Being a List of Places I’m Going to Visit/Have Visited, Incomplete

This Week at A+

Science  –  Continue work on Landscape box -Plants of South Carolina

Grammar:  Suffixes –  Subjects and Predicates  -Compound Predicates – Compound Subjects – Combining Sentences

Vocabulary  –  Suffixes  —  Idioms

Writing  – Journal  — Paragraph, Super Supper  —  Outline using ‘Three Little Kittens’  —  Paragraph, Create Your Own Town  — Using Colorful Speech, — Paragraph, Solutions  — Proof-reading

Literature  – Finish reading ’Freedom Train’ by Dorothy Sterling – Finish Reading ‘William Wilberforce’ by John Holzmann  — Read all of ‘Shoes for Everyone’ by Barbara Mitchell and ‘The Great Turkey Walk’ by Kathleen Karr

Reading Comprehension: Short study of Venn diagram – Fantasy vs Reality in Tall Tales and Fables

D.E.A.R =Drop Everything and Read:   

Math: Rounding 10s, 100s, 1000s  — Place value  —  Skip Counting  —  Addition and subtraction

Life Skills  –  Use a Compass Rose

Spelling:  The ‘s’ sound; s or ss, c, ce, sc  — syllables

Art: Draw your perfect city, and label buildings.  Draw a scene from ‘By the Great Horn Spoon’

Geography:  Countries and Capitals of South America

Social Studies/History:  Bill of Rights

Spanish: Nouns, definite articles.

Music: Songs of America

This Week at A+

Mr. Brilliant is still fighting me tooth and nail.  He wants to be parked in front of a computer 24/7/365.   Everything thing, and I do mean everything, with the exception of computer time and TV time, is greeting with moan and groans and OMG!!!11! it goes on for ages.

I could never, would never, un-school with this child.  He’d be living in my basement at age 45, if I did.

So, what did we do?

We watched ‘Young Thomas Edison’.  Fun movie, great to watch a black and white movie with Mr. B.  He usually goes on and on about how *BORING* it is to watch a black and white movie.  Mr. B identified with young Tom, as portrayed in the movie.

Mr. B wrote in his journal daily, he did copy work and worksheets.  We worked on vocabulary, we studied long and short a and e, covered homophones, synonyms and antonyms, we reviewed complete sentences, capitalization and use of periods, question marks and exclamation points.  We covered adjectives briefly.  In math we continued multiplication facts, word problems using charts and ordering numbers from least to greatest.

We are studying South America.  This week we began discussion of the Andes Mountains.

We made a Dirt Cake as a project from ‘By the Great Horn Spoon’  Mr. B made it all by himself, the first time he’s followed a recipe and made something from scratch.  It worked out well and tasted great but I doubt we’ll make the Dirt Cake often, it is very high in sugar and fats.

Mr. B resisted all attempts to work on his landscape box, he insists on doing it with his dad (who does not have time).  So the soil sits on my porch next to the box and the big dog is locked out of his favorite lounge, since he will dig into the soil (he already ripped both bags open).

Mr. B was also supposed to write a news report using words from his vocabulary.  He dug in his heels, again, insisting on doing that with his dad.  He’s got to do it today, no matter what.  His sister is off school today, due to Hurricane Irene, so maybe she’ll get him rolling.

Another writing assignment ignored, Mr. B was supposed to write a story about the life of a gold nugget, told from the nugget’s point of view.  The assignment sheet has gone on walk-about.  I suspect Mr. B ‘misplaced’ the assignment on purpose.  We did some of the work this assignment was to cover, similes.  I don’t think Mr. B really understands them yet.  We will review similes in depth this coming week.

Mr. B did write a friendly letter, a thank you note to his grandfather (who took the entire family to Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. this summer).  He didn’t address it yet so the job is not done.  Again, fighting me.

We spent a morning discussing and researching what to do in case of electrical shock.  We also had the practical experience of preparing for an evacuation and a hunker-down.  Turns out the preparations were for naught, Irene is coming abreast of us now but will pass about 250 miles out to sea.  We hope.

Just as I finished typing that we had our first big blow, winds topped 45mph and there I was, with stuff still on the porches and in the yard.  I called out to the kids to come help me bring in the items what would go flying and we all got drenched to the skin.  The blow passed just as we finished.  *shrugs*

For ‘Stuart Little’ we discussed the difference between fiction and real life (can a family really adopt a mouse for a son?).  We also researched animals in literature.  Mr. B made a list of animals that were the main character in a story.  We talked about fiction vs. real life some more (Do animals think so much like humans?  Can they really talk to one another?).  This sparked another project, Mr. B has decided he wants to have a golden hamster as a pet, so he had to find out what such a pet requires to stay happy and healthy and write-up a shopping list.  Mr. B hasn’t earned a hamster, not yet.

We continue reading poems and memorizing two poems.  Mr. B continues reading about Thomas Edison to himself (he’s read two books so far).  He is also reading about William Wilberforce to himself.  He dislikes the Wilberforce book, I am on the hunt for a better one.  I am reading ‘Freedom Train’ aloud to him, we are going to begin working on projects for that book next week.

Next week we begin Spanish again, the following week we begin working with Mrs. Lincoln, Mr. Brilliant’s Literature teacher.  Mrs. Lincoln is a real life Ms. Frizby from Magic School Bus.  More about her another time.  Hopefully tennis will also begin next week.  Still searching for a swim coach.

Terrific Tuesdays

Tuesdays, the day I talk about something that turned out terrific.

Sonlight has a huge yearly reading list for the fourth grade.  We’ve read ‘Moccasin Trail‘, ‘Plain Girl’, ‘Sing Down the Moon’, and  ‘By the Great Horn Spoon’ so far.  ‘Freedom Train – The Story of Harriet Tubman’ is in progress.  From the Oak Meadow curriculum we’ve read ‘Stuart Little’.

‘By the Great Horn Spoon’ has become our greatest hit so far.  Mr. Brilliant loves it, has read it twice.  Before we read the book I told Mr. Brilliant about his great-great-great grandfather, the sea-captain, who sailed ’round the Horn a number of times, often going through the Straights of Magellan, and took gold miners from Boston to San Francisco during the gold rush.  This gave Mr. Brilliant a personal connection with the book.  I purchased ‘Using ‘By the Great Horn Spoon’ in the Classroom’, as I wanted to go into more depth than the Sonlight curriculum does.  This combination has worked out great.  I’ve even tied in some of our studies of South America to this book.

From Mr. Brilliant and I, ‘By the Great Horn Spoon’ is highly recommended.  Speaking to other homeschooling parents, if you are covering the westward expansion of the US, the Gold Rush, California history, or South American geography, or if you are looking for a book that including examples of friendly letters, ‘By the Great Horn Spoon’ fits the bill.  I’d also recommend this title to the reluctant reader, the action moves fast enough yet the writing flows easy for a child reading at grade level.

To briefly cover the other books, ‘Moccasin Trial’ was a slow start but my son did get into it and did finish reading it with relish.  We read ‘Plain Girl’ out of sequence, during a visit to the Amish country.  I could tell Mr. Brilliant liked it, but he was embarrassed to admit it.  Both my kids read ‘Sing Down the Moon’ and both found it interesting but depressing.  Mr. Brilliant swallowed both ‘Freedom Train’ and ‘Stuart Little’ crossing the Atlantic.  He read them so fast that I’m having him re-read ‘Freedom Train’ again (I’m reading it aloud to him).  Mr. B had read ‘Stuart Little’ before, and I’d read it to him a few times when he was a wee thing, we both felt he didn’t need to read it again before we started on the projects.