Week in Review: Week 3

Another week breezed by here at casa Sunshine and Lemonade. A week without too much drama. Which is surprising. Especially since my children live here. But I'll take it. Anytime.

Last Friday, Madalyn brought home her work from the week in her Friday Folder. They had been taking timed tests in math - to work on their 0-5 math facts. She got a 92% on addition. And a 53% on subtraction. I asked her what happened with subtraction (she got that low because she didn't finish most of the page, not that they were wrong) - and she says "Well, mom. Subtraction is just not my thing." So...can you see her now? In high school. Telling her math teacher - "yeah, subtraction is not my thing. But I can do a mean quadratic equation."

On Tuesday, Katie went to a homeschool cooking class at our local Young Chef's Academy. There were 19 kids there. I don't think they were expecting quite so many! It was an hour and a half class (or a little less for us because I thought it started at 11:30 rather than 11) - so I got a little time alone - and Katie got to cook a breakfast burito and blueberry muffins - and most importantly, she got to eat them. The classes are only once a month, so she'll have to make do with cooking in our kitchen until the next time.

And then last night after dinner, the girls presented me with this:

The good mother award. I am not sure what I did to spurn this creativity. Oh, wait, yes, I do know. They lost all privileges yesterday - so perhaps this was their way of entertaining themselves. Hmmm...maybe instead of asking what I did...I should be wondering what they did. And why are they trying to butter me up? Aren't they sweet?

This is what we accomplished homeschooling:

GRAMMAR/WRITING: I did what I said I would do. We stopped the Note taking workbook and I got a vocabulary program. We started Wordly Wise.I really like it. And after a week, she has learned new words. And how to use them. And I think she'll retain it. It's very challenging - which is just what she needs. Also, I have made writing for her blog part of her school work. She got a blog back in February and I let her write what she wanted. Most days it was text speak and craziness. And then she let it fall by the wayside. I told her that if she really wanted to be a writer, then she needed to write. Go check out her blog.

LOGIC: We are continuing through the workbook and this week has mostly been analogies. Did you know that they took those off the SAT? Anyway, today she had to make up her own. She was provided with the first part - and had to do the second. For example: sour is to pickle as _______ is to __________. So she did sweet to molasses. My favorite one was this one: net is to fisherman as guillotine is to executioner. She can be a bloodthirsty one.

GEOGRAPHY: This week we started studying China. I meant to do this first. To go hand in hand with the Olympics, but it just didn't happen that way. She read a book about China - and some articles from a DK encyclopedia about the country. And we finally used our Geography through Art book. To make it so that I didn't have to be the crafty one - I just told her to pick what she wanted to do out of the China section. And she chose to make a paper cut out. She did a great job with her dragon:

HISTORY: We continued along with History Odyssey, this week studying the Akkadians, Sumerians, and Mesopotamia. I made her watch a "They Might be Giants" video. And now she can't get the song out of her head.

I thought it was pretty funny...

BIOLOGY: We moved from the microscope to the Science encyclopedia - and learned about the taxonomic binomial system of organizing living things. And we have talked about the parts of an animal cell. Today were were supposed to capture an ant and look at it under the microscope. Michael made our slide to trap the ant. But he used corrugated cardboard. So, the ants keep escaping. He needs to re-engineer it!

MATH: We finished up our chapter on rate.

So, that was our week. There is that old saying of "you learn something new everyday." What did you learn this week?