Homeschooling Week 5

Week 5 was a little bit weird for us because our Tuesday class session was cancelled by the teacher. Which means that Week 4's assignments were not turned in or presented. Also we did not receive the home assignment sheet until late Tuesday so we were already a little behind. Luckily most of the assignments were review to get ready for a unit test coming up this week.

This week for Math we had to work on vocabulary. So we made flash cards with the term on the front and the definition on the back. This was really tough and I don't think Phi has any kind of grasp on these terms. This was the first time these terms were being introduced to her. The concepts she can do. She knows how to round but does not know the technical definition of the term 'rounding'. I think that vocabulary words should be introduced at the beginning along with practice worksheets.

For social studies we had to work on review questions from the end of the unit. The students were not given books so we only had photocopied pages to work off of. This was tough because we were not sure if we had the correct answers. There were things on the review that were not covered in class or the handouts given throughout the week. I have talked to the teacher to see if we could get a copy of the text books.

For science Phi had to pick a mammal and write a report on draw a picture. We started this assignment by talking about what mammals are. Then she chose to do African Elephants. We turned to the National Geographic kids website to do some research. Joey helped her outline her report and I helped her put it together in an essay format. For the picture we started by looking online for "elephant coloring pages". We printed one and then Phi traced the picture. Phi does not like to draw but she is down for tracing so she really enjoyed this. After tracing we let her watercolor her drawing.

For reading and writing Phi got to finish Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. She was very excited to be able to finish the book. She really enjoyed it. She had 2 assignments for the week. First was to write an opinion piece. She had to write about why she liked the book and her favorite parts. She did a great job. Writing essays are already getting easier for her. 

The second part was to draw a picture of her own invention for the Chocolate Factory. I think she must have been thinking about her Nana with this invention. It is a 24 hour chocolate maker. She claims it never breaks and makes chocolate bars 24 hours a day 7 days a week. Sounds good to me! 

Even with the late start we were able to get everything finished by Saturday afternoon. Joey and I are getting into the swing of things and this week went pretty smoothly.