Weekly Review-- January 10-15, 2011

Everett...

Completed lesson 2.1 in Growing with Grammar 6.  I've since decided that his grammar is at a good place, so we need to switch the focus on writing.  He watched the 2nd disc in IEW's Student Writing Intensive A, about the Story Sequence and outlined The Boy Who Cried Wolf along with the class on the disc.  He's very excited to make changes and start writing his own story next week.  We didn't work on any spelling this week, but will bring it back sometime next week or the week after.  We reviewed lessons 1 and 2 in Saxon Math 7/6 and he completed lessons 3 and 4 with very little assistance from me.  Next week I'll start teaching him the lessons instead of having him just read it in the book to make math a bit more fun and so that I can have a better knowledge of what he's working on.  I also ordered Art Reed's Saxon DVD lessons, which I can watch to make sure I'm touching on all the important points of the lessons.  

Annika...

Worked on quite a few pages in her Explode the Code 3 workbook, and is doing really well.  She also did no spelling, but will start back with in the next week or two.  She started Growing with Grammar 1, and completed lessons 1 and 2 with minimal difficulty.  We reviewed lessons 10-12 of Saxon Math 3 and she completed Lesson 14 and Test 2. 

Lucas...

was very excited to get back to regular school work.  He completed 6 pages in his Get Ready for the Code workbook and did lessons 1 and 2 in Saxon Math K.  We started Saxon math over, because we hadn't made it too far in,  and I wanted to make sure we didn't lose  ground over our long break. 

Science and History
I've decided to take a different path on scheduling History and Science.  We will be focusing on only one of these subjects on any given week.  This week was science, and we wrapped up Unit 3 of Real Science Odyssey Chemistry level 1.  We learned how scientists could perform tests on elements in family groups to prove they belonged in that family. We performed some of our own tests on Sodium (using table salt) and Potassium (using salt substitute) and seeing how they reacted in various settings.  We also showed how certain elements will cause a reaction in things and that without those element present things can have very different outcomes.  This was achieved by baking muffins both with and without baking powder.  

Art

That's right folks, we actually did some art this week.  The kids had found a mosaic kit at Target and dug it out.  We talked a little about designs that could me made with mosaics and looked at examples of some online.  Then the kids made mini mosaics with their kits.  Everett made a turtle, Annika made a flower and Lucas made a mouse.  They really enjoyed it and I'm looking forward to making sure Art time is definitely included in our weeks.

I feel it was a pretty good week for our first one back in over a month.  The kids had fun and we got a reasonable amount of work done.