Week in Review

My quest for a history curriculum continued this week – and I still haven’t made any decisions. We did register for Art through History through History at Our house. I am hoping by sticking our toes in the water, we can get a feel for the style of this program to see if might be a fit. A lot of the curriculum that I ordered for next year arrived. I love getting boxes! I got what we needed for Noeo Bio II, Singapore 6A and B (but for some reason, I forgot to order the workbooks!), some miscellaneous books for history, and a new typing program for Katie to use. One of the sources I used was Rainbow resources…and I got a copy of their catalog with my order. That book must weigh 87 pounds…and would surely harm a small child should it fall off my counter or unexpectedly fling from my hands while being interrupted for the millionth time with cries of “she did…”

My book reading time this week has been somewhat limited as I found a new obsession: Pioneer Woman. It all started with a picture of Apple dumplings over on Jeanne’s blog. It’s all her fault. The pictures are beautiful and mouth watering. I found the recipe over on Pioneer woman cooks…and I rushed to Target to buy the ingredients. (The kids are making them tonight – I’ll tempt you with the results tomorrow!) Then I spent the rest of the day on Confessions of a Pioneer woman…reading her love story…looking at her amazing photography…and wishing (for only about 5 minutes) that I lived on a ranch. Eventually the pleas of my children were heard and I went back to my own reality. I told the kids it was Jeanne’s fault. It’s also Jeanne’s fault that I sent the link to my friend Cindy in Texas. She is currently obsessing about cowboys and apple dumplings too…and so standardized math test questions are no longer being written and her house is being taken over by the cats.

Madalyn had a good week at her school. She had a project this week to make a poster showing how to keep your teeth clean and healthy. Here is a picture of her making the poster.

I am on the PTA of Madalyn’s school. I keep track of all the volunteer hours (basically it means that I read code – I have to figure out parent’s John Hancock’s…and then figure out what class their child is in…and then log the volunteer hours per class. It also involves a lot of hair pulling and gnashing of teeth). This week we had our monthly PTA meeting. We sit at tables with attached stools. That are made for 6 year olds. Not for thirty-somethings whose rears are much too large for said stools. My feet were asleep within a few minutes. And then because it’s fun…I stayed and had lunch with Madalyn…eating school food…AND sitting for another half hour on those stools. I am still recovering.

MATH: Katie spent the first part of the week doing chapter reviews about division and multiplication of fractions. Then on Wednesday we moved to “Areas of Triangles” and learned the simple formula: ½ x base x height. Next week we will begin covering ratios. Katie looked at the upcoming chapter this morning and said “are we really going to spend time with this chapter?”

HISTORY: Katie finished reading “The Wave” and said next to “Ties that Bind, Ties that Break,” it was her favorite required reading for school. I told her about watching it as an afterschool movie when I was in elementary school. She is most upset that we cannot get it on dvd. We began and finished chapter 25 covering Japan in Manchuria and The Long March. Tonight we are going to play go-fish with “economic” sanctions. When Japan invaded Manchuria, the League of Nations imposed economic sanctions (meaning no trade with member nations and Japan) until they withdrew their troops. The problem was that Japan’s biggest trading partner was the US…who was not a member of the League of Nations. With Go-fish, there will be four players: Japan, the US, and 2 league of Nations members. Japan can only trade with the US. The US can trade with anyone. The league of Nations countries can only trade with the US and other League members. We’ll see if the girls still think that “go fish” is fun after our experiment!

PHYSICS: Katie continued with week 25 of the Noeo Physics curriculum and learning about Magnetism. She continued to learn about electro-magnetism and learned how to make a compass – and then how to make the compass point at an electrically charged current rather than north. Again…I am obsessed with LOST…among other things…maybe by studying Noeo Physics, I’ll figure out what the islands secrets are…

SPELLING/GRAMMAR: In Grammar, Katie worked on adjectives and began looking at formatting letters (does anyone actually write those anymore?); in Spelling, she continued working with suffixes.

WRITING: Katie read “Animal Farm” this week – and actually finished today – a little earlier than I expected. I had her read this not only because it correlates with our history, but because I read the book “Deconstructing Penguins” which labeled this as a fourth grade book. I loved their discussion of the meanings of this book and I cannot wait to discuss it with her next week. (Hey…did any of you notice that the author of this book posted on my blog?!! He commented after my post about the book – and how I felt like a moron after reading it. At least he didn’t offer the advice of my friend Cindy – which was to simply to take my kids to see “Horton Hears a Who” and call it a day.) Katie said she liked the book – but not as much as some. She says the pictures are gross and give her a stomach ache. I am reading too (but I am not done yet because I’ve been blogging…and obsessing) and I must admit, she’s right…the pictures are nasty.PIANO: Katie is working on sheet music and experimenting with a piece that she can play with different notes (I have no idea as to what that means…it’s her word…of course, when I first asked what she learned in piano this week, she said “stuff.”).

OTHER STUFF: Our homeschool group started back again this week. Katie started swimming lessons there. She is a good swimmer – but could use some fine tuning on her strokes (umm…someone needs to show her what they are). Her friend Diana joined our group and is in class with her. She also went back to folk dancing. Her other class is Latin (with Abbeyj) and they reviewed to get ready for the National Latin exam next week.