Homeschool Week 6: Interviews Over Pho

Louie

Language Arts: We are up to 8 letters now and Louie is doing great with 5 of them. The letters "C, D, and N" are just not sticking. I am sure that there is a reason why they are not teaching the letters in alphabetical order, but I really think it would help. Over the weekend while at my parents, everyone chipped in to help Louie with C, D, and N. So far C is sticking better but N and D are still a mystery to this kid. We did a lot of flashcard review this week. 

N is for Nana

There was one point when we were sitting at an In and Out waiting for our food and I busted out the flashcards. Louie looked me straight in the eye and stated "I quit". So 5 weeks in is all it took for Louie to quit school. Awesome. I think it's time to find a new way to get her to learn these letters. She is also supposed to know 5 sight words and because letters are such a difficult task we haven't even really reviewed sight words.

Reading: This week we took a familiar story and had Louie tell us details from it. We started the week by me reading the story to her. Then she told me the story using the book. Of course she picked a sea otter story so the next day she used her sea otter dolls to reenact the story. On the last day she drew the 2 sea otter characters and retold the story like a puppet show. 

Writing: We finished the first section of the writing program and this week was kind of like review. We looked back on her work and Louie picked one and rewrote it. We looked at her story and how in 5 weeks her writing is improving. 

Math: We are taking our 0-5 skills and using them to learn one more and one less. We looked at a number line because common core (UGH) and played a few dice games to help show what one more and one less of a number is. 

Social Studies: This week Poppa and Louie did some more research on Mr. Appleseed. They found lots of interesting facts like when he was born and where he grew up. Later in the week Momma and Louie watched another video on J.A. and we used a venn-diagram on a whiteboard to compare and contract was life was like when J.A. was alive and what it's like now. Then at Nana and Tata's house we read another Johnny Appleseed story from a Tall Tale book we checked out from the library.  

Science: We are still talking about apples. I really wish we could fit a quick trip to Oak Glen. Maybe this Sunday. For this week Dr. Louie the mad scientist put her safety goggles back on to do an experiment. Her question was "do different types of apples have different amounts of seeds?" Next she had to conduct an experiment to find her answer. So we bought 4 kinds of apples, red delicious, granny smith, fuji, and gala. Then we sliced those puppies open and counted the seeds. Louie found that different types of apples do have different amounts of seeds. The granny smith had 10 and the fuji had 3! 

Phi

Language Arts: This week we started talking about Tall Tales. I tried to find a more culturally relevant one for Phi but her teacher shut down the La Llorona idea since it was more of a folklore than a tall tale. So we went with one that reminded us of our favorite guy, Poppa! We watched the Disney version and read a few books all about Paul Bunyan. We looked at how the story differed a little with each version. The assignment this week was to create a "Tall Tale Pop-Up Book" with specific types of figurative language.

This was a very fun project and came out so cute. I think my favorite of her figurative language was page 3 and the alliteration.

Math: We are still looking at the power of ten and how to multiply by 1/100 or 1/1000 etc. This is all about when and how much to move a decimal point. Phi is grasping this okay.

Social Studies: The assignment this week was to interview someone who had immigrated to the US. Phi choose her Uncle Tommy and over pho on Sunday she sat and interviewed him. We used the voice memo app on my iphone and used pictures and Powtoons to made a video.  Here is the interview.

Thanks so much for sharing with us Tommy. We love you!


Science: We are looking at cells. We watched this really great video and it was a great way to learn the basics. We also watched a Bill Nye video about cells. As Phi was watching she starts laughing because there was a girl in the video that "looks just like you MOM!"

She wasn't lying this kid does look just like me! Weird.  

The project was to make a model of a cell. Phi choose an animal cell and decided to make a pizza to represent the cell and all its organelles.

educational and yummy. My favorite combo!

So we are down 6 weeks. Is it winter break yet? Just kidding. Kind of!