Homeschool Week 28: Ch-ch-ch-changes

Language Arts: This week we finished the book "Holes". I will admit this was not my favorite. I had a hard time following along with the story. Phi seemed to like it. There was a lot of work this week for langauge arts. We did the usual comprehension questions as well as some cause and effect and then a big writing project. The assignment was to write an alternate ending to the book. Phi chose to pick up the story 20 years later. This one was a lot of fun for Phi and I think she did a great job.

Filling In the Holes

          Isabella Yelnats was so excited to go on a Girl Scout trip. Her best friend Maddie Zeroni was in her troop and she was going too. Isabella and Maddie were in the car waiting for their dads.

“Did your dad get all weird when you told him you were going?” asked Maddie.

 “Yeah, he told me he went there but didn't tell me what he did there.” answered Isabella.

“Camp Green Lake looked awesome on Instagram!” said Maddie. “I know right!” said Isabella

Three hours later they arrived. The girls jumped out of the car. Hector and Stanley looked at each other.

“Never thought I’d see this place again Caveman.” said Hector

 “Me neither Zero.” said Stanley. They smiled at each other. Camp Green Lake had green everywhere. There was a shiny aqua blue lake. Cute little cabins were lined up around the lake. Hector and Stanley said goodbye and left. Isabella and Maddie walked around and bumped into their counselor. Her name was Miss Walker. They saw her nails that were painted dark red. They asked what color it was and she walked away without answering. She turned back and yelled at them to stay out of Mary Lou Meadow. They had no idea where that was at so they didn't worry about it. They unpacked everything into their cabin. They started walking around the camp. They were lost and didn’t know where to go. They ended up in Mary Lou Meadow. They started walking back and Isabella fell into a hole! Maddie gasped.

“Are you ok?!” she cried.

“Yeah” Isabella yelled back up. They both walked back to camp.

They got back to camp to talk to the counselor. They asked her about the holes that they had found at Mary Lou Meadow. Miss Walker punished them because she had told them not to go there. She made them scrub tables in the cafeteria. While the scrubbed they thought about how the holes might have got there.

“Maybe aliens were here.” said Isabella

“Nah. Maybe it was huge gophers.” Maddie suggested. Isabella shook her head.

“Oh! What if this place was for bad boys and they had to dig these holes for a really long time until they learned their lesson!” they both laughed hysterically.

They decided to sneak back to Mary Lou Meadow. Isabella looked into a hole and found something in it. She jumped into the hole. She saw a hat that had big letters that said ‘Yelnats’ in blue. They both gasped.

“That’s my last name! And that’s my Dad’s last name. That means this is his cap!” Isabella screamed. “Let’s go back and call our dads and see what is going on.”

A few minutes later they were in their cabin calling their dads.

“Hey Dad.” said Isabelle.

“Hi Sweetie. Are you having a good time?” asked Stanley.

“Yeah! But I have a question for you.” Isabella explained.

“Go ahead.”

“Well, there were some holes around here and there was a hat in one of them that said Yelnats on it.” Isabella heard a beeping sound on her phone. He had hung up. Something happened with Maddie’s dad.

“What the?” said Maddie “He just hung up on me!”

“Next week is parent’s day at Camp Green Lake so maybe we can ask him there.” said Isabella.

A week later it was ‘Parents Day’. Maddie and Isabella were worried that their dads wouldn't come. They both walked outside and looked for their cars. Isabella found Stanley and Maddie found Hector. They all said hi and their dads asked the girls to follow them to Mary Lou Meadow. Stanley and Hector told them to sit.

“This place once was a place for bad boys who had to dig holes for their punishment. There were mean people here like the warden and Mr. Sir.” said Stanley.

“We used to have nicknames. Mine was Zero and Stanley’s was Caveman.” said Hector.

“We had to dig holes every day, five feet wide and five feet deep.” said Stanley. “One time Hector ran away so I went looking for him. We went to a place that we called Big Thumb. We were close to being killed but my lawyer came and got us out.”

Isabella and Maddie were amazed because they were right about the holes.

“That’s amazing!” they said at once. They all walked back to the cabins. They were surprised to see Miss Walker was being fired because she had scratched someone with her dark red nails. They girls were happy.

“Bye Caveman” said Isabella as she said bye to her dad.

“Bye Zero” said Maddie.

Caveman and Zero smiled as they drove back home.

Math: We moved from common units of measurements to metric units. This week started a bit rough with some word problems. Phi hates those. (I love them) but the week got easier when we reviewed metric units of measurement for length, weight and capacity.

Science: We are finishing up our chapter on matter. This week we talked about the difference between a physical change and a chemical change. As her project Phi went with a Powtoons presentation. Of course Bowie was the obvious music choice.

Social Studies: We are at about 1900-1915 in California history. This was a time of lots of immigration into California, mostly from Asia. This was also the start of anti-immigration laws. Explaining how this cycle of immigrants coming into CA, California freaking out that immigrants are stealing jobs, putting anti-immigration laws against a certain country into place, then California freaking out that there is not enough people to do the hard low paying jobs, immigrants coming into CA. See this cycle?

The next 2 weeks will be Star testing for Phi so I am guessing homework will be light. I can't believe we are in the home stretch!