Week 13

Last Saturday we got to watch the lunar eclispe.    It was pretty awesome and a great start to our weekend.

My photog skills aren't up to the task of documenting this awesome event.

Our school week was spent wrapping up lose ends before our Christmas break. 

We worked through chapter 3 of Rod and Staff 7 which covered verbals and substantives.  After break we’ll cover the writing from that chapter and review before taking the chapter test.  Ideally we could have covered the entire chapter, but it didn’t work out that way this time.   We’ll make sure to take lots of time to review before taking the chapter test.

Mapping the World with Art covered the voyages of Christopher Columbus.  I-E and E-R learned to draw The Greater Antilles and The Lesser Antilles Islands.   They then combined them together in an antique style map. 




In Math we covered proportions and rates.   In addition to our Singapore work, we had fun realizing how important proportion is when working with photos.  

I-E also used proportion to enlarge our template for gingerbread houses.  She had to scale back her original creation so it could fit in the oven to bake!   We’re looking forward to decorating our gingerbread house with cousins during break.

Spelling took more work than planned.   After flying through the first word list in Mega Words, I expected the second lesson to be just as easy for I-E and E-R.   Turned out not to be the case!    Those schwa sounds at ends of words were killers for my girls.   We added some neat activities from our new box of Spelling Power task cards.

E-R chose  to spell out her words on the keypad of my phone, while I-R used toothpicks to spell out her words.   And the test was finally passed!   We will move onto the third word list after break.  

In history we learned about Renaissance music in Rats, Bulls, and Flying Machines.  




    We also took an unplanned detour to the holocaust.   While scrolling through our TIVOed shows, I found two show that recorded in 2009!    Who Do You Think You Are which aired on NBC showed the journey a celebrity took in tracing their genealogy.   Lisa Kudrow’s father’s family were Eastern European Jews.   Her journey back to the village of Ilia in Belarus told the story of how all the Jews in the village—including her Grandmother—were shot and burned.   The story ends happily though when she finds her father’s cousin, who was believed to have been dead, alive and well in Poland.  Before watching the show, we looked up Hitler and the Holocaust in our history encyclopedia.  E-R remembered Number the Stars which we read two years ago and made the connection between that book and our new information.   I highly recommend the show.   It was a great way to show how “ancient” history affects us today.   After further investigation I’ve found that a new season of this show will air in February of 2012.   And the episode we watched along with others are available to watch on NBC’s website. 

A great week and the perfect ending to our second term.   Happy Holidays everyone!