Homeschool Week 20: The Stolen Emerald

Louie

Language Arts: This week was all about the letter J! So of course we had to do some kind of Poppa themed craft. Louie asked for a picture of her Poppa and made the capital J his beard. I swear this kid is a comedy genius. 

Reading: This week we read another book by Jan Brett. This week we read The Hat. It was very similar to The Mitten and Louie loved all the animals in the story. We did a lot of comparing and contrasting of the stories. We also did a fun game with sight words this week. It was like a memory game with pez candy. She is going really well with her reading. I love this stage where I am still in awe that my baby can read! She has been not too thrilled to read the Bob's books to me so to make it more fun for her I told her that she could read it to Baby Ellie as a bedtime story. She LOVED that idea and I think that Ellie liked it too. 

Writing- This week we looked at giving more details to writing and also did a really cute exercise on spacing between words. Since we were talking about spacing we were given a little astronauts. After each word she taped down an astronaut. 

It's all Ellie all the time over here. 

Math- We are working on subtraction. A few worksheets to do this week. Louie has also been practicing counting up to 100. She likes to do this really loud in the car. I think the highest she has gotten was to 113. 

Social Studies- We looked at places in our community. We talked about places like hospitals, schools, post offices, and libraries. We also talked about the people who work in our community. This week in class the kids got to present what they want to be when they grow up. Of course Louie picked a veterinarian. She got to put together a poster board and a costume. She did such a great job on her presentation. I got to talk about being a Girl Scout Troop leader so I got to be there for her presentation. 

Science: We looked at the different states of matter. We looked at how water can be changed from a liquid to a solid and back. We also looked at how certain types of matter don't mix. Specifically oil and water. We made colored mustache ice cubes. We put baby oil in a container and then let the colored ice cubes melt. We saw colorful bubbles start to form. Then we noticed that the colors started to blend together. A fun and messy project. 

Phi 

Language Arts- We read the next 4 chapter of The Westing Game. And those were some intense chapters. We finally found out who did it! Lots of twist and turns. We did the usual vocab and comprehension worksheets. The big project for the week was to write a mystery and made a crime scene for it. Phi wrote a great story and them made puppets and a video. Also lots of twists and turns. 

Math- We worked on word problems and dividing fractions. It was a pretty easy week and Phi seemed to do really well. Let's see what next week brings!

Social Studies- Another explorer. This is starting to get pretty boring. This week we looked at Vasco Nunez de Balboa. The Spanish explorer who first European explorer to see the Pacific Ocean. 

Science- Since Phi got her weather project done last week she had no science this week! Yes!

Homeschool Week 19: I Repeat the Tornado Is Touching Ground!

Louie

Language Arts- This week was about the letter V and was a great way to introduce Louie to Van Halen. We taught her that David Lee Roth over Sammy Hagar all the time, every time. We also listened Veruca Salt (we always try to show her some girl rockers!) and to one of Poppa's favorite bands, The Vandals. Seeing The Vandals play Warped Tour was the only time I saw Popps actually sing along to a band. That is huge! We also did a bunch of worksheets on the letter V but really the important lesson here was the music.

Reading: We worked more on our short vowel sounds. She is reading and blending pretty well. We played a few games, did some worksheets and read books. Louie's teacher had some great fun activities this week. We also read the story "The Mitten" by Jan Brett. A cute story about a lost mitten and the creatures that find some warmth in it. We looked at sequence of events and did a few worksheets looking at the author and setting.

Writing- We worked on labeling a picture and going back and adding steps when it comes to writing out how-to sentences. This was a fun week. Louie drew a picture of our house and labeled the windows, door and roof. We need to work on using lower and upper letters correctly.

Math- We are doing addition now. We talked about the plus sign and the equal sign. Louie did really great with all the worksheets. We ended the week with a great dice game. She rolled the dice and wrote each number down and then she had to add each couple of numbers.

Social Studies- Because of the holiday we studied Martin Luther King this week. It was a bit of a challenge for me to talk about MLK in terms Louie would understand. We talked a lot about making the world a better place. Of course Louie's dream for the world involved sea otters.

Science- We jumped into the states of matter. We looked at how matter is made of particles and how the particles interact will determine is something is a solid, liquid or a gas. We did a sorting activity and Poppa and Louie made goop to look how it can act like a solid and a liquid.

Phi

Language Arts- Phi read chapters 17-20 of The Westing Game. The story is getting interesting. The connections between the 16 players and Mr. Westing are starting to reveal themselves and we are getting closer to finding out who the "murderer" is. We did the usual worksheets and this week Phi finished her Sunset Tower project. She used a poster board and made a 5 story building. 4 windows in the first 4 stories and 2 windows and a door on the bottom floor. In the 16 windows she drew each character and wrote 3 physical descriptions and 3 personality traits and 1 quote from the book to support them. The last 3 on the first floor she drew different scenes from the book with descriptions. And of course I forgot to get a picture of it.

Math- Oh math. This week we had to call my super smart sister to help out with one problem and we had a lot of issues when it came to pretty basic math. I am talking multiplying double digits and even subtracting numbers with borrowing. I have no idea what is going on but there are times when simple math is a struggle, like it is something she has never done before. After practicing a few times she would get the concept but her retention is just really weak. This goes for all subjects.

Social Studies- More explorers. This week we looked at Jacques Cartier and his travels into Canada. We looked at his voyages from France. We also looked at the different reasons why countries sent explorers to North and South America. She then had to pick one reason and write a postcard back home explaining the reason for the voyage. She choose to be an explorer from Spain heading to North America to develop a colony so that Spain could become more powerful.

Science- Severe weather. We looked at hurricane, hail storms and tornados. Her assignment was to choose one severe weather and make a project all about it. Here is Phi's.....

A full and fun week! 

Homeschool Week 18: Sorting Clouds

Getting back into the swing of things was rough! But we did it and we are almost back into our groove.

Louie

Language Arts: This week was all about the letter "Ee". This came at the perfect time since Baby Ellie was just born and we are all obsessed with her. We did a lot of worksheets on the short e sound. Louie whipped through them. We worked on the -ed and -en word families.

Reading: This week we read a cute story called "Snowmen at Night", all about, you guessed it, what snowmen do at night. There were a few cute writing activities to go alone with this book. We did some pre-reading where Louie predicted what the snowmen would do. Then she wrote about what her snowman would do at night. Of course in her version her snowman is a BB-8 because everything is Star Wars.

Writing: We are back on the writing program the teacher is using and we have moved onto sentences. I loved how this week was set up. It made much more sense to me. We started with talking about how your can use sentences to show people how to do something with steps. The first day Louie drew pictures for the steps to get a drink of water. Then on day 2 we listed a bunch of things she was good at doing. Things like drawing, making her bed, getting dressed etc. Then on day three she wrote out how to sentences with pictures.

Math: We have moved on to adding numbers! We are starting with adding objects. I was worried about math with Louie because Phi has such a hard time with it. I am finding that Louie is doing pretty good. I think that Phi might be confused because she started learning math one way at her old school and then a totally new way here. Louie seems to be doing really well.

Social Studies: We are looking at different jobs in our community. Jobs that help our community run. We looked at a bunch of different jobs and Louie had to pick one community job she would want to do and start working on a presentation. She picked a veterinarian of course! She facetimed Tia Elaine to get some ideas for her outfit. A flyer was also sent home asking parents to come in a talk about their jobs. Now my j-o-b would be boring to kids but the teacher said that Girl Scout Leader would work too. So now Louie and I are both working on a presentation.

Science: Sorting and comparing objects by properties of matter. We did a few worksheets and did a few games where we sorted things. Her favorite was sorting Star Wars characters into a droid category or human category.

Phi

Language Arts: Not sure what is going in with Phi and her reading but her comprehension is really bad with "The Westing Game". I think there is just too much going on in the story and she is always trying to get through her work as fast as she can to get back to drawing. This week she read Ch. 13-16 but when it was time to work on worksheets she could not answer any questions. So we spent the weekend reading the chapters out loud and stopping every few paragraphs to go over what we read and what was happening in the story. It was so much that I started dreaming about the story. We got through the chapters and she got her worksheets completed. She also started a really fun project. She is making the 5 story tower and each window will have a player in the game along with 3 events from the book. Each window will include a list of physical traits and personality traits and a quote from the book to back up the list. This is a great long term project, I just wish we would have been given the assignment at the beginning of the book so that we don't not have to go back to look for quotes. We could have been highlighting them along the way.


Math: We continued looking at how fractions function. I liked this week because it was a good overall review for her. We are still struggling with multiplication tables. The amount of work is good. It lets us work on math everyday but only 1-2 problems.

Social Studies: We are still looking on explorers. At this point I can't even remember what history we are doing. Is it US history? I know that we are studying different explorers from Europe that colonized america and parts of south america. This week we studied Ponce de Leon as well as the relationship between the Native Americans and the Explores and how is changed over time. Phi wrote a great essay about it.

Science: Clouds. This week we looked at different types of clouds. What they look like, where they are located and the type of precipitation they bring.

In the middle of the week we got hit with some big news. Phi's teacher was offered a position she could not refuse (I can't imagine what would be better than teaching my kid. haha!) and is going to be leaving us in just 2 weeks. This hit us hard because she had been Phi's teacher for the last 3 years. After a rough start I have grown to really admire and respect her. We work well together and I really believe that our open line of communication and flexibility is a big part of Phi's success in this program. All kids need an adjustment period when introduced to a new teacher and going through that in the middle of the year is tough. We are going to have to make sure that we all get through this as best as we can.

Homeschool Week 16: Junk Food and Air Pressure

Louie

Language Arts: We continued with blending words and more specifically the short o words. We also looked at rhyming words. Louie has some trouble with this. She wasn't quite understanding that we are listening for the ending sounds to be the same, not the beginning sound.  This was the letter week Louie was waiting for. Every week she asks "Is it X week yet?" I was very happy to tell her YES it's X week. Unfortunately I could not find a band for our rock and roll letter lesson this week. We did a lot of worksheets and Louie made this cute craft. 

Writing: We did a cute writing assignment called "What's in Santa's Sack?" For this activity Louie had to come up with clues as to what is inside Santa's sack....

Of course it's an otter. 

She liked this so much she made 2 different ones.

Social Studies: Another lesson that she had already talked about at girl scouts, the difference between goods and services. We looked at the different services that people in our community provide and we talked about goods that we need. She was very confused as to why a farmer provides a service. I explained how a farmer provides a service by growing food!

Science: This week my work and Lou's lesson collided! We talked about health eating habits and I just happen to work for a dietary consulting firm! We talked a lot about the difference between healthy food and junk food. She also learned how to make a well-balanced meal. Here is one of hers...

Phi

Language Arts: Phi read the next 4 chapters in "The Westing Game" and things just got interesting. The millionaire is dead and his will has put 16 residents of Sunset Towers in teams of 2 and given $10,000 and clues. The team who figures out who the murderer is wins the fortune. What we know for sure? One of the 16 is the murderer!! Along with working on her character chart and answering some vocab and comprehension questions, Phi also had to make a newspaper about Mr. Westing and the game...

Math: We continued working on multiplying fractions. She was doing okay with this. Her teacher sent home extra worksheets and Phi did 2 problems from those a day, along with her usual worksheets. Math is still a struggle. She sometimes does great and then sometimes she will completely forget how to multiply 2 digits problems. 

Social Studies: We looked at another explorer this week. John Cabot was another Italian born explorer who jumped on the English exploring bandwagon and even changed his name to sounds more English. He went on one voyage and "discovered" Newfoundland. On his second voyage he went missing and was never heard of again. Phi answered some questions and did a lap book activity with a timeline and interesting facts. 

Science: We moved from the water cycle and are not looking at more specific things that affect weather. This week we looked at air pressure. Along with some reading and worksheet she did an experiment to show how air pressure, or lack of air pressure can crunch a can! 

And we are officially on Christmas break! 

Homeschool Week 15: Murder Mystery and Gingerbread Men

Louie

Language Arts: This week was all about the letter "Ww". I was looking forward to this week to introduce Louie to the great band Weezer. We watched a lot of Weezer videos and it was wonderful! Louie is really starting to show some improvement in reading. We have been working on a lot handouts on letter sound recognition and she has moved on to book #4 in her Bobs books. It is still pretty awesome to hear her read.

Reading: This week we practiced retelling the details of a story and comparing and contrasting similar stories. We read The Gingerbread Man, The gingerbread Baby and The Gingerbread Cowboy (very cute story!) We looked at how the settings, characters and storylines were similar and how they were different.

Writing: This week the kids did a project similar to Flat Stanley. Each kid made their own gingerbread man. Louie colored hers in and I laminated him. She then added a pink ball nose. The assignment was to have him "run away" somewhere and write about it. Then each kid added pictures to a google document to make up a book. Here is Louie's entry.


Math: We have moved on to number 13. 14 and 15. We have also started counting by 10's to 100. This week thanks to the advent calendar Louie starts each day counting down how many days until Christmas.

Social Studies: We talked about the difference between wants and needs. This was an easy assignment because we had just gone through this at a girl scout meeting.

Science: Healthy Habits and Hygiene. We looked over some way to keep healthy and some things that are very unhealthy.

Phi

Language Arts: Phi started a new book!!! It is a murder mystery and so far its good! There was some vocab work and some comprehension worksheets. I have never read this one so I am reading along! This was a perfect time for this book because over the weekend we went to see my niece in the play Clue!

Math: So we are chugging along with fractions. This week was about multiplying fractions. A much simpler concept but as we were working I found that she was not really getting the concept of what a fraction was. Let me tell you, there is nothing more frustrating than explaining what a fraction is over and over and over again. We continued with the "problem a day" on the whiteboard just to give her some extra practice.

Social Studies: Phi studied a little bit about Christopher Columbus and the age of exploration. For this project. We looked at why countries were sending expeditions and what things they were looking for. Phi had to do a project and she went with a comic strip about the first encounter of Hernan Cortes and the Aztecs. I love it....

Science: This week a repeat lesson for Phi because we had just went over the water cycle in a great presentation by a parent at a girl scout meeting. It was also review from last year. She did a quick experiment with Poppa about how condensation works.

Market Day!- Both girls had Market Day yesterday at school. They were to decide on a product or service to sell, make a poster and decide on a price point (either $1 or $2). Both girls were really excited about this. Louie has been into melty beads so she made "Magic Squares" and made pins to sell. Phi decided to offer caricatures drawing of her classmates for $2 each. They had so much fun!

Christmas break is so close I can taste it! 

Homeschool Week 11: Rock and Roll All Night and Party Everyday

This week was special because Momma had a business trip one afternoon was spent with Grandma doing homework. They loved the change of pace.

Louie

Language Arts: This week was about the letter "Kk". So naturally the band of the week was..

 We rocked out to a little "rock and roll all night" and of course we "partied everyday". We are still reviewing flashcards twice a day and she is rocking it. She is excited for the new letter each week. She is still doing some simple blending and everywhere we go she is recognizing letters. This week we worked on sight words and I was surprised at how many she knew.


Reading: I loved this weeks lesson on mental imagery. We talked about the images that come up when reading a story. We read a book about monsters and midway we stopped and Louie drew a picture of what she thought what the monster would look like. She also read a Halloween poem with Grandma and drew a picture of the setting. This was such a cute lesson and a great way to introduce kids to imagery from reading. That has always been something about reading that I love, imagining what they setting and characters in a story look like. 

Writing: We continued on with the writing lesson. I think this program would be really great taught by someone who is familiar with it. I am still not sure if I am doing the lessons right. This week we used some sight words in sentences.

Math: Number 10! We are in double digits. Louie is still not great at recognizing all the numbers. Instead she has to write them out until she gets to the number she needs. I think we are going to have to include some rounds of Uno into the mix. This week we also started working on equal to, greater than and less than. To help Louie remember we talked about how the alligator wants to eat the bigger number. We used dice to write down random pairs of numbers and then she had to put in the correct symbol. She did very well.

Social Studies: No social studies this week!

Science: Since this was Halloween week science was all about pumpkins! We were not going to carve pumpkins this year but since Louie was studying them we got one. Louie the little Scientist and Poppa recorded different observations about the pumpkin. She counted the lines, measured the height, counted the seed (there were over 500!) and even did an experiment to see if it would float.

Phi

Language Arts: This week Phi finished reading The Sign of the Beaver. She had the usual comprehension questions. She said that she liked this book better than Hatchet. I am so glad that she in enjoying the books this year. I hope that the next book has a great female lead this time. Fingers crossed.

Math: Phi came home this week with a note from her teacher that she needed to work on her math vocabulary. So of course flash cards were made. This week the 8 problems were about adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing decimals. Her teacher gave her some great notes so we were able to get through the week pretty easily.

Social Studies: We are still working on Native Americans from different regions. This week was about Plains Native Americans. The tribe she decided to focus on was the Walla Walla Tribe. We did the same worksheets we have been doing with all the other regions. She researched shelters, food and clothes.

Science: We are still working on the different systems of the body. This week was the skeletal system. I found a great interactive website that helped her learn the different types of bones and where they are located. She did a vocabulary worksheet and comprehension questions. She also had to make  model of something to represent the skeletal system. She choose to make the model of a bone. She used food to make a bone.

Does it look like a burrito with sting around it. Yes it does. Here is what the inside looks like.

 The yarn represents blood vessels. The strawberry jam is the bone marrow, The lady fingers are the spongy bone and the wafers are the compound bone. The tortilla is the membrane on the outside.

So we are onto week 12. We are very close to a break! And I am ready for a break.

Homeschool Week 10: Love for Lungs and Cali Not So Much For Spiders

Louie

Language Arts: The sentence of the week was "Bubbas Blasts Beastie Boys Before Bedtime". Bb is for Beastie Boys. We started this week with a little "Fight For Your Right to Party" video watching. We did our usual video watching and worksheets. Louie has been really great with her letter recognition. I have her review her flashcards twice a day. This week we also worked on worksheets on identifying the beginning sound of a word. She did really well. 

Reading: It is still all about sequence and order of a story. We did some worksheets and also read some books and talked about the order of the story. We read "The Very Busy Spider" by Eric Carle. Our favorite was Miss Spider's Tea Party. Such a sweet story and it went very well with our science lessons. 

Writing: This was a fun week. We looked at drawing things from a different angle. We did this twice. She drew her place setting from her perspective at the dinner table. And then she drew her feet from her view! Super cute. The last day of writing was about speech bubbles. This was fun because Louie's favorite books are the Piggie and Elephant series by Mo Willems and they are filled with speech bubbles. 

We talked about what speech bubbles tell us and how we can tell who is talking. She drew her own Piggie and Elephant drawing complete with speech bubbles. So cute!

Math: Engine Engine #9. We worked on 9 as well as continued working on counting to 20. She loves counting how many Shopkins she has so maybe I need to get her enough to have 20.  Yes she still cannot count to 20. We also started working on greater than and less than. Lots of worksheets comparing items. She did really well with this.

Social Studies: We have moved on from US Symbols to California symbols. We talked about the bear flag, the quail, the desert tortoise, the poppy, the redwood and the state seal. We traced words through a little book and then Louie and Poppa made a California mobile. She wants to give it to Tia Elaine for the baby's room. 

I knew that our lesson had stuck when we were offroading through Joshua Tree and she said "Momma LOOK! The California bear." 

Science: EEKK! This week was about spiders. We talked about some facts about spiders, like they are not insects. Insects have 6 legs, spiders have 8. We had to watch a few videos and every time we watched one she was like this....

Of course Louie made her own spider. Her's was pretty cute! 

Phi

Language Arts: This was a disappointing week. We did the grammar worksheets. We have been trying to give Phi more independence when it comes to work. This is for 2 reasons, because she needs to learn how to work on her own and because we don't have the time to work so one-on-one with her. Combine this a family emergency and we had a project get away from us. She read chapters 13-15 in Sign of the Beaver and answered comprehension questions. She also was suppose to make a setting display. I gave her 3 morning sessions to work on this and all she did was draw a picture. This was not the assignment and was not something she could turn in. So we used a homework pass (she earns these throughout the school year for good work and behavior in class). We had to talk about this and we came up with the decision that from now on any assignments not completed is going to cost her $5.00.

Math: 2 digit division. When Joey came home with the assignments he mentioned that Phi's teacher mentioned that to earn a 4 on this assignment we would have to do the model drawings. Without these she would only earn a 3. My mind thought "damn common core". I was worried that this was going to be hard to understand. Her teacher taught them 2 ways to do this kind of math. The first was by educated guessing (YES!!!) and with the model/drawing concept. For the homework we did both. So you are probably wondering what this model/drawing is? Well here you go...

Every time I teach her this way I feel that she is not really getting it. I even texted the teacher to see if we were on the right track. We were.

Social Studies: We studied the Plains Native Americans. For her tribe this week she choose the Cheyenne. We looked at their shelters (wigwams), food (buffalo) and clothes (deer skin dresses). She also made a really cool field guide for the area. She did some really great watercolor drawings for deer, buffalo, fish, berries and corn. We found some pretty I am guessing that we are going to be doing another area.

Science: We are moving on from the cardiovascular to the respiratory system. We looked at how the lungs work and the different parts of the body that are used to make the lungs work. She labeled some diagrams and we had to make a project showing how the respiratory system works. Check out the little experiment she made to show how the diaphragm helps lungs work

Moving on to Week 11!

Homeschool Week 9: Foo Fighters, Hooting Owls, Pumping Hearts

Louie

Language Arts: This week we worked on the letter Ff. Now I don't know why we didn't think of this sooner but we decided to us some good ol' rock and roll. Basically we watched a lot of Foo Fighters videos.

Besides the worksheets and the videos about the letter F we sent a lot of time making up funny F sentences. Our favorite was "Felix Fights Foo Fighters". Alliteration for the win.  Louie is still doing great with blending. The issue now is she is memorizing the books we are reading so she is not really trying. I am going to chalk this up to word recognition.

Reading: This week we on sequence of events. There are a bunch of great books that we got to listen to and read some really cute and silly books like "We're Going on a Bear Hunt", "The Napping House" and "There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed a Leaf". We used cut out pictures to help Louie recall the sequence of events of each story. She did really great with this.

Writing: We continued on with the writing program the teacher has sent home. I am completely lost on this. I hope I am not the only parent completely lost. Basically I have her write a sentence to a story 3 times a week. This week was all about her hamster Persimmon. She also draws a picture to go with each sentence.

Math: I need to get better at spreading out the number of the week. Usually we get those worksheets done the first few days and by the last day when we review she doesn't remember it. This week was about 8. We also worked on ordinal numbers and did a lot of cut and paste worksheets.

Social Studies: American Symbols. Heck ya! We looked at things like the Statue of Liberty, the American flag, the bald eagle and buildings like the White House. While working with Louie about this I learned that Uncle Sam was named after the U.S. Mind Blown.

Science: This week we moved from one nocturnal animal to another. From bats to owls. Louie and Poppa read all about owls and did a really cute project where they made a lunch box for an owl. She filled it with bugs, snakes and rats. So cute.

Phi

Language Arts: Phi read chapters 7-12 of The Sign of the Beaver. The story is getting really interesting. Matt had a run in with a bee hive and was saved by a Native American man and his grandson. As a thank you a deal is made and Matt agrees to teach Attean (the grandson) how to read. A friendship is starting to blossom. Phi had some comprehension questions to answer and some worksheets about how Attean and Matt are learning from each other. We also had a grammar worksheet to do.

Social Studies: We continued learning about Native American tribes this time we looked at the South West. Phi choose the Navajo tribe. We looked at who they ate, wear and where they lived. She put together a little book about them. She also had a project where she had to make a satchel. Her's turned out super cute!

Math: We have moved from decimals and worked on double digit multiplication. This year her teacher is using her one on one sessions to concentrate on math which I like. I can tell that it is helping because she came with the procedure down. She also came home with a note from her teacher saying that Phi needed to memorize her multiplication tables. Amen sister. I have been trying for 2 years to get her to memorize those. We added flashcards to her daily school routine this week.


Science:  We are studying the cardiovascular system. We looked at how the heart works to take oxygenated blood cells all over the body. As part of the lesson she had to do something to demonstrate the cardiovascular system. She went with something that demonstrated how a heart beats and moves blood. We used a small mason jar about ha;f way filled with water. She cut of the bottom of a balloon and stretch is over the top. Poke to holes and add to 2 straws on each end. Tape the part of the balloon you cut to one straw to make a valve. Then when you push on the center of the balloon water will be pushed out of one straw. Just like how blood moves through the heart and and body.

Can't believe we are 9 week in! 

Homeschool Week 8: Bottles, Bats and Beavers

We had a fun week filled with art projects. This week Phi started a new book and Louie started to read! Isn't it unreal how one week they don't know the letter D and the next week they are reading. Kids be crazy.

Louie

Language Arts: We worked on the letter Gg this week. We talked about geckos, grandmas and of course gangstas. Something clicked with Louie this week. She is flying through all her flashcards and blending sounds all just make sense to her. She is now reading book #1 and #2 of the Bob book series. It's amazing. She is working on the -ap and -at work families and is doing so awesome. I was really getting worried that maybe homeschooling from kinder was going to be too much for us. I mean we would be in charge of teaching her the basics, but I am much more confidant that we got this.

Reading: We worked on breaking up a story into 3 parts, a beginning, a middle and an end. My go-to story for all these projects is Lilo and Stitch. Throughout the week after each story we talked about what happened in the beginning, the middle and the end. We talked about how the beginning introduces us to the characters and the setting, how the middle is the exciting part and the end summarizes and pulls everything together.

Writing: Louie finished writing her story. One assignment this week was to make a cover for her story. She decided to call it "The Best Off-Road".

Math: Number 7 this week. We are still working on counting to 20 and she still consistently misses a few numbers. We also worked on positional words like above, below, beside, between, etc. There were a lot of fun worksheets for this project and Louie did fantastic with this.

Social Studies: Because Columbus Day landed this week social studies was about Christopher Columbus. When I saw the topic for this week I almost emailed the teacher to see if I could switch it out for something else. I do not believe that Christopher Columbus should be celebrated, he did not "discover" America. This is offensive for 2 reasons. First he never actually made it to America and second you cannot discover something that is already populated. It devalues the Native Americans who were living here long before any Europeans. And I can almost guarantee there will be no Cesar Chavez assignment come March. (Stepping off my soapbox). Instead of being that parent I decided to just downplay this section and go about it like a historical fact and not something or someone to celebrate. Here is Louie's ship in a bottle project.

Science: Louie is learning about bats and apparently she is an expert now. Her and Poppa talked a lot about bats this week. When she got to me we did a Venn Diagram all about bats vs birds. Louie was able to do this with no problem. She also had to complete a project of her (my) choice about bats. None of the projects on the school website appealed to us so off to Pinterest I went. I found this really cute bat watercolor project and knew Louie would love it. So Louie and Poppa worked together to make this adorable art piece. On the back Louie listed some "Bat Facts"

Phi

Language Arts: Phi started a new book this week. A classic that most 5th graders read, "The Sign of the Beaver". I do not think I have ever read this. She read chapters 1-6 and had some comprehension questions and other worksheets. Phi is working so much more independently but I still look over all her work at the end of the week. Looking over her answers I could tell that she was not really comprehending the story so we sat down and read it together out loud. This story has a lot of old-time slang and the Native American 'accent' in this book is a little bit difficult to understand. I am looking forward to reading more with her.

Math: We are continuing working with decimals this week. This time we looked at rounding. This was easy and we are still taking math really slow and working on math almost everyday.

Social Studies: And on the complete opposite end of what her sister learned this week, Phi focused on Native Americans of the Northwest. She picked a tribe from the area and did some research on the tribe. She choose the Chinook Tribe from the Washington/Oregon area. She made a small book about the tribe, the shelters they made, the food they ate and the clothing they wore.

She also made a toilet paper totem pole that represented our family. (I didn't get a photo!). She looked at what the animals represents and choose one for each of us. It was very cute! She also wrote a short paragraph explaining why she choose each animal.

Science: We dove into plants. We started looking at the parts of plants and the teacher assigned this great website . It is all about a detective trying to solve mysteries about plants. Phi went through 3 different cases and learned about the female and male parts of the plant and how pollination is important for plants to reproduce.

We are 2 months in!