Snapshot Summary: September 19-23, 2011 week 3

English

Adjectives

We reviewed adjectives and played a game in which we gathered a group of one type of items, such as cars and then we had to choose one and describe which one we were thinking of by giving one adjective at a time as clues.

We also made bags for each part of speech and slipped index cards with the appropriate words in each bag. We then picked a set of each words and made silly sentences from them. We then used the Mad Libs pages at Imagine Childhood to make silly stories. I also plan to encourage them to use more adjectives in their nature journals.

Verbs

Using the Spooky Story Cubes from Make Me, we practiced both adjectives and verbs. The cubes provide the nouns. They rolled a couple of them and then, supplying the adjectives and verbs made fun sentences. If they forgot to add adjectives, I could remind them what they were by asking them questions like, "what kind of bat is it?" to get answers like scary or black or ugly.

We reviewed the three types of verbs and the past, present and future tenses of verbs as well as irregular verbs.

Sam is working in Learning Literature with Lord of the Rings.

Science

We sketched pictures of the ocean floor and labeled the different areas.

We had fun comparing the mass of the plastic in a small bottle and that of a large bottle...

as opposed to the mass of a balloon full of air balanced with an empty balloon.

Air Pressure and the Weight of Air

We had fun with bouyancy with

Dancing Raisins.

Sam and Alex are working from Exploring Creation with Physical Science.
Alex is completing the lapbook for it.

Nature Study

Dragonflies, Frogs and our Backyard.

History and Geography

Geography Postcard Album: Nevada

Geography Term: Desert

Following the directions at Layers of Learning, we made a pop-up scene that we will be working on for the next few weeks, adding one term at a time. This week the wrote the definition of a desert and we labeled it in their pop-up. This went along well with our state of Nevada study.
Sam mapped the Great Lake area with Paddle to the Sea.

Quentin writes and sketches in his history journal.

Colonial Toys

We made Handkerchief dolls...

and Whirligigs.

and Button Spinners.

Math

We played a game that Quentin made over the weekend. 

Math Games with Playing Cards
We practiced place value, additon, subtraction and multiplication....all with a deck of playing cards.

Sam is getting used to a full high school load, which is quite an adjustment, particularly in terms of testing and completing assignments on time. He completed another math test this week.

Foreign Language
Sam is working on his third semester of Greek and is still enjoying Latin. In fact it is...

Our Favorite Resource This Week

This is the one subject Sam leaps to do. We find Visual Latin's teacher fun and interesting. We watch the lesson and Sam completes the worksheets, one of which is translating a page of Latin. It is our favorite Latin program.
Household Ways

Mixed greens, craisins, glazed pecans, grapes, blue cheese, goat cheese
vinegrette made from balsamic vinegar, canola oil and honey
homemade rolls on the side

We made these honey glazed chicken and bacon bites (recipe from Kayotic Kitchen). Alex and I loved them, but the others were not so fond of them.

 We also loved Pea and Potato Gratins.