Weekly Report Jun 15-19, 2009

Brandon:
Horizons 3 - lessons 15-19 and a test (There's a test every 10 lessons)
Singapore CWP - pages 69-76
ETC 6 - pages 113-121 (We finished up book 6 this week so he took the post test also.)
GWG - lessons 1.9-1.11
Spectrum Reading 3 - pages 26-29 (He's doing this 2x per week.)

Gavin:
Horizons 1 - lessons 11-15
Singapore CWP 1 - pages 9-14
ETC 2 - pages 10-18
I was worried that Gavin might not be ready to do blends but he's just cruising along! It's amazing how much spelling he picks up with us just doing Explode the Code right now.

Both:
History - SOTW 2
- read Beowulf from Favorite Medieval Tales
- Beowulf coloring page
- Brandon did some copy work
- finished up The Celts: See Through History
- started chapter 3
- another coloring page
- both did a narration exercise about Augustine
- read about monasteries in Medieval Life: DK Eyewitness
- made a medieval letter illumination
- completed map work from chapter 3
- read about monasteries from the Encyclopedia of World History and What Were Castles For?
- added Augustine to our timeline book

Science:
This week, we discussed the respiratory system and the digestive system.
- completed a lab about breathing rate and how it's affected by various activities
- did a little experiment exploring how much air you can hold in your lungs
- also made a "breathing model" found in the book Science and Your Body
- read Why Do People Eat? by Kate Needham
- read What Happens to a Hamburger? by Paul Showers
- also completed the fun activity at the end of that book about how digestive fluids affect food
- read about the respiratory system and digestive system in the following books:
What's Inside You
Body by Richard Walker
Tell Me about the Human Body

We also finished up The Sword in the Tree and Gulliver's Travels.

Weekly Report Jun 8-12

Brandon:
Horizons math 3: lessons 11-14
ETC 6: pages 97-112
Singapore CWP: pages 65-68
GWG: lessons 1.5-1.8
Spectrum Reading: pages 18-25

Gavin:
Horizons math 1: lessons 6-10
Singapore CWP: pages 6-9
ETC 2: pages 1-9

I ended up skipping some lessons in Brandon's math because it was too easy.


Science for both:
- covered the skeletal, muscular, and circulatory systems.
- finished reading The Magic School Bus: The Search for the Missing Bones
- completed 4 labs. One consisted of monitoring your heart rate after various activities. The most favorite by far, though, was the "Blood Model" lab.


Can you see the white blood cells, platelets, and red blood cells?

History for both:

- covered chapter 2 in SOTW2

- map work- coloring page

- narration- Brandon did copywork.

- read chapters 6-10 from The Sword in the Tree

I've decided to wait until Gavin is closer to six before he starts doing copywork.

Our First Week Back!

This has been our first week back. We resumed school after only a two week break. The summers are incredibly hot here! The boys never wanted to go outside until late afternoon/evening. We were all getting a bit stir-crazy. I have been so excited about starting the new year - especially science and history.

It seems that fall has been our "summer" since moving to the desert. The weather is always nicer and there are smaller crowds at all the fun places we like to visit!

This is what we accomplished this week.

Brandon:
Horizons 3 - Lessons 1-5
Growing with Grammar (GWG) - Lessons 1.1 - 1.4
Explode the Code 6 (ETC)- pages 81-96
Singapore Challenging Word Problems (CWP) - pages 63-64
Spectrum Reading 3 - pages 8-19

Gavin:
Horizons 1 - Lessons 1-5
Singapore CWP - pages 1-5
Explode the Code 2 1/2 - pages 17-32

Both:
Story of the World 2 (SOTW2) - Chapter 1
- map work
- Brandon did copywork
- read Who Were the Romans?
- barbarian coloring page
- narration exercise about the Roman Empire
- read chapters 1-5 of The Sword in the Tree by Clyde Robert Bulla
- made our own Roman ruins that the boys ate afterwards!

REAL Science Life - Unit 1 (What is Life?) and Unit 2 (The Cell)
- read The Magic School Bus Inside Ralphie by Joanna Cole
- read Germs Make Me Sick! by Melvin Berger
- read Your Skin and Mine by Paul Showers
- read Magic School Bus: The Search for the Missing Bones by Eva Moore,
chapters 1-5
- germs coloring page
- animal cell coloring page
- plant cell coloring page
- human cell coloring page

For science, we completed two labs the boys really enjoyed. The first was "An Egg is a Cell" lab where they had to identify parts of a cell as found in an egg. The second involved making edible models of plant and animal cells!

We've also been reading Henry Huggins by Beverly Cleary. A child-friendly version of Gulliver's Travels is our family read-aloud now. The boys cannot get enough of Lilliput!