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What was YOUR week Like?

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World Geography:
Wyatt and I are really enjoying "Essentials in Writing Grade 10" this year. The video clips are short, clear, helpful, and the instructor is likable. The teaching is done on a whiteboard, and it is the most natural modeling of not only how to write a variety of assignments but also of how to edit well. The student notebook is straightforward, gives appropriate topics for assignments, assigns manageable increments of writing each day, and has excellent helps from prewriting to finished product polishing. The prewriting plan is concise and something Wyatt could easily remember when asked to write summaries, essays, compare/contrast papers, etc. in the future. This week Wyatt wrote a summary of an article. I was thankful for all of the practice he had with summary oral narrations in CTC/ RTR. The length of the summary oral narrations assigned was 5-7 sentences or so, and that was the same length assigned for the writing of the summary of this article in Essentials in Writing. All of that previous practice in summarizing orally was a big help in completing this writing assignment. Ironically, sometimes writing succinctly within a shorter amount of allowed sentences is harder than writing with many details within a larger amount of allowed sentences. Here is Wyatt's summary prior to editing...


"Practical Happiness" had us discussing how we can have a tendency to look for the strawberries in life, or for the weeds. We talked about how pessimists expect the worst and look for the worst, and how optimists expect the best and look for the best. People around us can bring out the pessimist or optimist in us, and likewise, we can bring out the pessimist or optimist in others. We talked about how we have the responsibility to attempt to be the optimist and to bring out the optimist in those we care about. For example, when a friend/family member begins to digress and be pessimistic either by complaining or possibly by gossiping, it's up to us to redirect and not join in the negative way the conversation is going. It is also up to us to take a person's redirect or gentle reprimand when we are needing it with grace. Not easy! This really was a great talk to have, and we both tried to redirect in a positive loving way the rest of the week if one of us was off in our thinking or talking or actions.

For "Mapping the World by Art, Wyatt drew a map of the Iberian Peninsula and France. These CD-ROM directions are clear and easy-to-follow. I think Wyatt will be able to be quite the cartographer when he's done with World Geography this year! His maps are looking so neat - I can't wait to see them all come together at the end!


Here Wyatt is with another one of his history assignments...


In science, Wyatt did an experiment showing the different rates of diffusion in relation to temperature, which he loved...


Here Wyatt is hard at work on his science questions, all spread out with his work, with one of our kittens Sunny outside on the banister watching...


What a good week!
In Christ,
Julie

Creation to Christ:
Singapore Math teaches place value in such a way that dc really do understand each place's value. I was not taught math this way back in ps. I was taught to just 'add this, carry that, why?, don't ask, just do it because you get the right answer.' I wish I'd been taught Singapore's way years ago - it sure would have saved a lot of time and pencil/paper work, and I sure would have been able to apply more what I'd learned to math needed in my life or my job!! Singapore Math taught a great method to mentally add tenths and hundredths this week. I'll see if I can explain it, though Singapore Math really explains it best. For 2.53 + 0.02, they had Riley combine the 2 hundredths with the 3 hundredths to get 5 hundredths, and then add 2.5 to get 2.55 mentally. The word bubbles on the side of the textbook page are super important to do. They had him saying the problem out loud like 'add 2 hundredths and 3 hundredths to get 5 hundredths'. These are the subtle differences in Singapore Math that mean all the difference because they have the dc making mental connections about the worth or value of each place a number may be (as opposed to saying 'point zero 2 + point zero 3', or as opposed to starting with the larger number (2.53, which is harder). Next, they had him do problems like 5.34 + 0.9, in which they had him combine the 9 tenths and the 3 tenths to get 1.2, and then they had him add 6.2 + 4 hundredths to get the final answer 6.24. Again, this subtle difference of having him say the problem out loud like '9 tenths plus 3 tenths' makes a big difference in truly understanding place value. After doing some problems like this, the next page had the problems written out horizontally and vertically, like .65 +.27, or like 8.25 + 1.36, suggesting that at this point dc may have to just go through the steps of carrying with pencil/paper, but also hinting that if dc can do the problem mentally (as shown horizontally), they could give it a try. I'm old school, so I wanted at this point for Riley to complete the problems vertically. He told me he didn't need to, and we had a bit of a disagreement over it. I told him that he could try it without writing them out out, but that the first answer he missed he needed to solve them vertically with pencil/paper. He didn't miss any and had the page done, which had about 10 problems, in about 5 minutes. Ok. I guess he was right.


In WWTB, Riley is reading a William Wordsworth poem. The underlining/circling part of the descriptive adjectives, vivid verbs, adverbs, specific nouns is something we now have down pat. We clip along with it, I really help him along the way, but he has gotten better and better at it. It draws his attention to what make the writing memorable and excellent. He also noticed the rhyme/meter, and soon he'll be ready to try his hand at writing his own poem. Last year's poetry writing each week in PHFHG is going to have been super preparation for this!


In science, Riley is reading about voluntary and involuntary muscles. He sketched them and labeled them after reading about them in his "Illustrated Adventure in Human Anatomy." He has a hardbound moleskin journal for these notebooking pages, and it's become a special book...


In Christ,
Julie

Beyond Little Hearts for His Glory:
For an introduction to Historical Fiction for Storytime, Emmett's brothers joined him to act out the pilgrims coming to America. They acted out the pilgrims on the stormy seas, the shock and joy of finding land, and of course as all reenactments lead to - there was a fight/battle that ensued as the Pilgrims protected their homes - I let them off on the details here. I like to have the older boys join Emmett on this types of activities as they are physical, fun as a group, and take 5 minutes - so they don't take away from the rest of the day's work/learning focus for the other boys.


Another fun together 5 minute activity that I had Emmett's brothers join in on was his grammar activity. Emmett learned about commands as a sentence type, and they played "Teacher Says" as a version of "Simon Says." We had a blast!


Emmett is now reading the Nature Journal for his Emerging Reader's Set. To help him with fluency, I put my finger underneath the line and move it slowly and steadily as he reads and stop to pause at end punctuation. This is helping him to learn to read sentences smoothly and to stop the right places. Earlier on, many of the easier books he read just had a sentence on each line, so he just paused at the end of each line. Now he is learning that he needs to pause at punctuation instead of just at the end of each line.

In Bible we talked about fearing/reverencing the Lord. Emmett shared that he misses his Great Grandma Irene, and that when he misses her he can pray. It was a good talk about heaven - I'm so thankful for these moments.


Nothing is better than doing math with his buddy Speedy...


What a good week!
In Christ,
Julie