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| Snapshot Summary, February 13-17 |
On Monday we received a care package from a friend.
It was really nice because we had all come down with colds and felt miserable. It really cheered us up.
Tuesday was Saint Valentine's Day, of course and I had so many plans for it. By this time the colds were still going strong, but I did manage to do some special things for the day.
Lunch consisted of Hot dog hearts and heart carrots...
heart peanut butter apples...
even the hearts taken out of the apples were put to good use!
For dinner we had heart shaped pizza...
with heart pepperoni and
I got the idea from here where they made strawberry milk. I just adapted it.
We did not feel up to much school this week, but we did accomplish a few things...
Napoleon Bonaparte
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| Quentin's sketch of Napoleon |
We learned about Napoleon this week, and how he easily came to power when France was looking for a strong leader after the French Revolution. Next week we will begin learning about America's purchase from Napoleon.
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| map from Story of the World Activity book |
Sam read a story about Napoleon once he is held captive by the British in St. Helena in 1815. It gives an interesting well-rounded view of the man.
Postcard-Geography Album: North Dakota
We added another page to our Postcard-Geography Album.
We also began our study of the Sioux Indians by learning about the many things they made from Buffalo.
We also learned about the German Immigrants to the Dakotas and tasted some Knoephla soup, which was very tasty.
Whales
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| notebooking page from Apologia website |
In science we learned about the names for the different movements whales make and about what they could possibly mean.
Fractions
We began our unit on fractions...
with finding area on the geoboard, using one square as our standard for one unit, and making various triangles, starting with the basic one-half...
and going on to more complex areas to figure out.
We also explored the concept that one-half could change in size depending on what was considered one unit by using math blocks and determining halves by making two car trains of the same color that match the length of a given unit...
and recording all the results. The boys thought that these were too simple beginnings, but I wanted to make sure these concepts were in place before we began manipulating them with various operations.
A few days after our first exploration with blocks, we again use blocks, this time finding all the equivalent fractions. This is also showing relational values as before, but is also introducing the concept of equivalent fractions.
I then gave them some addition and subtraction problems with like denominators. I usually like to give these first as word problems because they are easier to visualize. You can say something like, "We have seven members in our family. Two are wearing red shirts today and three are wearing white. Altogether, how many people are wearing either red or white shirts?" After a few of these, I began just putting down the problems and have them come up with possible word problems to go with them. Soon they began making up their own number and word problems.
Next I used a plain piece of paper and folded it first in half and then continuing to fold in half, each time asking them what fraction the parts could be written down as. With guided questions, we filled out a chart of equivalent fractions. Using the chart, we then worked on a problem or two using unlike fractions and helping them as they needed to look through the list we had just made for equivalent fractions.
We then began folding another piece of paper into thirds first before beginning to fold in halves, making lists of equivalent fractions as we went. We will be continuing our work with fractions next week.
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| "My Men" Edition |
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