Weekly Wrap-up: Week 6 - The One with the Sun and a Struggle

THE CORE

Cate continued to work on her English Grammar 101, finishing up pronouns and starting verbs. She's building her vocabulary with Vocab Test. But the real vocab building comes from inspiring books like Through the Looking Glass, her current read. She's struggling to keep on task with her essay writing, preferring creative writing, but she wrote up a great information piece on famous historical women pirates this week. And math? She's mastered 69% of pre-algebra on Khan Academy.

Sam worked on language arts with his Grammar and Writing Handbook. It's not his favorite, but we're tackling it in small "chunks". He's much quicker and more confident writing a "perfect paragraph" now, one with a main topic, supporting sentences and a succinct closing. He's reading The Great Brain, a longer, harder book that he's used to, but I think he'll enjoy the zany happenings of another 10-year-old boy. He's half way through Handwriting Without Tears cursive. Spelling, like handwriting, continues to be a challenge for him. He's on week 4 of Grade Spelling. And math? He's mastered 45% of math 4 on Khan Academy.

SUN SCIENCE

Sam almost finished Apologia Astronomy Lesson 2 this week with 3 hands-on projects. He modeled a solar eclipse using an inflated globe "ball", a ping pong ball and a flashlight, used a compass to place a paper sundial outside to read time, and made a pinhole viewing box for safer observing of eclipses. Each project requires a notebook page write up for his science journal, which he is working on now. This journal will be a great source of accomplishment for him at the end of the year!

SHOOT!
It's always bring a smile to my face to see my kids follow their own interests with excitement, creativity and focus. After watching a video on You Tube, Sam gathered up the supplies he needed and built a popsicle stick gun that shoots toothpicks. Now, no worries, he's being responsible and safe with it. This kid is going to build some great things in the future!

ANALYZING EXPERIMENTS
Cate finished Apologia General Science Module 2 on Scientific Inquiry on Monday, receiving an 85% on her final test. Most of the week was spent on Module 3, learning to analyze and interpret experiments. 

THE STRUGGLE
Do you have a subject that just isn't "flowing"? Every year we have one subject that gets pushed aside for all the other things we study. This year? It's history. Cate is studying Ancient Music History with Easy Peasy, and plans on doing all 4 years this year by doing a week each school day. (The weekly requirements aren't that strenuous.) And Sam? We've been watching US History videos here, but they just aren't capturing the depth I would like. I'll be making changes in the coming weeks; I'm just not sure what yet...Both kids watch CNN Student News, and Sam plays US Geography games. He's consistently matching 42 states to their "shape".

DAYS COMPLETED: CATE - 52 | SAM - 52

As always, special thanks to these bloggers for their weekly homeschool blog link-ups. Click on over to see what other homeschoolers are doing!

Happy Homeschooling!