Homeschool Week 12: The Ultimate Battle: Otter vs Hamster and Tendons

Louie

Language Arts: This week was about the letter "Oo". Louie loved this because otter starts with O and this kid loves sea otters. She also worked on ending sounds of words. She also read book 3 of the Bobs book series and did a fantastic job!  We introduced her to the band Ozomatli and she loved it. Then she wa super stoked to see that they are playing near by soon!

Reading: We looked at non-fiction books this week. We tied this in with science and at our weekly library trip we looked up and picked up 2 non-fiction books. One one sea otters and one on hamsters. Louie and Poppa looked over the books and talked about the information you find on the front cover, back cover, spine and title page.

Math: We worked hard on getting Louie to count to 20 but she is just not getting it. When she gets to 14 and then 15-16 are a mess and then she picks it up after 17. We will still working. We also used a number line (ugh Common core!) to look at one number before and one number after.

Social Studies: This week we talked about Veterans and why we celebrate them. This was a great lesson and we got the opportunity to talk about the Veterans in our family. Louie made a little book about Veterans Day and she even wrote a letter to Kelly to thank him for his service.

Science: Explaining how animals can be different and alike. Of course I knew that she would pick sea otters and hamsters. And that is exactly what she choose. She made a venn diagram with a photo of each. She found some great similarities like they both have pouches! Otters in their armpit for rocks and hamsters in their cheeks for food.

Phi

Language Arts: Essay time! Now that the novel was done Phi had to write a 5 paragraph opinion essay with 3 quotes from the book. She did her prewriting, rough draft and typed up her paper. It was a good paper. She is getting much better at the writing steps. She also made a book cover for it. She did another grammar worksheet also.

Math: We had our first crying session this week. We moved onto adding and subtracting improper fractions and mixed numbers. There are a lot of steps and lots of multiplication and dividing big numbers. It's all things she knows but she needs to work on her neatness because she has numbers everywhere and it's hard for her to keep track of what she is doing. I hope we stick with this for another week. She needs the practice.

Social Studies: Another week, another Native American regions. This week was about the Eastern Woodland tribes. She choose the Mohawk tribe and researched shelters, clothing and food. It seems pretty repetitive, even the type of shelters, food and clothes are all pretty similar. We did look at their crying ceremony for when a tribe member dies. 5 days of mourning.

Science: This week we looked at the muscular system. We watched a Magic School Bus episode about the muscular system and did a few worksheets on concepts and vocabulary.  She also had to make a model of something demonstrating the muscular system. She made a model of a hand and how tendons work. Very cool!

Since Veteran's Day is on Wednesday this week we had to turn in our work a day early. This gave us a head start on the next week, or a day off. I haven't decided yet!