Weekly Wrap-Up

It’s time for the Weekly Wrap-Up hosted by Kris @ Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers. 

This week’s Wrap-Up is part this week and part last week.  As I just posted about our field trip last week because I was just feeling lazy.  This offended my student, who feels that everyone should know what she’s been up too.

So here are the highlights…

Science

We are still studying birds.  Our “What food do birds prefer?”  ended.  The birds in our yard prefer sunflower seeds to mixed seed, but they will eat whatever’s available to them.

Here’s some of the birds that visited us.

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Now we’ve moved on to a bird bath experiment.  What do bird prefer? High or Low?  So far they prefer not to come near ours.

We did some experiments about how birds slow themselves down and waterproof their feathers.

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Social Studies

We’ve been working our way through the Gold Rush and have begun to work our way to the events leading up to the Civil War. 

She finished reading Freedom Train: The Story of Harriet Tubman.  And we finished her first pocket in our History Pockets: The American Civil War.  We’re now on pocket two.

 

We also had a field trip to the Jamestown Settlement for homeschool days.  It as a nice review of what we studied last year.  And I got an awesome picture of the musket demonstration.  Check out our day HERE.  

Extras

She’s been continuing to work with lines in How to Teach Art to Children.  One day she had to create a drawing using two lines going in the same direction.  Here you see her beach scene, a walking stick, the sun & moon, and a pyramid scene.

Then she had to create a maze by curving lines around torn pieces of paper.  She found this one a little tricky.

She’s also continuing to enjoy our study of Mary Cassatt.  Our weekly picture study notebooking page is the only time she doesn’t gripe about writing. LOL

Lastly, she had her first soccer game of the season and the Yellow Bumblebees won!!  Mackenzie even scored a goal!

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Weekly Wrap-Up

One month into grade four and we’re still going strong.  So far no major hang-ups or attitudes.  Even the Wee Tot has been relatively agreeable, for her, and we’ve managed to get school finished in a timely manner each day. This is one happy mommy.

Bible

We’re still reading through the Book of John and learning along with the original 12 disciples.

Math

We’ve moved on to dividing by 3s and 5s.  Division is continuing to go well.  And to think she was nervous about it.  Reviewing our multiplication facts all summer sure helped.

Language Arts

We reviewed dictionary skills, verbs, and diagramming  in First Language Lessons.  One of her new skills in FLL is proofreading and learning proofreading marks.  She likes being able to “check” mistakes in the assignments.

Spelling Power and Writing With Ease continue to go well.

Social Studies

Mackenzie finished reading Sing Down the Moon.  While she was very upset to, again, read about how horribly our country treated Native Americans, she was very happy with the ending. 

She is now reading Freedom Train, about Harriet Tubman.  That, along with our read aloud William Wilberforce, has began our study of slavery.

True to her nature, Mackenzie is horrified and feels some guilt that her ancestors would treat people so cruelly.  She has such a tender heart when she reads about other people hurting.

In spite of the difficult topics she is, at some level, enjoying the readings.  She said of our Wilberforce readings, “I’m glad that some people were willing to stand up and help.  This book has given us lots to talk about hasn’t it?”

We also started our Civil War History Pockets.  We started with pocket two, on slavery.

Science

We finished lesson two, on what makes a bird a bird.  We concluded the lesson with an experiment about what food birds prefer.  Basically, we needed two identical bird feeders, with the only variable being the type of seed in them.  We filled one with a basic seed mix and the other with just black oil sunflower seeds.

Much to our dismay, not one bird has approached either.  Not having a bird friendly yard is making this study a difficult one for us. LOL   There is nary a tree or a bush in our tiny yard to attract them.

Extras

We are continuing our artist study on Mary Cassatt.  We just love her work.  This week she did a notebook page on one of her picture studies.

  In honor of our bird study in science, we decided to draw and paint birds using a lesson from Deep Space Sparkle.  We opted out of the feathers because I didn’t want to dig them out.

Mackenzie starts piano lessons next week so we purchased a digital piano for practice.  She is loving that.  Not bad for a girl who never touched a piano before today.

She also started soccer this week.  It was alright.  I’m a little disappointed with the coach.  He’s a very sweet man and I know she’ll have fun but he doesn’t seem to know a lot about soccer.  Her coach last year taught them so much.  They did drills of all sorts, learned plays, and had a great time.  Her skills improved tremendously last year and I was hoping for the same.  Maybe he’ll surprise me, but I hope they’re playing more and sitting less next practice. LOL

And we enjoyed our last Water Country day of the season.

Be sure to check out the other wrap-ups over at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers.

Weekly Wrap-Up: No field trip edtion

It's that time folks. Time to wrap up our week. And look, I'm writting the post on a Friday. Although I don't know that it will be posted on Friday. LOL Be sure to hop on over to Kris' to see what other folks have been up to this week.

This week was nice. Mainly because we didn't have a lot of "extras". No field trips breaking up our week and lots of time at home. Our only "big venture" was cooking class starting back up this month. Mackenzie takes a cooking class every so often at The Young Chefs Academy. We primarily do this in the winter as a fun activity for the kids to do when it's too cold outside.

For me the class serves 2 purposes:

1) She learns how to cook. I can cook. Not terribly well and I certainly don't enjoy it but, thanks to Quick Cooking magazine, I can get edible food on the table. It's a necessary evil for me. LOL So we don't do a lot of cooking together at home. The extra mess alone is enough to send me right over the edge. Cooking together is not as frequent as it probably should be. I'll work on it. =o)

2) The mom's hang out at the local Starbucks while the kids are cooking for an hour and a half. Okay, so this might be my favorite reason. LOL If they'd only let me enroll Wee Babe it would be perfect.

Now I need to remember the rest of the week. What did we do? LOL Thinking, thinking...

Bible:

We stick-figured our way through the temptation of Jesus. We talked a lot about areas where we both needed to work on not succumbing to temptation. That's a long list. Yikes!

Math:

I think we were skip counting by 3's. Which means next week she'll be multiplying by 3's.

Science:

We are studying birds at the moment. If I were a good mom, I'd take her bird watching. I don't enjoy birds much though. Well except for chickens and turkeys. The others don't taste as good and they poop on my car and make too much noise. LOL One of my favorite things about living in Guam was how clean my car stayed. =o) I should send her with my bird-loving friend. She likes them and can pretty much tell you what any bird is off the top of her head.

Language Arts:

We did a few days on proper oral language, particularly focusing on verb tense. Mackenzie's favorite part was the fact that there was no writing involved.

Social Studies:

We're still studying colonial times. Love, love, love it.

Our read aloud is The Witch of Blackbird Pond. And we're getting to the really good parts. Yay!! If only my sinuses weren't draining so I could read longer.

Mackenzie read The Skippack School this week. She says it was really good. She can't tell me why though. LOL

She also got a good lesson this week on why it's not a good idea to rely on one source for your information. We were studying how the colony of Georgia was founded.

One book painted James Oglethorpe and the colonization of Georgia as this great humanitarian deed. And it was, in a sense. The London poor were given opportunities for jobs, homes, food, etc. That's definately a step up from living on the streets.

What that particular didn't book didn't tell you was how Oglethorpe et. all were really looking out for their own interests. They thought London had far too many poor and wanted them out. What better place for them than across the ocean? And while they're there, they'll work where they were told, eat what they were told, dress how they were told, and basically have no options. And the "best part" was that if Spainish in Florida decided to attack the English colonies, they'd wipe out Georgia first. It's just London's down-trodden, so no big loss, right?

That was a good lessson in "there are two sides" to every story. And as to why our curriculum uses more than one source.

Our history pocket this week was about colonial homes. She got to make a "diorama" HP style of a colonial home, which she thought was fun. I like crafts about as much as I like cooking, so it was a big treat. ROFL

Mackenzie was thrilled when what she learned about colonial homes in the HP showed up in her reading. "I know what a settle is mom. I read about them in my HP." All the pieces are starting to fit together. =o)