Homeschooling Week 6

Week 6 was completed in record time! Mostly because we went away for a 3 day weekend and wanted to get all our work out of the way before the weekend. 

This week for Math we had 4 pages, each page had one problem each. This week we were dealing with money and making change. Simple enough. The only part I felt really didn't mesh well was the part where she had to explain her steps. The problems were too simple to really require steps to be explained. We did the best we could. 

For social studies Joey and Phi studied the Najavo people. I was a bit bummed because this topic could have had a lot of potential for some really great projects. This assignment was simply to read a hand out and write down ways the Navajo people respect the land. Phi wrote out a paragraph and this assignment was complete. 

For language we talked about folktales. We talked a little but about how they are stories that are passed down through the generations and are usually oral traditions. We also talked about the morals that many of these stories have. The assignment was to pick a folktale, write about it and it's moral and of course do a picture. Phi picked the folktale of Casey Jones. A great cautionary tale about rushing to be on time and being careless. We spent a day outlining the paper and another session writing the final draft. For both papers this week we used the spider diagram way of pre-writing. For her picture we did the same thing as last weeks elephant. She traced and watercolored. 

For science we discussed reptiles, amphibians and fish. We looked at a video on the life cycle of frogs and had a great time learning about fish and gills. For this assignment Phi had to choose a reptile, write a report and do a picture. (I see a pattern here!). Again we went to the national geographic kids website and looked at the different reptiles they had. Phi picked the gecko. Since I don't want to get her burned out on tracing and watercolor we decided to make a collage. So we google searched geckos and printed out a bunch of pictures and gave her a glue stick and she went to town. When she was done we laminated it. We used the national geographic site to research, made a spider diagram and she wrote her paper.

I am hoping for week 7 a new book is assigned for reading and there is a big project for social studies instead of science. We will see!