Homeschool Week 15: Murder Mystery and Gingerbread Men

Louie

Language Arts: This week was all about the letter "Ww". I was looking forward to this week to introduce Louie to the great band Weezer. We watched a lot of Weezer videos and it was wonderful! Louie is really starting to show some improvement in reading. We have been working on a lot handouts on letter sound recognition and she has moved on to book #4 in her Bobs books. It is still pretty awesome to hear her read.

Reading: This week we practiced retelling the details of a story and comparing and contrasting similar stories. We read The Gingerbread Man, The gingerbread Baby and The Gingerbread Cowboy (very cute story!) We looked at how the settings, characters and storylines were similar and how they were different.

Writing: This week the kids did a project similar to Flat Stanley. Each kid made their own gingerbread man. Louie colored hers in and I laminated him. She then added a pink ball nose. The assignment was to have him "run away" somewhere and write about it. Then each kid added pictures to a google document to make up a book. Here is Louie's entry.


Math: We have moved on to number 13. 14 and 15. We have also started counting by 10's to 100. This week thanks to the advent calendar Louie starts each day counting down how many days until Christmas.

Social Studies: We talked about the difference between wants and needs. This was an easy assignment because we had just gone through this at a girl scout meeting.

Science: Healthy Habits and Hygiene. We looked over some way to keep healthy and some things that are very unhealthy.

Phi

Language Arts: Phi started a new book!!! It is a murder mystery and so far its good! There was some vocab work and some comprehension worksheets. I have never read this one so I am reading along! This was a perfect time for this book because over the weekend we went to see my niece in the play Clue!

Math: So we are chugging along with fractions. This week was about multiplying fractions. A much simpler concept but as we were working I found that she was not really getting the concept of what a fraction was. Let me tell you, there is nothing more frustrating than explaining what a fraction is over and over and over again. We continued with the "problem a day" on the whiteboard just to give her some extra practice.

Social Studies: Phi studied a little bit about Christopher Columbus and the age of exploration. For this project. We looked at why countries were sending expeditions and what things they were looking for. Phi had to do a project and she went with a comic strip about the first encounter of Hernan Cortes and the Aztecs. I love it....

Science: This week a repeat lesson for Phi because we had just went over the water cycle in a great presentation by a parent at a girl scout meeting. It was also review from last year. She did a quick experiment with Poppa about how condensation works.

Market Day!- Both girls had Market Day yesterday at school. They were to decide on a product or service to sell, make a poster and decide on a price point (either $1 or $2). Both girls were really excited about this. Louie has been into melty beads so she made "Magic Squares" and made pins to sell. Phi decided to offer caricatures drawing of her classmates for $2 each. They had so much fun!

Christmas break is so close I can taste it!