~Week 10~

We had a busy week once again.    The girls had five different Girl Scout meetings/activities between them as well as attending the Library Homeschool Hour and their Nature Center Class.   We're looking forward to a lazy weekend.  

Hermoine has been working on reviews all week in math.    She's having a very easy time with math so far this year, which is nice because when we battle it is always over math.

She worked her way through Spelling, Grammar and Writing.   Her Writing was focusing on Venn Diagrams and how to use them in a persuasive paragraph.   She thinks Venn's are cool, so she had fun with this weeks lessons.    She is reading The Giver by Lois Lowry for Literature.

In Art she finished up her ancient seals and cartouches artwork and moved on to the significance of solar discs in ancient art.   I can't express how much she loves this art curriculum.

For Music she learned about traditional Caribbean music.   In Science she is working on cell division and osmosis.    She also did three lessons of Rosetta Stone Latin and two from Getting Started With Latin.   She worked on memorizing all the seas in Geography.  She is supposed to be working on the continents as well, but she knows them already.

Ramona also had reviews for four of the five days of math this week. The fifth day was working on bar graphs.

She did all of her Spelling, Writing and Handwriting.  In Grammar she is working on learning the complete subject vs the simple subject and the complete predicate vs the simple predicate.   She finished memorizing "Ozymandias" and has moved on to "How Doth..." by Lewis Carroll.    For Literature she is reading The First Four Years by Laura Ingalls Wilder.

In Art she learned about optical illusions.   For Music she had a Unit Review and Assesment.   In Science she is learning about the way organisms interact.   She finished the BBC Typing program and is now working on speed by typing daily.   She did two lessons of Rosetta Stone Spanish and is working on memorizing the oceans and their spellings in Geography.

Both girls learned about the Crusades in History.  

Rascal

Our most recent book club choice was Rascal by Sterling North.  Nick read this book to Hermoine when she was six or seven, but it's one of those that isn't a hardship to repeat.    It's about a boy in the early 1900's who finds and tames a raccoon.   We all really loved it and the girls did a lapbook on raccoons to go along with it each night while I read.   I had initially printed up the lapbook for Ramona, but Hermoine asked for one as well.    Homeschoolshare.com is a fantastic site for free printables including lapbooks.   This is the link for the one we used.   Below are some snapshots of the girls' lapbooks. 

Our next book club choice is The Tale of Despereaux by Kate DiCamillo.   I can't wait!

~Week 9~

A quick post on week 9.    The girls worked through all of their subjects.  We managed to get five days of work into four so they could take Friday off and go to Art class and the corn maze with Girl Scouts.    I'm glad the first quarter is over and am looking forward to getting through the second one.    I'll do a more detailed review for week 10. 

~Week 8~

Last week was really busy for us.  The girls both had hard weeks and school was a bit stressful.  So far this week seems to be going smoother, but we're trying to fit five days of work into four this week so we'll see how it goes.   Here is a very brief re-cap of our week.

Hermoine started working on statistics in Math. 

She did well in all her Language Arts subjects.  She is still reading The House of Arden for Literature.  She is finished up her pottery in Art.   Her Science was about crystal making and she had two science experiments.  She did her Geography and her Latin.     Her Music was about traditional African music.  She really enjoyed that.  

Hermoine painting her ancient spiral bowl

One of Ramona's experiments

Ramona was working on story problems with mixed fractions.     She worked through all her Language Arts.  She is more than half way through These Happy Golden Years for reading.    Her Science was crazy...lot's of fun, but five experiments for two days of science.   At one point our kitchen windowsill and counter were covered with several different experiments.    She did Geography, three lessons of Spanish and two of Typing.   Her Music was about how to read So and Mi on sheet music and she learned about the cello.    For Art she learned about patriotic paintings and how people use flags in artwork to inspire others.   

Two more of Ramona's experiments

In History they learned about early England, William the Conqueror and the beginning of the English language.    

Week 7

Week 7 is in the bag.   A pretty non-eventful week overall.   We had a few activities...scouts, book club and a scout event tonight as well.

Hermoine is working through some fairly hard percentage problems.    They look like this:   There are 42 boys and 24 girls in a chess club. How many more percentage of boys are there than girls?  

In Language Arts she worked through her spelling, grammar and handwriting.  In Writing she worked on putting events in the proper sequence and then wrote an essay with the events she had been working with.  For literature she finished reading The Silver Crown,  read Seabird by Holling C. Holling in it's entirety and began The House of Arden by E. Nesbit.  

In Art she finished painting her cave art, and moved on to ancient pottery.  She started a pottery project that she'll finish next week.   For Music she studied Tchaikovsky.  In Geography she covered projection maps, the Robinson Projection map in particular.    She completed three lessons in Rosetta Stone Latin and two lessons in Getting Started with Latin.

She learned about DNA and RNA in Science.  K12 had some fun activities to go with these lessons.

Ramona is working on adding and subtracting mixed numbers and then taking them down into their simplest form.   

In Language Arts she did her spelling lessons and handwriting.   Grammar was all review.  When First Language Lessons does review the lessons are really long.   She is about half way through memorization of Ozymandias.   She was also working on sequence in Writing and wrote a paragraph about major events in her life.   She began reading These Happy Golden Years by Laura Ingalls Wilder for Literature.

In Art she learned about American Folk Art, in particular the quilt.  She made her own quilt designs on paper and read about how the women and girls would come up with their designs.   She really loved this unit.     In music she began a unit on string instruments starting with the violin.   In Geography she was practicing finding coordinates of cities in South America by using the degrees of longitude and latitude.    She worked through two lessons of Rosetta Stone Spanish and two lessons of BBC Typing.

She learned about solutions and mixing molecules in Science.   We had two fun experiments that were also quite easy with mixing liquids.

Both girls learned about the Vikings arriving in the British Isles for history.

Images of our Day

Random images of our school today.  In case you couldn't tell, Tuesday is an Art day around here.

Ramona working on her paper quilt designs in Art

Hermoine did this "cave art" painting yesterday

Hermoine working on Latin

Hermoine's diagramming.   She has one diagram plus two pages for each lesson in Grammar.

Ramona's math textbook. She also had three pages in her workbook.

Hermoine's logic

Hermoine's spelling sentences.

Hermoine working on a pottery lesson in Art.