave Dore, and El Greco, and a refresher on the mediums of egg tempera and oil on canvas.

Melissa’s favorite painting was by El Greco, oil on canvas called “Donenikos Theotokopoulos”, ca. 1580

She has also started her drawing lessons with Daddy, and he’s teaching her an app on the iPad to learn how to sketch. It’s really interesting to watch her. She can “draw” much better on the iPad than using a pencil and paper.  I don’t have any pictures to show this week.

English: We started the study of Verbs this quarter. First she did a lesson on recognizing action verbs, then moved into verbs of being, then how verbs are integral to a sentence and learning how to identify that which is a full sentence and that which is not.  She then went into verb phrases and verb phrases which are implied in questions and negative statements.  We need to spend a little time refreshing diagramming sentences as they are getting more complicated and I need to make sure she has the basics down well.

Cursive:Copy work on the state of Iowa and Kansas, and some fun facts and points of interest from each state.

History:  This chapter focused on the Church and Feudalism, and more specifically, life in monasteries and convents. She took the chapter test and got 100%. We had her do drawings of Medieval life.

No Maps, Charts, and Graphs this week.

Math: We did lessons 65-67 this week – Multiples, percents, Using Pictures to Compare Fractions, and Rate Word problems.  I have found that she is not being careful with copying the problems to her notebook

Music: There were actually songs I KNEW!!! Yay!! Not so hard to read the music when you already know them. English Lullaby, Dormi, Non Plangere, Shoo Fly, Billy Boy, Dixie, and The Patriots.

You know what I am really enjoying? Touching base with our past. These books bring back old hymns from my childhood and old songs from the past. I really am happy to be sharing them with Melissa, and wish I had a keyboard so that we could be sure we are singing the right tune. Maybe Daddy’s iPad could have an app with a keyboard.

Phonics: Lessons 81-84. She did exercises practicing the prefixes of sub, mid, tri, bi, and a review.

PE: Walking with Mommy. I know I need to do more exercise.

Reading: In the reader, she read the poem “A Prayer” by Katherine Rankin, and the story “Sunlight on the Cross”. We will finish up this reader next week and move on to the next book, “Book of Gratitude”.

She is still reading “Madeleine Takes Command” and we still need to do the book report. I decided to move on to quarter 2 so that we don’t get even more far behind.

She finished the Reading Comprehension book and moved on to the “Thinking Skills” book. She did Lessons 1-3.  I have realized that this book may be a problem for us. It is based on St. Therese of Lisieux and it’s supposed to be a book that helps you to infer from the story what the meaning is. She knows St. Therese’s story so well that she answers based on what she KNOWS, not what she has to guess.

Religion: The text focused on the Fourth and the Fifth Commandments and how to identify them and live them out in our lives.

In Children’s Bible History we started the New Testament, reading about John the Baptist, The Annunciation, The visitation, Dreams of St. Joseph, The Birth of Our Lord, and the Adoration of the Shepherds.

In the Baltimore Catechism, she worked on Lesson 19 – The Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Commandments. She memorized the first 3 questions and will be working on the final 6 this coming week.

Science:  We actually skipped Quarter 3 and moved on to Quarter 4, which is Health and the Human Body. Melissa just couldn’t bear doing snakes and bugs right now, and she’s very interested in the body as she is going through puberty and is wanting to know how her body works. Unfortunately, the book starts with the sense of taste, but we’ll get there!

She did The Parts of the Mouth, Beyond the Mouth, Your Mouth and Speech, Keeping your Mouth Healthy, Germs in your Mouth, and Your Breath. We will be adding in more library books and probably a DVD or two as the quarter goes on.

Spelling:  Took the spelling test – A 19/20 95%

Vocabulary: Lesson 13 plus quiz. A

===

On another note, I have found that I finally ran into one of the problems that other home schooling parents say they have come across: A Religious Ed Director who doesn’t approve of what you’re doing with your child.

Last Monday I went to pick up our daughter from weekly Catechism class and the DRE (Director of Religious Education) was helping the teacher to teach the class while the main teacher was sick. I noticed that Melissa was sitting in the back and I just don’t want her back there. I want her at least in the middle of the class being part of it, not with the sullen uninterested kids in the back. The teacher asked, “Are you talking about this one??” and pointed to Melissa. I said yes and she said, “Oh you don’t need to worry about her, she is always interested, engaged, and wants to answer all the questions. She is amazing in her knowledge of the faith! ” I said thank you and said that we use a curriculum provided by Seton Home Study with a basis in the Baltimore Catechism.

Both ladies looked SHOCKEd and said, “Why would you teach from that? ” Not snotty, just truly incredulous that anyone would still use the book. I said, “Because its the foundational document for teaching our faith? “

The DRE proceeds to tell me that they are mandated since Vatican II to NOT teach from the Baltimore Catechism as it is antiquated and out of date. The teacher says, “I am from another country and I have never even HEARD of that book”.

We discussed it and I kept hammering that it was approved by the Vatican and can be used for teaching. They vehemently disagreed.

Rather than just type everything out, this article explains why I think it’s so important to teach the Baltimore Catechism:

http://www.setonhome.org/baltimore-catechism/

Vatican II most certainly did not invalidate the Baltimore Catechism. The church cannot turn upon herself and change that which she has taught and believed for thousands of years. The WAY the truths are transmitted have changed, and that’s the ONLY argument that makes sense to me as to why the Baltimore Catechism would be “discouraged”.

All I can tell you is that the comments of the teacher say it all for me: “Your daughter knows her faith so well!!”

When She tried to convince me that there was a better way, and the Church teaches differently, I simply said, “You just said she knows her faith so well…it’s the Baltimore Catechism and the Seton Curriculum that has done that…My case is closed”, smiled, and left the classroom.

The imp in me wants to buy a Baltimore Catechism for the teacher. <evil grin>

Small Rant…

K, so I have a little rant:

<RANT>
Why does every single DVD I find that teaches something important to kids have to be high paced, and smart alecky?? I am looking for really nice Intro to Chemistry DVD and I found this one:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Standard-Deviants-Chemistry-Three-Pack/dp/1581980604

It was overly silly, snappy attitudes, and it just felt condescending to the intelligence of our kids. I didn’t even finish watching the first one. I shut it off and brought it back to the library. It was the only one they carried.

Why do people think they have to make their DVD’s so fast paced and full of attitude just to get the kids to pay attention? It’s crazy!!!! </RANT>

Stepping out…

I’m starting to remove the training wheels…  I have contacted Seton and they said that I could do the quarters in any order as long as I tell the graders what I’ve done. LOL

I don’t think the “Health” quarter is interesting enough for Melissa, so I’d like to get my feet wet and plan something that adds learning about the body into the curriculum they already have planned. It’s pretty basic. I think I could do this material in MUCH less time than 2 weeks a chapter and adding in more detailed human anatomy.

I want to add DVD’s, possible apps on the iPhone, crafts, etc…

I have this sticker book from Usborne and I thought I could use it as a springing off point for the body systems additions. She likes stickers and crafts still. I know this is typically for a younger child, but she still loves doing stuff like this.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/like/310784532844?lpid=82

1. The Mouth
a. parts of the mouth
b. The Esophagus and Pharynx
c. The Vocal Cords
d. Learning to speak
e. Keeping your Mouth Healthy – germs, breath
f. The Mouth at different stages of life – Pre-born Newborn, Elderly

2. Your Teeth
a. Structure of the teeth
b. Uses of teeth – crushing and grinding
c. Your first tooth
d. Permanent Teeth – wisdom teeth, care of teeth, dentist, fluoride
e. Teeth at different stages – Pre-born Newborn, Elderly

3. Your Eyes
a. The miracle of sight
b. The structure of the eye – glands, focusing, taking care of the eye, problems, eye exams
c. The eyes at different Stages of life – Pre-born Newborn, Elderly

4. Nutrition
a. What food does for you – energy, heat, helps you grow, repair and replacement, helps body work properly.
b. Kinds of nutrients – Carbs, fats, proteins, vitamins, water
c. The Food Pyramid – drinks, desserts and snacks, dehydrated food
d. Nutrition in the different stages of life – Pre-born Newborn, Elderly

=====

I would like to add in a study of the body in a general way. My thought is to introduce a system each week.

1. Cell Structure (DNA here or separate week?)
2. Bones
3. Muscles
4. Circulatory System (Heart and Lungs)
5. Digestive System (In chapter 4 do processing of food and water)
6. The Brain
7.
8.

What else? Any ideas to plug in to the topics? SO far I just have this book.

Weekly Wrap Up 11.8.13

We have had some success in figuring out what makes Melissa be motivated to work. It’s still not coming from within, but I noticed this week that the more control she has over what / when / how she does things, there are much less problems.  I had a headache on Monday – a migraine mixed with eye strain and sinus pressure, so I was in bed. Mike took over the reigns of having Melissa get started. There was NO problem with lip or blow back at Daddy. The next day, same thing. Fought me about getting started, whined about the work, etc…

This is what I found: Daddy gave her the list and she took it from there. She separated all the books into three piles: To do with help, fun stuff, and things that need writing. She picked one from each pile until she had done 5, then took a break. Took 5 more , then a break. It worked out really well.

On my day, we sat down and I asked her how Daddy’s day as a teacher was different than our days. She got quiet. She then said, “I guess we’ve gotten into a bad habit”. I said, “Yep – and it stops today. “

The week was MUCH better. She kept falling into the old habits, but I could physically see her face try really hard not to continue it.  I worked on my reactions as well.  I was very proud of her and her efforts and I let her know each time I caught her doing something good.

Here’s the wrap up of our week:

Art: I let her do her art projects for “Little Flowers” during school time instead of after school time. We are still a few weeks ahead in the book.

English: We started the unit on Adjectives, and covered exercises 53-60, working on limiting, descriptive, Proper Adjectives, antonyms and synonyms for more colorful writing, and limiting adjective articles.

Cursive: We have now started on copywork with reinforcement of States and Capitals that she learned last year. We did Alabama, and Alaska and will be doing these for the rest of the quarter.

History:  We are finishing the unit on Rome and started leasrning about how Christianity became tied with Roman history. We studied the life of Christ and the establishment of the Church and how it worked in relation to the history of Rome.  She continued to read “Ancient Rome” and kept restarting the chapters after she reached the end of the story. She really enjoyed it. It gave her a glimpse of Roman life.  She took the chapter test and we’re off to the Barbarians! LOL

We still have the trip to Caesar’s Palace to see all the architecture. Yeah, it’s a little hokey, but Las Vegas is really good about re-creating environments.

She did Lesson 8 in Maps, Charts, and Graphs.

Latin: She did a fun review of all the vocabulary words. She did abysmal. It really shows that she has not hooked into it AT ALL yet. I thought she had at the beginning, but she’s not interested right now. I’m discerning whether or not I should continue with this. She will get it again in High School, but I don’t know if this will give her a leg up or not.

Math: We did Lesson 36 through 40, and did Test#7, which I am going to have her re-take. I had her take it at 10 at night and it was not her best time. I should have waited but I didn’t. She hasn’t missed a single problem all year, and then missed 6 out of 20? Yeah, she needs a re-test.

Music: Singing Advent songs: Antiphon for Advent, Oh Come, Oh Come Emmanuel, Come to my Window, and Hymn to Our Lady.

Phonics: She did exercises practicing the sounds of -au, -aw, and -ie sounds.

PE: running/walking for distance.

Reading: In the reader, she worked on “Father Marquette” and answered questions for comprehension, “Biff”, “The Old Bridge”, “The Church in the Cotton Fields”, “Church Lets Out”, “The Peanut Doctor”, and the poem “Sight”.

In Reading Comprehension, she did Chapters 29-32 and the comprehension questions.

She finished the book report for Seton, and we reviewed the two choices for this quarter, “Red Hugh, Prince of Donegal” and “Madeleine Takes Command”. She chose Madeleine because the story reminded her of Saint Kateri. Oh – and it was about a girl instead of a boy. That was important.  We had purchased ”Red Hugh, Prince of Donegal” with the basic curriculum, so I had to find “Madeleine Takes Command” on amazon and have it shipped. We don’t have it yet, but will start it when it arrives sometime next week.

Religion: The text book lessons were on the 10 Commandments, and then the Two Greatest Commandments – “You shall love the Lord your God with your whole heart, your whole soul, your whole mind and with your whole strength, and you shall love your neighbor as yourself”.

The Baltimore Catechism reinforced the text with Lesson 15 on The Two Great Commandments. She memorized the questions/answers corresponding to the lesson.

Concise Bible History focused on the Reign of David.

Science:  Yay!! We started a new unit! I was so done with insects and so was she. She doesn’t know that we’re going to go back into them after this, but for now we are enjoying learning about birds.  We read pages 42-47 and answered the questions on p. 46/47 in her notebook. She also wrote in her definition notebook the definitions of digest, gizzard, incubate, incubation, and temperature.

She watched the video “The Galapagos Birds”  and read some free reading books on birding.

She wrote and researched a paragraph on “Molting”.

Spelling:  Week 10 – A+ 21/20 106%

Vocabulary: finishing up week 7 and quiz – 100%