Weekly Review

We have a good week in homeschool this week. We have continued our study of Greece and the Olympics. We started Singapore 1B extra practice workbook this week. We have spent a good deal of time working on handwriting. He has become very interested in learning cursive handwriting, which has encouraged him to practice is printing in order to start on cursive. He has worked hard on his printing practice. We worked on proper nouns and common nouns. He started the practice writing workbook I bought from amazon. It is mostly about punctuation and sentence structure.





We read about Plato and the lost city of Atlantis, pirates, Greek myths, and Treasure Island this week. An update to Percy Jackson and the Lighting Thief, he is about half away through the book and is really enjoying it. It is a challenging read for him but he finds it interesting and funny.

King Tut

Today we watched part of the specials the Discovery channel had on King Tut. I DVR'd all of them for us to watch. If you get a chance to watch them, the shows they had on Egypt, Sphinx and King Tut are very interesting. LittleBit was enthralled with the mummies and seeing the pyramids. After watching the show he built King Tut from Legos. He also made some comparisons to King Tut and Darth Vader, but we will just leave that alone. HeeHee

Geocaching

LittleBit and Dad went on their first geocaching adventure today. He loved it for the most part, going right before lunch and having trouble finding the cache did not make for the best timing. We read a book on geocaching, so he understood the principle behind it and the basics.

This morning we got out the GPS and explained how it worked, he loves the GPS! He thought it was "too cool" following the GPS as they were driving and he found out where you can see how fast your are traveling(I am in trouble with this). Since we have been studying maps with school, he already knew about north, south, east, west and today he learned about latitude and longitude.





He had a good time and wants to do more and of course going to chik-fil-a for lunch was just a bonus.

Weekly Review and Book Haul

This week we have continued our study of Greece and the Olympics. Thanks to a suggestion from a homeschool mom on Twitter, we have been using our globe to locate countries, we have heard about while watching the Olympics. We have slowed history down in order to spend more time on Greece and mythology.

We finished Singapore's extra workbook 1A in math. I am still not happy with his basic math facts so we will continue to work on them and continue on to workbook 1B.

We spent a good deal of our week working on handwriting, this is his most difficult subject. He does not like handwriting and resists practicing all the time. This week for practice I would make a letter and then have him try to copy. The game was to make them look so close to mine Dad would not be able to tell who wrote what. It worked fairly well, he thought is was a little fun. As we practiced we talked about exactly how you made each letter.





I had a book haul for this week. I went to amazon.com to order 1 book, D'Aulaires' Book of Greek Myths. I ended up ordering 9 books in total, the 4 for 3 book deal amazon has is to tempting. We now have the following books to read:

1. D'aulaires' Book of Greek Myths
2. Bible Wars and Weapons
3. Treasure Island
4. Let's Go Geocaching ( a project Dad and LittleBit are starting this spring)
5. Secrets of the Mummies
6. Pirates Raiders of the High Seas
7. Robin Hood
8. Secrets of Atlantis
9. Writing Practice workbook.

Penny Power Magnet Experiment

LittleBit and Dad did another magnet experiment. LittleBit thinks magnets are very interesting. They used the motor generator kit again for this experiment. The materials used were: tape, magnet (rare earth magnet used but can be any decently strong magnet), string/thread, ruler, and pennies (enough to stack under magnet without touching.


Previous experiments had identified that not all metal objects are attracted to magnets. This experiment shows how non magnetic metal objects can interact with magnets.

Steps:

1) Verify that magnets and pennies do not attract.
2) Attach magnet to string with tape and suspend magnet above table (clearance to table ~ 1 inch) . Alternative: tape string to edge of table and suspend magnet above floor
3) Place ruler on table as a reference point for the magnets home position (our home position was the 6 inch mark)
4) Pull magnet to one side by an inch (5 for us), let go of magnet and count the # of times it passes your home position (#6) and record result.
5) Do the same for 2 inches (4 inch mark) and record result.
6) With the magnet at rest, place as many pennies beneath magnet as possible (6 inch position). Make sure tape and magnet do not touch the pennies.
7) Repeat steps 4 and 5 making sure magnet swings over pennies. Got a big “Wow” out of LittleBit when he saw the difference. He was also in charge of “swinging” the magnet and recording the results.

What happened?

The number of times the magnet passed the home position was less with the pennies than without them. As the magnet moved past the pennies it caused movement of electrons in the pennies (otherwise known as eddy currents, real small electric current)). The effort it takes to move the electrons slows the magnet and reduces the number of times it passes the home position. I told LittleBit that the magnet caused the electrons inside the pennies to move. We could not see them move because they are so small. Also we discussed the real world applications such as, roller coaster brakes, and brakes for “bullet” trains.

Aluminum foil and other non-magnetic metals will also work for this experiment.

Weekly Review

This week we studied about the first Olympics games. We read about the Greeks, Sparta and Athens. He is as interested in the Greeks as he was about Egypt so I think we will be slowing down in our history reading to spend extra time on Greeceduring the Olympics. I am sure some of the interest comes from all of the mythology in the Percy Jackson book we are reading. I am going to see if the library has D'Aulaires' Book of Greek Myths, for us to read.


This week we made our first seedling pots, using newspaper and our pot maker. I showed him how to mearsure, mark and cut to get the correct size of paper we needed to make the pot. You do not need to measure each piece of paper will make 6 pots. Cut the paper in half then fold each piece into thirds and cut, you then have six strips of paper to make into pots. Making the pot took a little more muscle than I expected, you really have to rotate the pot maker into the base to get a good pot.




He made a list of the seeds he would like to start. There are no green vegtables in the list, he loves fruit but not big on greens vegtables. He wants to grow stawberries, cantaloupe, lettuce, bell peppers, potatoes, and grape vines. He also wants to plant an apple tree. It looks like a busy spring, we hope to purchase seeds this weekend.

Reading Day

LittleBit is under the weather, I think we have spent more time sick than not since the first of the year. Today we had a reading day, LittleBit pulled out books he wanted to read, I added my picks and we had a great day reading. Here are the books he picked:

1. Star Wars Lego Visual Dictionary - he loves this book, he spends hours reading about the lego kits
2. Stuart Little Learning to Read Book 1
3. Stuart Little Learning to Read Book 3
4. Ducks Don't Get Wet
5. Light and Darkness
6. Magic Tree House - Civil War Sunday



He wanted to read on Percy Jackson, he is waiting for Dad to get home to read with him, since they are reading that one together.


We also watched a few episodes of Sid the Science Kid, I had DVR'd which led to a google lesson on roly polys. Don't you just love watching a love of learning come to life in your kids.

Weekly Review and New Read Aloud

This week we worked mostly on the 3 R's. We finished 2 units in the Singapore 1A math practice book, read 3 chapters in Story of the World book and worked on handwriting as often as I could work it in. Today he is helping me write the grocery list for the Superbowl. Later today we have plans to do some science experiments but he wants to wait for Daddy to come home from work so he can help. Overall a productive week and I hope to be a bit more organized next week. We are working on setting up a new work area this weekend.



This week we started a new read aloud, Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief. He had seen the previews for the movie and loved it. I looked into the books to see if he would be able to read them. As with Harry Potter he will have read the books before seeing the movie, the books are always better, I think. While he can read on a higher level than his age, I wanted to make sure the topic was acceptable for him. We are reading it together as a read aloud. I would not recommend this book if your child does not understand this book is just fantasy, a good story written by a creative person. LittleBit understands that a book is a book, and not real. He has no problem with mythology, as we have studied some mythology in our history book. He finds it silly that people thought a fake god such as, Poseidon was responsible for the weather such as hurricanes etc, instead of the science of weather. He thinks the writer of the Percy Jackson books is "cool" to use history to write a good story. With that said we are enjoying reading the book and I hope we will like the movie after finishing the book. I will not be surprised to see LittleBit find every difference in the movie from the book, which will make for an interesting talk I am sure.

Workspace

Sorry, I have not updated in awhile. It has been busy around here, finally bought a new car, we are working on turning the dining room into a library and getting ready for tournament and testing time with TaeKwonDo.

I had turned my craft room/office into a school room last year and am very happy with it, LittleBit not so much. It was a struggle to get him to stay in the back room of the house to work. This year I started doing school in the living room and it went much better, he likes being where we usually spend most of our time. It has been driving me crazy, I don't like doing school in the living room, I would rather have a dedicated space. With that being said, he does better in the main part of the house so I am trying to work with that. We really don't use the dining room for anything we eat in the kitchen, it is an unused space for the most part.

My plan is put in our round kitchen table and purchase a few comfortable chairs for it. Hubby has offered to make some bookcases. It will be a slow process since we have about a dozen house projects going on right now. I will add pictures when we finish. I did make a purchase a rug to protect the floor from the table and chairs. Love overstock.com you can some really good deals.


Now I am looking for chairs to go with the table we already have. I will keep the bulk of our supplies in the office such as science projects and craft supplies. This room will be a space to sit comfortably and do some of our work and the bookcases will be great!