Thursday, March 4, 2010

Weekly Report...Week 26


Thank you for the "get well" wishes I received last week. The suffering was minimal this week. Overall, we had a good week. Here's the breakdown of the week (I just wanted to make sure I used the word "week" at the end of every sentence...week)...

History (Both)
"The Regulars are coming! The Regulars are coming!"
Paul Revere and the Battles of Lexington and Concord were the topics we studied this week. I read "And Then What Happened, Paul Revere" by Fritz, the boys added to their timeline, Magnus read "Mr. Revere and I" by Lawson, and the boys made a pop-up of Paul Revere's ride.
Oh, and we, of course, watched the relevant episodes of Liberty's Kids.


Science (Both)
Were learning about the properties of water. I wasn't very keen on this topic, but it is quite interesting. We discussed adhesion and cohesion as well as capillary attraction. The first experiment we did was to pick up a cookie sheet off of a dry surface. It was a piece of cake. Then I placed a small puddle of water on the surface before putting the cookie sheet on it. Wowzers! The water had adhered itself to both surfaces making it difficult to pick it up. The boys thought that was cool.
The next experiment we did was pouring water from a pitcher into a glass but doing it from about a foot away and at an angle. Wanna know how we did it and how it worked?


We used a piece of twine for the water to adhere to. It was neat.

Next we tested the absorbency (capillary attraction) of a coffee filter, paper towel, and copy paper.


Language Arts (Magnus)
Writing...He worked on key word outlining and the "which" clause again. He has demonstrated proficiency in this so we'll move onto Lesson 2 of IEW SWI A next week.

Spelling...He is doing good. Nothing exciting to report. How exciting can spelling be really? And no, I have not seen Akeelah and the Bee.

MCT Poetry...We are LOVING this unit!!! I blogged about our experience with it so far. If you missed it, I encourage you to view the poems Magnus wrote here and here and the one Thane composed here.

Language Arts (Thane)
Writing...He completed week 5 of WWE. He wasn't too happy when we got to day 4 and he had to copy his narration he dictated to me. I bet next week he'll give me a 4 worder.

Reading...He completed some episodes of Headsprout.com and is working through reading Sam the Minuteman with me. It is a bit of a challenge, but he is doing good.

Math
Magnus...He drew equilateral triangles with his drawing tools and learned about fractions as he divided them.

Thane...Learned about perimeter. It took him awhile to grasp the concept (which surprised me), but after a couple days of doing it, he understands now. He also learned what a diagonal is and how to measure it.

Latin (Magnus)
We actually DID something! I had him review the chants and watch the grammar portion of chapter 2 again. There is a great possibility he may be taking a LFC A class next year, so I am not as stressed about not getting it done. I'm actually thinking about ditching LFC A now and maybe working through Minimus. We'll see.

Fun Day Friday
We finished up our history projects, did our picture study of NC Wyeth's, "In a Dream I meet General Washington"...

...went to the library to get books on how to draw dragons. They'll spend the rest of the afternoon pouring over them and fine tuning their skills. We also headed to the park to meet up with our homeschool friends. Nothin' like a little nerf gun and light saber!

Activities
Monday...?
Tuesday...Drama (Magnus) and AWANA (Both...Thane earned his patch for his second book!)
Wednesday...Fencing (Magnus)
Thursday...nada
Friday...Fun Day and Park Day with our Homeschool Friends.

Thanks for stopping by! Hopefully you'll tune in next week too!

7 comments:

Lori C., Texas said...

Great week! My kids LOVED Paul Revere!

Julie said...

Wow! That science looks like a blast!

Daisy said...

Wonderful week. My children have always enjoyed that time period in history. Lots of excitement. Beautiful choice for picture study.

Robyn said...

Love your science pictures! Looks like fun experiments! We've had that issue with narrations too! I don't have them recopy every week so they never know when they will and when they won't have to! Keeps them on their toes!

Unknown said...

You take great pictures!

Unknown said...

You take great pictures!

Julia
www.greensummervillian.wordpress.com

Robin Johnson said...

It looks like you had a great week. The science experiments look great!