Week 8 (10/17-10/21)

Scripture:

1. Boys - Obedience: I obey right away without delay.
2. Girls - Obey your leaders (because) they keep watch over you. Hebrews 13:17

Reading:

1. C&C - Read Chapters 4 & 5 of Piper Reed Gets a Job by Kimberly Willis Holt.
2. Madelyn - Read Chapters 8-10 of Eddie, Incorporated by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor. Completed a timeline of Eddie's business ventures in Excel. We're hoping Daddy will help us create some kind of neat graph with our data.

Social Studies: Madelyn interviewed Ms. Veronica (her dance teacher and owner of the studio) and scheduled an appointment to interview Mr. Brian, the homebuilder.

Math:

1. C&C - Completed Unit 2, Chapter 4 or Week 6 from Singapore Math 2A. The concept was adding with renaming.
2. Madelyn - Completed Unit 1, Chapter 6 from Singapore Math 4A. She learned about negative numbers and took a cumulative review test on Unit 1.

Writing:

1. C&C - Completed Week 5 in Writing With Ease.
   
2. Madelyn - Completed Lessons 158 through 164 in Primary Language Lessons. The book is now complete! Onward to apply her knowledge to a new program.
   

Science: We completed labs on mechanical waves and heat transfer. If nothing else the girls should all know the law of conservation of energy. We have witnessed time and again how energy is transformed, not lost or gained.

Preschool: The boys completed Week 6 of their PreK Sonlight program. They learned to print capital R, N and M using Handwriting without Tears. They continue to work from Essential Math and Developing the Early Learner.

Week 7 (10/10-10/14)

Our fall is flying by! As eager as we all were to start school, we get easily distracted by other outdoor learning opportunities. My plan book is always so lofty just as I remember when I taught in the public schools. I like having this space to reflect on what we actually accomplished over the week.

Scripture:

1. Boys - Honesty: I speak truthful words and act truthfully.
2. Girls - Tell your neighbor the truth because we belong to each other. Ephesians 4:25

Reading:

1. C&C - Read Chapters 1-3 in Piper Reed Gets a Job by Kimberly Willis Holt.
2. Madelyn - Read Chapters 5-7 of Eddie, Incorporated by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor.

Social Studies: Madelyn worked on interview questions for our entrepreneur friends, Ms. Veronica (dance studio owner) and Mr. Brian (the homebuilder). We also volunteered at the food bank this week.

Math:

1. C&C - Completed Sprints! Also completed Unit 1, Week 5 (Addition and Subtraction w/o Renaming) of Singapore Math 2A.
2. Madelyn - Completed Sprints! Also completed Unit 1, Week 4 (Order of Operations) of Singapore Math.
   

Writing:

1. C&C - Completed Week 4 of Writing with Ease. The good thing about having purchased the workbook version of this program is it's exposing us to great texts, thereby giving us many book recommendations.
2. Madelyn - Completed Lessons 148 through 157 in Primary Language Lessons. She should finish next week.

Science: We studied potential and kinetic energy this week. We used the slide and origami frogs as examples.

Potential energy=top of slide

Kinetic energy = moving down the slide

Potential energy = preparing to leap

Art: The girls started taking stamping classes with their Great-Grandmother. It's a great art lesson and a good multi-generational learning experience.

Preschool: The boys completed Week 5 of their PreK Sonlight program. They learned to print capital D, P, and B using Handwriting without Tears. They continue to work from Essential Math and Developing the Early Learner.

Week 6 (10/3-10/7)

When I was a public school teacher, I charted out year after year of instruction using conceptual planning. Although my classroom now looks much different and my pupils are far more multi-aged that I previously worked with, my planning method remains the same. Our concept for the year is interdependence. We spent the first five weeks laying down the foundation for this study by really articulating our family's interdependence on each other as well as with our country, our Earth and our God.

Now, we are shifting our studies to consider entrepreneurship. We will be looking at how people in our community work individually and within groups to develop an interconnected local economy of unique services and goods. I hope that our children will contribute to this web with their own small business venture.

Scripture:

1. Boys - Thankfulness: I show gratefulness with words and actions.
2. Girls - Let the peace of God rule in your hearts...and be thankful. Colossians 3:15

Reading:

1. C&C - Read Arthur's Pet Business by Marc Brown.
2. Madelyn - Read Chapters 1-4 of Eddie, Incorporated by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor.
   

Social Studies: We are exploring the concepts of small business ownership and entrepreneurship as a group. We started this week defining entrepreneurship and brainstorming friends we know who are entrepreneurs. Then we brainstormed business ideas for our family. Finally, we researched the elements of a business plan.

Math:

1. C&C - Continued working on Math Sprints, which they will finish next week. Also completed Unit 1, Week 4 of Singapore Math 2A.
2. Madelyn - Also continued working on Math Sprints. Completed Unit 1, Week 3 of Singapore Math 4A. After Sprints are done, I need to continue reviewing factors and approximation with Madelyn. The test this week was tough on her.

Writing:

1. C&C - Completed Week 3 of Writing with Ease. The trouble with not making everything up from scratch is that the objectives sometimes become clear after, rather than before the lessson.
2. Madelyn - Completed Lessons 140 through 147 in Primary Languge Lessons. It won't be long before we get to start the Excellence in Writing Program.

Science: We are now looking at Energy. We defined energy as the ability to do work. We also quantified it as work=force x distance. We studied the law of conservation of mass. I demonstrated this by weighing two liquids and then combining them to create a solid (chemical reaction) and proving that even as a solid the weight was unchanged. We are using Energy for Every Kid by Janice VanCleave for these labs and information.

(Experimenting with friction during work experiment)

Preschool: The boys completed Week 4 from their PreK Sonlight program. They also started handwriting using Handwriting without Tears. They continue to work from Essential Math and Developing the Early Learner.

Week 5 (9/19-9/23)

(Junior Ranger swearing-in at Volcanoes National Park)

We spent 17 days and 16 nights in Hawaii. While not all of it was educational, a good bit was. I am counting five days toward our schooling.

The objectives I laid out for this trip are as follows:

1. Math - Devise and solve word problems regarding the value and expense of goods and services in Hawaii. Work on mental math, especially multiplying by 8.
2. Writing - Record experiences in journal format.
3. Science - SEE the impact of crustal movement in the form of volcanoes. Observe and explore the diverse ecosystems (including desert and rainforest) on the Big Island.
4. Art - Sand art; Conservation poster
   
5. Social Studies - Learn as much as possible about the culture and history of America's 50th state. Learn about land masses and the geography of our only island state. Complete Junior Ranger program.
   
6. Reading - Read for information and read for pleasure (this is vacation after all).

The proof that we met these objectives are locked in our 1,000+ pictures. As much as I'd like to document our learning it's just too great a project that would take away far too much time from present and future learning. So, you'll just have to make a visit to our home to see our photo album and if you're really interested, you could look through all 1,000+ raw photos.

Week 4 (9/11-9/14)

This was a compressed week as we were preparing for a trip. Some things were left out, while others were doubled up on.

Reading: We finished our read aloud of Shiloh. The girls liked it so well, they begged me to start Shiloh Season as our next read aloud. They also performed their final Reader's Theater based on Shiloh Season.

Social Studies:

1. C&C - The girls finished their Neighborhoods & Communities book. The final lessons were on compass directions and measuring distance on a map.
2. Madelyn - Madelyn finished the formal lessons from Map Skills: The United States during Week 3 so this week she worked through the 50 Questions of the Day. She really got to know her country and became quite comfortable with the US map.

Math:

1. C&C - More Sprints. They also completed the Unit 1, Week 3 work from Singapore Math 2A. This included their first formal test ever. No problem for our girls!
2. Madelyn- More Sprints too. She also completed Unit 1, Week 2 from Singapore Math 4A. This included her first test of the year on place value up to a million. She is a little rusty and tends to let anxiety hamper her performance on tests (kind of like her teacher). We'll keep working on it though.

Writing:

1. C&C - Completed Week 2 in Writing with Ease. We are still working on getting into a routine with this new program. I like the activities but sometimes struggle with knowing what to emphasize in the lessons as I present them to the girls.
2. Madelyn - Completed Lessons 136 through 139 from Primary Language Lessons. Our daughter has tremendous memorization skills. She amazes me every time I assign her a text to memorize.

We did not do science or preschool this week.

Week 3 (9/5/11-9/9/11)

Scripture:

1. Girls - God loves a cheerful giver. 2Corinthians 9:7
2. Boys - Generosity: I share my things with a cheerful spirit.

Reading: The girls worked on their final Reader's Theater. The script came from Shiloh Season. It was a great tie to our read aloud. The girls really used their knowledge of each character when making the puppets. We continued (as suggested) reading Shiloh aloud.

Social Studies: We went to the Food Bank on Thursday. We went to the NM State Fair on Friday. We had a great time exploring all the different exhibits, especially the ones featuring NM animals. We enjoyed the Native American dancing and Mariachi group in the Hispanic Village as well.

1. C&C - Continued working from Neighborhoods and Communities book. They worked on a calendar and explored different types of communities (rural, urban and suburban) and how they work together.
2. Madelyn - Continued working from Map Skills: The United States. She explored concepts relating to latitude and longitude, regions of the US, map scales and population maps.

Math:

1. C&C - The girls continued to work from their Sprints books. They completed Unit 1, Week 2 from Singapore Math 2A.
2. Madelyn - Like her sisters, Madelyn continued to work from her Sprints book. She completed Unit 1, Chapter 1, Week 1 from Singapore Math 4A.

Writing:

1. C&C - As anticipated, the girls reviewed Week 1 from Writing with Ease now that they have their workbooks for that program.
2. Madelyn - Completed Lessons 126 through 135 from Primary Language Lessons.

Science: We continue to study the Earth. We made observations on our salt bed and crystals that we started Week 1. We also demonstrated how the crust of the Earth moves using paper towels and PlayDoh. We continue to use Earth Science for Every Kid as our lab book.

Preschool: Seth and Sam completed Week 3 from their Sonlight program. They also worked from Essential Math and Developing Early Learners.