Sunday’s School Prep

How can it be Sunday again already?!  Time to get ready for another school week.

Math: The math notebooks are off to a good start.  This week we’ll be adding definitions and examples for property, commutative property, associative property, distributive property, place value, perimeter, ordinal numbers, roman numerals, prime and composite numbers, area, factor and multiple.   We’ll also be doing a bit of review work in long division and fractions.

Social Studies: We’ll continue our studies of the West North Central region of the US.  I think we might see if we can find something interesting to do a report on.

Science: The girls picked up a ton of books last week at the library to start their search for the perfect science project topic.  We’ve got several weeks till we’ll start work on it but I found that choosing the topic was one of the most time consuming parts so we’re getting a head start this year.  Gee is looking at topics related to the human body.  Bee is thinking more about astronauts and the moon.

There’s also the usual typing, swimming and Spanish too.  And computer games.  And educational websites. And mom’s group and get togethers with friends.  And getting outside to enjoy the warmer weather. And cooking and…

Sunday’s School Prep

Back to thinking about the school week before it gets here!

This week we’re going to start a math notebook.  It will give the girls a place to put notes on various mathematical vocabulary, procedures and formulas.  We’ve run into a problem with the MathUSee program because there’s no where for the girls to reference these things when they get stuck or don’t remember.  It’s too hard to find it on the DVD and in the teacher’s book.   We haven’t been taking notes up till now but with algebra and geometry just around the corner, it’s a good for them to begin to learn how.   We’ll start with some basic vocabulary.   They’ll be looking up and recording words like addition, addend, sum, multiplication, multiplier and product.  We’ll cover all four basic operations and give examples of how to perform regrouping, multiple digit multiplication and long division.  I found this great math dictionary site for kids where they can look up and play around with interactive definitions.  Click on the links for ‘Writing Fun’ and ‘Rainforest Math’ at the bottom too!  I’ll definitely be adding these to the girls homepage!

After a long break we’re going back to learning about the individual states.  We recently saw a travel show that sparked some new interest in learning about our next group of states, the west north central region.  I’ve ordered the library books on North and South Dakota, Iowa and Minnesota.  We’ll see where they take us.

We’ve still got the books on atmospheric science hanging around and Bee has been talking about wanting to chart some of the weather conditions.  I’ll give her a hand with that.  We’ll also need to check out the science section in the library for ideas since our ‘Choose Your Own Science Project’ is coming up in a few weeks.  In the meantime I got a book or two on American inventors to see if that sparks any interest.

With November quickly approaching we’ll continue to discuss the candidates and upcoming election.  We’re occasionally looking at local newspapers and using online resources to find out more.  The girls want to do an election here at home and have a chance to explain what they would do as President.  I want to plan that out to make it as fun and educational as possible so I’m probably going to hold off on it till we start 5th grade in July.

The girls will be trying some new Spanish software this week too.  We’ll see how that goes. 

Besides all that, the girls really want to watch more Discovery Channel!  I need to spend more time in the guide finding their favorite shows like MythBusters, Dirty Jobs and How It’s Made.  We’ve also got to rent the ‘Anne of Green Gables’ and ‘Pollyanna’ videos since Gee’s reading the books. 

Wow.  That’s a lot to do.  But before we start anything we’re going swimming tomorrow morning with our new pool membership!

Sunday’s School Prep

Our busy schedule lately has caused us to fall behind a bit in following our curriculum plan.  Not a big deal really.  I still maintain that one of the best tips I received when designing your own curriculum plan is to leave the last week or two of the quarter free and unplanned. 

Rather than rush through things to try to catch up, we’re just going to take our time about finishing our study of electricity this week. We’ll do experiments and continue to look at the books we have on the topic.

The only other thing I plan to cover is more about fractions.  Rather than starting with the lessons in the MathUSee book, I think I’m going to start teaching with some examples first.  We’ll use cardstock and scissors to look at equivalent fractions and adding/subtracting fractions with like denominators.  Knowing my kids, it’s sure to turn into an art project as well.   Then I thought it would be fun to use rice or beans to explore those same concepts with some measuring cups. 

Sunday’s School Prep

NOT!

We’re taking Monday off. Tuesday my sister is visiting. Wednesday we’ve got Mom’s Group in the morning and we’ll be feeding a rabbit for someone away on vacation in the afternoon. Thursday we usually get together with homeschooling friends. Friday I’ve got a meeting at Adrian’s school.

The nice thing about homeschooling is that even though I’m not typing up spelling lists or making copies of math sheets today, we’re still guaranteed a week of learning and growing. 

Sunday’s School Prep

It was a great break….. but now it’s time to get back to the plan.  Here’s what we’ll be doing this week:

Science: We’ll explore electricity, do some experiements  and play with the robot kit Gee got for Christmas. 

Math: We’re starting the next book in the Math-U-See series.  This week we’ll be reviewing how to add and subtract fractions with like denominators. 

Social Studies: We didn’t finish the west south central states before the holiday so we’ll finish that up this week too.

Language Arts: The girls wrote stories about what life without electricity would be like last week.  This week we’ll just need to perfect and print those. 

Spelling: We’ll be pulling words from our study of electricity for our spelling list this week.

Sunday’s School Prep

Ha!  Yeah, right!

This next week we probably won’t be doing much more than making more Christmas cookies, opening and playing with gifts, relaxing and enjoying family.

Of course, my quarterly reports are due this week so I guess I’ll have to pull those together sometime….. but for now, back to the fun!

Sunday’s School Prep

This week…..

More about Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Michigan!

MORE long division!

Swimming lessons, get-togethers and what ever fun we can find!

Sunday’s School Prep

This week…..

Thanksgiving poems and decorations!

Heimlich maneuver!

More long division!

Great Lake states of Ohio, Michigan, Illinois and Indiana!

Sunday’s School Prep

Here’s what we’ll be doing this week…..

Chemistry:  This week we’ll continue exploring some basic chemistry.  In other words, we’ll be packing as many experiments into the week as possible.

Math: We’ll be back to some long division this week after a two week break.  Bee has found this to be a very frustrating lesson and I’m hoping the break will mean we can come back to it with renewed interest and energy.  We’ll also start Roman numerals this week so we can continue forward even while we take some extra time on long division.

Spelling: This week’s list includes fame, blame, shame, tame, lame, safe, scale, molecule, atom, proton, electron and neutron.

Writing: The books we found at the library didn’t have much about the history of chemistry so they won’t be writing about those things as planned.  Instead I think we’ll do a book report.  It will be good to review the procedure since it’s been about a year since they wrote one. 

Sunday’s School Prep

We’re continuing our ‘official’ break from learning about all the states in the US.  Of course, all that really means is that we we’ll have only a few library books about states out as opposed to several dozen.  We’ll still be discussing and putting important dates in history on our US time-line, putting together our state scrapbook and putting the finishing touches on those writing pieces about Georgia (yeah, they’re still not finished!)

This week begins our study of chemistry.  We spent most of our first quarter on states and the girls have missed the science terribly.  They’ve been itching to do experiments, begging to know more about medicines and asking all kinds of questions about things they’ve seen on Mythbusters.  (I know, shame on me for not indulging their curiosity more… but there’s only so much time in a day!)  So for the next couple of weeks we’ll be donning our goggles and exploring atoms and molecules.

We didn’t do any formal math last week.  Instead we spent time figuring out what fraction and percent the girls have saved toward the purchase of a Nintendo DS.  We’ll skip formal math this week as well.  But perhaps we’ll try dividing the money they’ve yet to save by their allowance to figure out how long it will take to save it…….