Jeopardy! (for Science)

Science* did not go well, today.

So, as is my usual practice, I took my troubles to the WTM board. Someone suggested I play Jeopardy!

I had to go to Wikipedia to remember how it is played.

During the game, three competing contestants select clues from a game board of 30 clues divided into six categories, each clue in the form of an answer to which they must supply correct responses, each response in the form of a question. The notion of "questioning answers" is original to Jeopardy!

So, let's see.

Category: Metamorphosis**

1. For 10 points, this is the first stage of my life as an insect.
2. For 20 points, in this stage of my life, I wrap myself up and change.
3. For 30 points, I spend my youth in the water.
4. For 10 points, I gather with other males and wait for the females to notice me.
5. For 20 points, I molt and molt and molt until I become an adult.
6. For 30 points, I go through four distinct phases in my life.


Category: Defense Systems***

1. For 10 points, I change to look like my environment.
2. For 20 points, my colours say "look at me!"
3. For 30 points, I look just like another insect
4. For 10 points, I have great big eye spots which scare predators away
5. For 20 points, I smell
6. For 30 points, I shoot out hot gases at my prey.

This just might fly!

*We're doing a text by the publishing house Apologia called Flying Creatures of the Fifth Day. We're doing Chapter 10--"Insect Life and Life Styles." (strange title, actually). It covers the process of metamorphosis and defense systems (but I bet you figured that out already!)

**Answers to Metamorphosis.
1. What is larvae?
2. What is pupa?
3. What is a naiad?
4. What is a luk?
5. What is a nymph?
6. What is complete metamorphosis?

***Answers to Defenses:
1. What is crypsis? (or camouflage)
2. What is advertisement?
3. What is mimicry?
4. What is trickery?
5. What are chemical defenses?
6. What is a bombardier beetle?

How did you score?

Today's Blackboard

Our blackboard is very small.

It fits on the freezer door of our two door refrigerator. My husband made it for us out of a thin panel of wood and painted it with blackboard paint. It is held to the fridge with magnets I found at an office supply store. They are wider at one end than the other. The husband drilled holes all around the board and put the magnets in--and there we have it!

From time to time I look at that little board and I'm astonished at what is on it. Today, it had the title of their narrations and a few words my eight year old daughter wanted to know how to spell.

Day Off

Well, it was supposed to be!

This afternoon, my son saw that he was all caught up on Reading for Week 1. "I've reached Stop 1 already?" he asked not believing his eyes. (Remember the kids complete three stops and they can get a "prize" worth less than $10.00)

And I said, "No. See you are supposed to do a book report. Shall I show you what to do?" So, he sat down and did it.

Then, later on today, he wanted some computer time. I'd just finished writing up his "assigned" reading for this week and noticed two items outstanding from last week. He could go on the computer, I told him, when he'd finished reading at least one. So, he did. (Chapter 2 of The Ottoman Empire by Adriane Ruggeiero).

Then, this evening, while my daughter was waiting for Dad to take her to bed, I gave her a copywork sheet of "a" to do from The Learning Page. When she finished that, I suggested she do her book report. At first she said, "no," but then she said, "well, show me it."

I had to run an errand and when I got home I found it perfectly filled out on the kitchen table. Well, not perfectly. The Book report form instructs her to write two sentences about her book. She wrote:

My Book is oBout tow popel how get married.

(Dad must have helped with "married" don't you think? And that's not the word "how" it's "who" with the letters flipped.)

I think it's wonderful.
(Next time I'll tell her that spelling counts!)

I am greatly relieved to have those book reports done! We are to do one a week and I just didn't know how we'd fit them in.

Weekend Prep.

I'd forgotten what work it is to prepare for the week!

I actually have a sheet in Word which lists what I need to do. Here it is:

To Do List
Weekend Prep.


--Select Bible Verse(s)
--type and enter into Memorization sheets
--type into Start write for copy work

--prepare Poem
--prepare poem for Copywork

--prepare other Copywork and Dictation selections (History, Spelling, Aesop &/or Reading selection)

Writing:
--plan The Older and The Younger’s Aesop work

Reading:
--Look up and request SoTW books
--write up the Older and the Younger’s assigned reading chart
(goal: "one biography, one science book, one history book, one practical or art-and-crafts book, and three books of their own choosing - stories, poetry, or nonfiction." WTM)
--run off selections as needed from FMMA and Baldwin.
--update Reading Logs

Latin:
--run off worksheets for the week
--(as needed) Cut up cards for Latin vocabulary

Art:
--run off Meet the Masters Sheets
--find MtM prints on-line

Science:
--run off notebooking pages

Housekeeping:
--Type up schedule for the week.
--Cut and punch index spelling cards (5 cards of 2 colours)
--run off lined paper (10 sides)

It's astonishing to me how this just eats up the whole weekend. I'd like to put together a lap-book on insects for science but that idea is overwhelming at the moment.

Does anyone feel like there's just waaaay too much to do? Or am I just feeling that because we're not into the swing of things yet?

(And when am I supposed to clean the house?)

Weekly Report for August 19 to 23, 2008

Week One

"Road" by the Younger

"My Town" by the Older.
(See Saturday's write up)


I've decided that I must participate in order to be accountable for our work. I wrote this as we finished up each day, and sometimes throughout the day.
Our schedule is Tuesday to Friday with a 1/2 day on Saturday. (Dad has his days off Sunday and Monday).

Tuesday:

Bible Study: read and discussed Proverbs 1: 1-2

Recitation: Introduced "The Flies and the Honey Pot." Discussed unfamiliar vocabulary and re-told each stanza. The kids drew a picture.

Copywork: the youngest copied out the moral.

Dictation: The oldest wrote out the moral.

CW Aesop: Introduced the Princess and the Pea.

Spelling: Drilled phonograms and spelling rules. Only got half way through the list for K5

Latin: Read about Junius Brutus and did the picture study.

History: Read about Ivan the Great and Ivan the Terrible. (Ch. 22, SoTW2)Did the chapter test, using the book as a reference for the answers.

Math:
older, did 3B ex, 12 and 13
younger, did Review 2E. (from 2B) She finally agreed to use a few manipulatives for multiplication and division--beans in an egg carton.

Grammar:
older, Lesson 1, R&S 4
younger, FLL, Lesson 155. She had a lot of difficulty identifying nouns, verbs, pronouns, adverbs and adjectives.

CW individually:
Older wrote fist draft of re-telling the Princess and the Pea.
Younger--Didn't get to her narration.

Assigned Reading
Older completed his one hour. Enjoying "Seven Wise Princesses" retold by Wafa' Tarnowska, illus. by Nilesh Mistry
Younger completed only 15 minutes of her required 1/2 hour.

Evaluation: It was a long, hard and difficult day. We started at noon, and I was still at it at 7pm with the younger one when I had to quit and go grocery shopping.

Wednesday

My mom arrived to do their piano practice with them, so the order changed a bit.

Grammar:

Older--Lesson 2, R&S 4. The forms of the verb "to be" were new to him. I think we'll leave that for when we get to verbs and pull out the lesson in R&S 3 if necessary, when we get to it.

Younger-- FLL,Lesson 156. The script told me we had done conjunctions. Had we? I told my daughter that I think we'd been asleep for that lesson. She agreed. Anyway, we went on to articles which was difficult until I explained it the SWR way. (The "n" in "an" is just to help you say the word which starts with a vowel. The consonant is a "stop" for your tongue.) She did the dictation.

Math
older--3B, Ex. 14 & 15.
Younger--2B, Review A and corrections from yesterday.

History
Ch. 24(a) of SoTW2: The Ottoman Turks. This was a very confusing chapter, but the kids did well. I took down their narrations. My son wanted to add a few sentences so I gave it to him to do that. Then we re-ordered the sentences and I had him copy it out. He said it was shorter and was quite surprised. He was using pronouns! Nice things, pronouns. My daughter copied hers out.

Latin: Introduced Vocabulary D. They got into a fight over sharing a gluestick.

Inconsistency is the death of language study, so I've decided we're going to take the rest of the week and review ALL their vocabulary and chants to date. Most of the lessons this week are in history, so it seems a good time.

CW-Aesop.
Older--rewrote his copy from yesterday to correct for spelling mistakes and mechanics. He seems to be allergic to the dictionary and actually wants to look in his "Bone" books to find the words he needs to spell. What's with that?
Younger--took down her re-telling of the story. We included some dialogue at my suggestion. When I told her she could type it, she was quite excited.

Evaluation: We worked solid from about 1 pm to 6:30 pm. Another long, difficult day. Missed Bible Study and reciting our poem.

Then dinner and 1/2 hour of reading from both of them. Sigh. So nice and quiet.

Thursday

We got up with Dad at 6:30 this morning. That was too early! I let the kids watch TV (videos) until 8:30 and then we started with History at my daughter's request.

History: SoTW 22(b)
Older--wrote his narration on his own, without help though he was in the room as I worked on my daughter's with her. Surprisingly, he took great pains with his printing, punctuation and capitalisation. I was quite pleased.
Younger--Dictated to me, I wrote it down and dictated the first two sentences back to her.

Spelling--SWR K5--dictated list for the second time. They wrote the words on cards and alphabetized them.

Latin--reviewed Vocabulary A to D. Did Lesson 6.5They clowned around a lot during the vocabulary review but then we were all pretty tired by then. Doing the lesson was a slog.

Lunch at 11:00. Wonderful! Took an hour.

Bible Study:
Proverbs 1 (yes, all of it. We talked a lot about the "fear" of the Lord.)

Grammar
Older--R&S4, Lesson 3
Younger--FLL, 157

Math:
Older, 3B, Practice 3B
Younger, 2B, Review 2A

Evaluation: I was done at 1:30. (They still had their math and independent reading to do). I'm exhausted, but very happy--which sure beats exhausted and frustrated, as I have been the last two days. I don't know if we can start tomorrow at 8:30am, but this sure is nice.

Friday

Holy catfish!
We're up at 6:30am again. And they are reading. Reading! Not watching TV/DVD's as is usual. They wanted to. It's calm. Peaceful. What a wonderful way to start the day.

Spelling --the test. I'm going to have the eight year old redo it tomorrow.
Latin--Vocabulary exercise. Reviewed Vocabulary A-D.

Writing--Talked about the six rules of sentences and changed the type of two of them.
younger finished typing out her re-telling. She took 45 minutes but did a wonderful job. I told her next time, I would not use any punctuation as I wrote it. She immediately saw how challenging that would be and asked me to pleeeeease include capitals. We'll see.

Bible--Proverbs 2: 1-11. This is not going well. I'll have to seek some advice.

History--Ch 24(c) Sulieman the Magnificent. Also didn't go well. They seemed to blank out the audio CD. I'm strongly considering going back to rereading it myself. They may have just been tired. We did the chapter test rather than a narration. Perhaps that was the trouble?

Grammar
older-- R&S ch. 4 A bit bumpy but fine.
younger--FLL 157. Prepositions. I think the text is a bit babyish for her, now.

Math
Older--3B, Ex. 16
Younger--2 sheets of mental math. I had to sit with her and re-teach the techniques for subtraction. It was horrible for both of us, but she was getting it in the end. (I had to send her out for a bike ride in the middle of it to clear her head.)

Evaluation: I think I'll put down today's difficulties to our tiredness. It's been wonderful getting up at 6:30 two days in a row but we are still adjusting. After all, no one was in bed before midnight on Wednesday. (A long, rare, hot spell made it difficult to sleep, plus our habit of staying up late most nights anyway.)

Reading
younger--all caught up and a bit ahead.
older--still needs to do 45 minutes to catch up to today.

I'm looking forward to tomorrow, though. Science, Art, Grammar, Math and writing a book report. And I must tidy up a LOT! We haven't done our poem all week because, ahem, I've lost their sheets.

Saturday

Again, both chose to read, first thing. Well, the older wanted to "check a few things on the computer" and after that he happily settled into about an hour of reading.

I am. of course, chomping at the bit to get to our art and science, but this is so great, I'm doing my best to curb my impatience.

My son wanted to continue reading, and after a half hour my daughter was ready to move on, so I gave her some super simple subtraction math sheets.

Art--
I presented Meet the Masters, Grade three., Portfolio A. (See side bar for link to this free program). Pieter Bruegel, The Harvesters, and Marc Chagall, I and the Village. The kids really appreciated seeing the larger web images!

Each of them wrote a little bit about the painting and the artists and did an art project using shapes to create a picture. (See above!) They really enjoyed it.

And that was that. Some neighbourhood kids came by to play and I let them go. We had a good week and we all worked hard.

On the First Day

Last night I apologised to my son for having yelled "all day."
Tender hearted kid that he is, he said, "It's understandable."

I told him I would try better tomorrow.

He replied, "Today wasn't as hard as yesterday."

"What do you mean? I asked him. "Was yesterday harder academically or do you mean attitude?"

His reply was, "Yesterday I didn't know what was going on all day. My brain wasn't caught up. Today, I knew more about what I was doing. It's just because we hadn't done it in so long. But it's like this," and he gestured to the book in front of him, meaning reading, "well, now."

Why would it have NOT occurred to me that the kids might have trouble "switching on their brains" to start school? It's tough for me: having to keep them on track and not be distracted--I expected that! But, I saw it as an obedience issue--not an issue of adjustment to get their heads back in the game.

We both agreed that today should be "even easier."

It does get easier the longer we do it, but again, I'd thought it was an obedience issue, getting used to having limits and boundaries and so on. I thought it was a relationship issue. And, here, at least for my son, it's just a matter of being familiar with the material.

It isn't personal.
Whew.

I think I can breathe now.

(And that confession is highly motivating to remain consistent, too.)

The Princess and the Sandwich.

Our writing program is Classical Writing-Aesop. It is the beginning level of the Classical Writing program. I had been doing it last Spring with just my son. This fall, I've decided to fold my daughter into it as well. The format of the program is very simple. At the beginning of the week you read a folk tale or bit of anecdotal history and then the child re-tells the story in his or her own words in various ways (Like using mostly dialogue, or changing the characters, etc. Then one uses it to work on mechanics and word choice and writes a few drafts until the final copy.)

Today's story was the Princess and the Pea. An incident with my daughter tonight inspired this, my own re-telling.

A lowly chef toiled in a sandwich shop. He longed to be a personal chef, but he wouldn't work for just anyone. He had to work for someone discerning, someone who would appreciate his work with the most perspicacious palate.

One day, the most bedraggled customer came in. Her hair was lank. Her shirt was stained.

"I wonder," she said, in a high, haughty tone, "I wonder how good your sandwiches are to eat?"

Biting his tongue, the chef was most polite as he asked her how she would like him to prepare her sandwich.

"What would you like, Madam?"

"Ham and cheese on a bagel." she said. "With the cheese sliced thinly."

"Ok. A Bagel, toasted or not?"

"Butter or not?"

"No butter, then. Mustard?"

"No mustard but mayonnaise."

"So you want an untoasted bagel with just mayonnaise, ham and thinly sliced cheese. Is that it?"

And then came the imperious command: "Do not put the mayonnaise next to the cheese."

"Madam," he said, "Would you be looking for a chef?"

And she was.