Weekly Update March 28-April 1, 2011

Spring is Here!  

 Why does it seem that at this point of the school year our only motivation is summer break?    The beginning of the school year starts out so promising---look at everything we are going to learn!    But now it seems to feel like----Let's do our school work so we can get done and have a summer break!   

And so we worked toward that goal. 

 History---we have finished study the Middle Ages and are going to take a month to study Native Americans. Using

The Story of the First Americans: Ancient Times, we learned about Beringia, the cultures of the Planoes, the Clovis, and the Folsom peoples as well as the beginning of farming in Mesoamerica.    We then compared the first known American Continent Civilization, the Olmecs, with ancient civilizations in the Mesopatatian area.   E-R and I-E took notes, outlined, and wrote paragraphs about the Clovis culture and the Olmec Civilization.    E was to pick a section of the chapters we read to research further, take notes, and write an outline for a paper to be completed next week, but he appears to have picked up a virus and so he spent a lot of his school week sleeping.   Next week, he'll get to that assignment and we'll push the assignment back a week for him.    We also practiced taking notes from my oral reading.    So far we are working paragraph by paragraph on this, but the goal is to be able to take notes from an hour long lecture without stopping.   At first the kids just tried to write down everything they heard, and of course quickly got lost because I talk faster than they write!   So we talked about listening for the main idea, dates, and places

Science---This week we learned about Daniel Fahrenheit, Lord Kelvin, and Anders Celsius.    Wait, wait can you guess what they are all famous for?   Yup, Daniel Fahrenheit invented an accurate thermometer and the scale of measuring temperature we use here in the USA.   Lord Kelvin and Anders Celsius developed different scales for measuring temperature.    We practiced converting temperatures between Fahrenheit, Celsius, and Kelvin.   

Math--E worked on Aleks and covered Real Numbers and Linear Equations and their applications in the real world,  translating sentences into inequalities,  functions and systems of equations, and solving equations involving rational expressions and proportions. E also took his placement class for his math class he will take at Foothill Techology School next year.   He is aiming to take their geometry honors class.   We'll see how the test went in a few weeks.   E-R and I-E worked on Rates in Singapore and have started working through the Key to Percents books.

Grammar--E started the chapter on Adjectives.   E-R and I-E finished their chapter on Adjectives and Adverbs and took the chapter test.

Lit, Art, and Spelling kinda fell by the wayside this week. 

How was your week?   Has spring fever struck in your home?

Check out what other homeschoolers have been up to this week.