Curriculum Plans 2012/2013

This post is part of a series showing the realness of homeschooling---the ugly, frustrating, and wonderfulness of it all. 

English:
Rod and Staff 8

Vocabulary.com

Megawords:
Sentence Composing for Middle School

Math:
Derek Owens Algebra

Science:
Rainbow Science

Literature:

Windows to the World: Introduction to Literary Analysis Teacher and Student

Self-Evident Truths Series: Statements of Equality

Logic:
The Art of Argument
Critical Thinking in United States History: New Republic to Civil War

Art:
Art will be outsourced this year.   Both E-R and I-E are quite talented, and I’ve taken them as far as I can.   They will be picking a specialty and working with an artist later on this year.

Drama: 
I-E and E-R tried out and got parts in The Greatest Christmas Pageant Ever at a local playhouse.   Rehearsals are filling up their afternoons.   After this show, we will be taking a break from acting so they can concentrate on art, but I’m sure another show will be in their future later in the year.  

History:
Liberty! The Series
George Washington’s World
Abraham Lincoln’s World
A History of US
Student News Daily

Additional we are reading for one hour a day.   I have a pile of books on the shelf that are available for the girls to choose from each week.  

Week 25

 

Spring is here! 

We have enjoyed the sunshine and worked on our garden this week.   Our potatoes are up and carrots and onions are planted.   On our patio we’ve planted tomatoes under the dryer vent and lettuce in the shade.  

 

In Math we came to a stand-still with our Singapore.    We worked through the lesson on finding the area of composite figures, but the homework didn’t work out so well.    The girls got most of the problems wrong, and I even after working through the problems numerous times I just can’t get my answers (or I-E’s and E-R’s ) to match up to the answers provided in the answer key.    My husband (also known as Mr. Math Genius) will have a math session with the girls this weekend to help them figure out the problems.   A big part of me feels that the answer key is wrong! (the answer key was wrong!)   In place of Singapore, the girls worked ahead in Key to Algebra.  

In English we’ve almost finished up pronouns.   Next week we will have a chapter review and test before moving onto adjectives.   We had one day of feeling lazy so instead of our usual lesson the girls put together a Jeopardy game.

 

It was an excellent way to review—and actually more work than working though a lesson (but I kept that info to my self).  

Essay Voyage focused on content  this week.  The more we work with Essay Voyage the more I like it.    I must admit the classic essays didn’t excite me, and the thought of skipping them did occur to me.   After reading excerpts from  Alexander Hamilton’s Federalist Papers, the Declaration of Independence, James Boswell’s biography of Samuel Johnson,  and Orwell’s Politics and the English Language, I am glad we ploughed through.    Often the vocabulary is difficult and the reading slow, but oh the rewards of sharing the ideas with my girls!  I love the discussions that have ensued.   Wish I had a few more thumbs---I’d give this program 6 thumbs up! 

In History we continued studying The Age of Exploration.    We read about Columbus, da Gama, Cabral, Cortes, and Cabot.  We  focused on note-taking and forming outlines from those notes.   The girls formed an outline from the notes they took last week from the article in The Almanac of World History.  Birth of a New World Religion also provided note-taking practice.  We discussed  what lead to Columbus’s “discovery”  of the New World as well as some of the consequences of that discovery.   Ended the week watching When Worlds Collide.  

I-E started new acting classes—improv and stage combat.  She learned how to perform a slap, a kick in stomach, and a hair pull!   E-R finished her pre-engineering class this week and will start robotics and animation classes in a few weeks.  

A busy, full, productive week with sunshine!  How was your week?

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Week 24

This week was a get-back-on-track week!   Only three more weeks until spring break! So I put together a list of lessons that have to get done before then, and we’ve been moving through it.  
In history we moved into our study of the Age of Exploration.  



In The Almanac of World History, we read about the Spanish Conquest of the New World.  I-E and E-R took notes which next week will be organized into an outline, so a report can be written. 



Both girls read and summarized chapters 1-3 of Around the World in a Hundred Years.



In The Usborne Book of Explorers we read about Ibn Battuta and created a map chronicling his journeys through Africa and the Middle East. 



The girls were able to draw their maps from memory—thanks to Mapping the World by Art!  I love it when what was learned comes in handy!

History Portfolios had a map to complete that covered the Major Trade Routes C 1000-1400.



Mapping the World by Art has conveniently prepared us for our studies of The Age of Explorations by introducing John Cabot, Vasco da Gama, and Amerigo Vespucci.   This week though we moved to China and learned about Zheng He.   If you aren’t up on what kind of naval power the Chinese had between 1300 and 1500, you may want to check out this video: 

which compares one of Columbus’ ships with China's ships during the Mongol’s  reign.  Pretty amazing stuff!   I-E and E-R worked on drawing Southeast Asia which was explored by Zheng He. 

English this week brought further study of pronouns.   We continued with personal pronouns and added demonstrative pronouns.  Rod and Staff’s writing this week covered organizing your notes.  I didn’t think we really needed this lesson, but turns out we did!    So something else added to our list of writing skills.  Next week we will study this skill with our history notes.
  
We started two read aloud books (at booksshouldbefree.com )—Our Island Story and The Three Musketeers
. 
Math brought our Pi Day Celebration.   And our Singapore math lined up perfectly as we studied Area of a Circle.
  
We had a full and busy week—just what we needed!

Pi Day Celebration!

Fact:  Pi is commonly referred to as 3.14.
We’ve been celebrating Pi Day for several days now.     This year it happened to fall right on the week we are studying circles!   How perfect is that?  (E-R says it would be more perfect, if we happened to be working on page 314 in our grammar books!)

We’ve listened to Mathematical Pi quite a few times---love its catchy tune.

A long, long time ago. Long before the Super Bowl!

As well as this amazing video

What the number Pi sounds like when translated into music---pretty awesome!

Fact:  Albert Einstein was born on Pi Day in 1879.
We started out our week with reading Sir Cumference and the Dragon of Pi. 

It was silly and a bit young for I-E and E-R, but I enjoyed it!   And it did an excellent job creating a visual picture of how pi is used to determine the circumference of a circle. 
Fact:  In the Star Trek episode—Wolf in the Fold—Spook fools the evil computer by telling it to compute to the last digit of Pi.
Next we tried to figure out how to determine the area of a circle.We knew that an area of a rectangle is determined by multiplying length by width, so we cut out our circles and tried to put them together into a rectangle.

Cutting the circle into fourths didn’t work.    

Neither did cutting it into squares.

 

 

 

Cutting it into very small pizza slices almost allowed us to form a rectangle.

By taking the one of those pizza slices and cutting it in half, we finally were able to form our rectangle.   And we could then see that 1/2 of the circumference times the radius equals the area of a circle.   Since the circumference of a circle is determined by multiplying 1/2 the diameter by pi by the radius of the circle, the area of a circle can be determined by multiplying pi by radius squared.  
Fact: At position 763 there are six nines in a row.  This is known as Feynman Point.

The Joy of Pi (which showcases the first million digits of pi) is an informative read.   Inspired by the chapter on memorizing pi, I-E and E-R wrote their own piems. 
And I said, “A black pineapple at living magic dot com/dragon/sentence composing someone dot gentlemen.

and

See I need a below classroom to remake songs for women.  
It was hard!   
Fact:  Chao Lu of China holds the world record for most memorized digits of Pi---67,890.
After reading several chapters on the history of pie, we created this timeline book
. 

Fact:  There is no occurrences of the sequence 123456 in the first million digits of Pi.

We tried out Buffon’s Needle Problem.

Drew parallel lines. 

Dropped our baguettes (toothpicks)

Figured, figured, and figured some more.

One of the two experiments we completed did work out to 3.17.   Perhaps Lord Buffon was on to something, or perhaps he just had too much time on his hands! 

A Pi Banner was created

and proudly hung.

Notice the decimal point!

Representing Pi to the 207th digit, the girls plan to use the banner to memorize lots of Pi.

Fact:  In 2002, a Japanese scientist found 1.24 trillion digits of pi using a powerful computer called the Hitachi SR 8000, breaking all previous records

We also created Pi plates in anticipation of the pumpkin pie we plan to make for supper!

Fact: The height of an elephant from foot to shoulder is equal to 2 times pi times the diameter of the elephant’s foot!

A friend made this awesome Pi tee-shirt to celebrate Pi day!

Be sure to link up your Pi celebrations to .Celebrate Pi Day