Homeschool Week 10: Love for Lungs and Cali Not So Much For Spiders

Louie

Language Arts: The sentence of the week was "Bubbas Blasts Beastie Boys Before Bedtime". Bb is for Beastie Boys. We started this week with a little "Fight For Your Right to Party" video watching. We did our usual video watching and worksheets. Louie has been really great with her letter recognition. I have her review her flashcards twice a day. This week we also worked on worksheets on identifying the beginning sound of a word. She did really well. 

Reading: It is still all about sequence and order of a story. We did some worksheets and also read some books and talked about the order of the story. We read "The Very Busy Spider" by Eric Carle. Our favorite was Miss Spider's Tea Party. Such a sweet story and it went very well with our science lessons. 

Writing: This was a fun week. We looked at drawing things from a different angle. We did this twice. She drew her place setting from her perspective at the dinner table. And then she drew her feet from her view! Super cute. The last day of writing was about speech bubbles. This was fun because Louie's favorite books are the Piggie and Elephant series by Mo Willems and they are filled with speech bubbles. 

We talked about what speech bubbles tell us and how we can tell who is talking. She drew her own Piggie and Elephant drawing complete with speech bubbles. So cute!

Math: Engine Engine #9. We worked on 9 as well as continued working on counting to 20. She loves counting how many Shopkins she has so maybe I need to get her enough to have 20.  Yes she still cannot count to 20. We also started working on greater than and less than. Lots of worksheets comparing items. She did really well with this.

Social Studies: We have moved on from US Symbols to California symbols. We talked about the bear flag, the quail, the desert tortoise, the poppy, the redwood and the state seal. We traced words through a little book and then Louie and Poppa made a California mobile. She wants to give it to Tia Elaine for the baby's room. 

I knew that our lesson had stuck when we were offroading through Joshua Tree and she said "Momma LOOK! The California bear." 

Science: EEKK! This week was about spiders. We talked about some facts about spiders, like they are not insects. Insects have 6 legs, spiders have 8. We had to watch a few videos and every time we watched one she was like this....

Of course Louie made her own spider. Her's was pretty cute! 

Phi

Language Arts: This was a disappointing week. We did the grammar worksheets. We have been trying to give Phi more independence when it comes to work. This is for 2 reasons, because she needs to learn how to work on her own and because we don't have the time to work so one-on-one with her. Combine this a family emergency and we had a project get away from us. She read chapters 13-15 in Sign of the Beaver and answered comprehension questions. She also was suppose to make a setting display. I gave her 3 morning sessions to work on this and all she did was draw a picture. This was not the assignment and was not something she could turn in. So we used a homework pass (she earns these throughout the school year for good work and behavior in class). We had to talk about this and we came up with the decision that from now on any assignments not completed is going to cost her $5.00.

Math: 2 digit division. When Joey came home with the assignments he mentioned that Phi's teacher mentioned that to earn a 4 on this assignment we would have to do the model drawings. Without these she would only earn a 3. My mind thought "damn common core". I was worried that this was going to be hard to understand. Her teacher taught them 2 ways to do this kind of math. The first was by educated guessing (YES!!!) and with the model/drawing concept. For the homework we did both. So you are probably wondering what this model/drawing is? Well here you go...

Every time I teach her this way I feel that she is not really getting it. I even texted the teacher to see if we were on the right track. We were.

Social Studies: We studied the Plains Native Americans. For her tribe this week she choose the Cheyenne. We looked at their shelters (wigwams), food (buffalo) and clothes (deer skin dresses). She also made a really cool field guide for the area. She did some really great watercolor drawings for deer, buffalo, fish, berries and corn. We found some pretty I am guessing that we are going to be doing another area.

Science: We are moving on from the cardiovascular to the respiratory system. We looked at how the lungs work and the different parts of the body that are used to make the lungs work. She labeled some diagrams and we had to make a project showing how the respiratory system works. Check out the little experiment she made to show how the diaphragm helps lungs work

Moving on to Week 11!