Sweet Number Three!

Week number three is officially under our belts! The headaches haven't been bothering me too much this week. Thanks for all the well-wishes! I did have to flex my "ingenuity muscles" just a tad, nothing like three wistful faces (2 kids, 1 husband) looking at you to make your insides quiver and your brain turn to mush. Of course, I had to give in. Not only did the kids get their regular Wed w/Dad, but they got Thursday as well, and convinced me to go along. I had to do some major rescheduling, but hey, that's why homeschooling is so great! You can change things whenever you want! So here is what we've accomplished this week.

In Bible/History we talked about the Ice Age, the Tower of Babel ,Stonehenge, and the growing civilizations in Mesopotamia. We read from the Bible, Ancient History by J.M. Roberts, Ancient Mesopotamia by Shilpa Mehta-Jones, Charge! Weapons and Warfare in Ancient Times by Rivka Gonen, and Archaeology for Kids by Richard Panchyk. We've been using AOP LifePac #7 which focuses on archaeology and is helping the kids understand how the history of the world is wrapped up in the Bible, and how just because the Bible doesn't mention something by name doesn't mean it wasn't there.

We haven't done much in sciences this week. We finished up the inner planets. We were supposed to start the outer planets, but that got put on hold with the extra day off.

In Language Arts we've been doing the "word of the day". I've been using this website which is geared toward 4-6th graders. I started keeping a list back in August so I could pick and choose and then, if I miss a day, I'm not short. We've been doing worksheets on figurative language. The kids really enjoyed the hyperbole and idioms. My son got just a tad bit silly with personification. And they loved alliteration and onomatopoeia. Similie and metaphor are not their friends. Still working on that! They're doing great with syllabication and compound words. We also started our Journals for the year.

The Literature Study is going swimmingly. We are currently reading The Year of the Dog. Which is a great book. It goes along great with our cultural studies. For poetry we are reading from A Child's Introduction to Poetry, Side by Side: Poems to Read Together, Poetry for Young People, by Langston Hughes, and The Earth is Painted Green. We haven't started writing any of our own poetry yet. I think we'll do that next week.

In our Cultural Studies we are doing a "festival". We've chosen 3 cultures: Native American, German, and Japanese. We're going to a study of these cultures and compare them to each other as well as to our own American culture. In our cultural readings this week we read Liang and the Magic Paintbrush by DEMI (chinese) and Little Oh! by L.C. Melmed (Japanese). We also read Raising Yoder's Barn by Jane Yolen (Amish).

In Art we did a lesson on ancient art and another prism project. Most of the art lessons show up during the history lessons as well as the culture lessons. Eventually, we'll begin putting art on the timeline as well.

In Music we've been studying the instruments. This week we learned about some African instruments and how they are used. And we read I See the Rhythm by Toyomi Igus. I LOVE LOVE LOVE this book. It's so beautiful and it fits into not only music, but culture, art, and LA (poetry) as well!

We worked a little bit in our geography books, talking about how the land can be divided into different regions based on either natural or human characteristics. This seems to be confusing to them so we're going to do some more work on this.

They finished their 5th grade math books this week and spent Friday and Saturday finishing up the grade level test. It's a 4 page test in the back of the book. I pick and choose which problems I want them to do, so they're not doing ALL of it! It's just so I can see what they've retained well and what still needs some work.

In our English workbooks J worked on antonyms and K worked on verb tenses. They both completed 2 vocab sections and 4 reading comp sections. And they've both passed their spelling tests.

On our extra day off we went to Sea World. We always stop and play with the dolphins and touch the sting rays, and of course cruise through the shark tube. Since I went this time too we had to stop to see the manatees. On our way to the water ride we took a "path less travelled" and ran into a python! A 40lb. Albino Burmese Python! Not something you see everyday. And we got to touch it! J was a little leery of doing anything so crazy but K jumped right up there and was rubbing its belly! I had to touch it too after I took the pic. It was really smooth and soft! What an experience! Chalk the day up to science!




I snapped this one just as J's fingertips made contact. And then he snatched his hand right back!