Week in Review

We had a good week. We started our week with a holiday - always a nice way to begin! Katie had her friend Diana spend the night on Sunday and then on Monday, Madalyn's friend Shannon spent the day with us. AND Katie's friend Audrey and her mom Bernice came over for lunch on Monday - so we had a day full of friends. Again...a great way to start off the week. On Tuesday, Madalyn went back to school and Katie went back to her planner.

MATH: Katie continued with Singapore Math (5A). She did several days of reviews and then learned how to divide fractions. Fractions are her favorite. She even likes to make up problems to do for fun. Strange child...

SPELLING/GRAMMAR: Spelling Workout continued with suffixes this week. In grammar, Katie learned how to diagram sentences with adjectives. She also covered demonstrative pronouns: this, that, these and those.

HISTORY: We worked through chapters 23 and 24 in Story of the World and Katie is enjoying what she is reading. The more modern history seems to be grabbing her attention more than some of the other periods we have read about. In Chapter 22 we covered the rise of Indian Nationalism and Ghandi. Next, in Chapter 23 Katie learned about the Peace of Versailles and the rise of Joseph Stalin. These chapters are setting the stage for our next reading: "The Wave" by Todd Strasser, "The Night Journey" by Kathryn Lasky and "Animal Farm" by George Orwell.

WRITING: Katie's history lesson influence her writing assignment for the week. I took the suggestion from the SOTW activity guide and had Katie do a research project on peaceful demonstrations. She choose to research Martin Luther King, Jr (after realizing that there is not much information in the kids section on Thoreau's "On Civil Discourse.") We went to the library and looked for information in the encyclopedia and a few other books. She took notes while we were there, and then the next day used her notes to make an outline. She did a rough draft, a second draft and then a final draft using the traditional 5 paragraph essay format. It was a great first foray into this format.

PHYSICS: This week Katie moved from inventions to Magnetism. She learned about magnetic materials and poles. She did a few experiments to see what is magnetic or not (stainless steel is not - hence no magnets on our fridge - yippee!), and another looking at actual magnets. She learned that magnets have a north side and a south side - so if you have two magnets, the north side is attracted to the south side; north-north or south-south would repel each other. Also, if you cut a magnet in half, there will still be a north side and a south side.

EXTRAS: Our homeschool group is on break for two weeks, so there was no art or folk dancing. I bought a "Walk away the Pounds" dvd, and Katie and I did that for the first time. It's a nice and easy workout (my trouble with most workout videos is that I am so un-coordinated that I spend most of my time trying to figure out what they are doing - and with this - it was simple and easy to follow!) - and I see us doing that a few times a week.