Monday, November 9, 2009

just a Monday

Home Room was delayed about 30 minutes, due to Gavin sleeping late.

In Home Room we read in Romans 1 (memory verses: 16-17) and Story of the Word about Frankish Kings. Ki missed his “S.A.T. question”, so I sent him a hint and told him try it again. I make up and sent “S.A.T.” questions because his brothers get the SAT Question of the Day in their emails and he wanted to as well.

Here is his Question for Today:
Solve this story problem:
Billy is taking an airplane to visit his Uncle Joe. The plane takes off at 9:15 AM. He needs to be there 30 minutes early to check his luggage at the desk. It takes 1 hour and 10 minutes to get from his house the desk at the airport. What times does he need to leave his house?


Connor and Ki like to do their “I hour Play Outside” first thing; to delay the start of ‘real school’ I guess.
11:00 was Research Paper class. C&G did an outline last week and this week they are making changes and additions so they can get to actually writing their paper. They each had totally different things to change and add. Connor used good sentences, but put it all under “A” or “B” (when he should have put them as 1,2,3 under A) and Gavin had good structure, but was told to use sentences and didn’t. He had the Outline Format Wrong. Not a bog deal, but I do want them to at least know how an outline goes; with the Roman Numeral first and under that the Capital Letter and the Arabic numbers, etc.

So I went over what they did well and what they needed to change and sent them off with a Wednesday Due Date.


Ki and I read in his Science book. This week is echinoderms; sea stars, sea urchins, brittle stars, sea cumbers, and feather stars.
Sea Stars eat by spitting out their stomach on their prey to digest it, then they suck the predigested food into their mouth.


Then I assigned the boys a special project; to get on Facebook and send me Restaurant City Gifts.


They watched one Doctor Episode during lunch hour; which was more like Lunch 90 minutes with lunch AND Doctor Who.


Gavin went over his plan for Science. He has a test Thursday so he needs to do his practice problems, review, and going over his notes (he takes ‘open notes’ tests). So he has figured out what he wants to do on each day. I think the boys like to go out of order just because they know I would suggest in order.


I assigned reading in Romans this week; a chapter each day for chapters 1-5. Gavin asked me which chapter he should read first. I told him I would start with chapter 1 and just read through, but he can always start at 5 and read backwards or read 2 then 5 then 3 then 1 then 4 if he wants.


Connor wanted to play German Memory Match with Ki and I. He almost won, too, despite not taking the class with Ki. When Ki learns a new set of words I write them on index cards. I write the English in blue and the German in Purple. Sometimes we play a game of Memory Match with his cards.


I have no idea what Connor did today (that was actually his work, LOL). I’ll have to check to make sure he remembered it all.


Ki is writing out a poem this week. There is a poem in his science book about the Sand Dollar and using it to tell the story of Jesus. I figured it’d be good for his writing this week. I told him he needs to have it written nicely by the end of the school week. Writing is very difficult for him. He can only get about 4 sentences before hi writing ability totally spirals into mass chaos and disarray so I just give him small increments. Being gentle and laid back about seems to work. He will from time to time decide he wants to practice his writing or do more than what I assign. If I were to assign more and often he’d regress and hate it; causing his brain to block it out all together. It’d be like 3 steps forward and 4 steps back.


On his assignment email I told him it was due at the end of the week so to just write daily what he thinks he needs to write to have it done on Friday. He told me today he wants to try to get it done before Friday; maybe even by Wednesday. He wrote about 4 sentences and showed me. It was easy too tell 4 was his limit. The last sentence was getting pretty bad. I told him it looks like his brain needs a little break from writing. He said He thinks he’ll leave it out all day and just write a couple sentences all throughout the day; stopping when his brain needs a break and coming back to it.


Saturday, November 7, 2009

Sunflowers

Ki and I planted 2 sunflowers a couple months ago. Two days ago we cut off their heads and dried them. Yesterday we took all the seeds out, sorted them, and soaked some in salt water over night.
NOW we are enjoying warm, fresh from the oven, roasted sunflower seeds! MMM!

We saved a dozen seeds to plant in February or March.

Gavin saved some tomato seeds. He scooped them out of the tomato, let them ferment a couple days, then dried them and put them in a ziplock bag for planting in March.

it's too bad I can't get Connor interested in foods we can grow. He did seem to almost like the radish Gavin grew last month, though.

I need to get some onion plants for him. He likes onions. He likes bell peppers, but wasn;t that keen on the peppers we grew.

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Pi

I excitedly ran down the stairs calling out; "BRIAN! I have a math problem for you!!"
His answer was; "Cool. What is it?"
Me; "here. I think I got it right when I did it. Did I?"
I decided to take an online geometry course. Ki doesn't like using ALEKS, so I decided to use his account. I scored a 48% on the assessment test. which I was actually quite proud of seeing as I have never taken geometry (aside from the bare basics in math like how to find the area of a circle and the hypotenuse of a right triangle- which I remembered) and the math classes I did take I barely passed by skin of my teeth with blood, sweat, and tears; only to be placed in a more difficult math class.

the problem was:
find the area of a rectangle that is 20" x 31" and has had half of a circle cut out of one end.
they had a picture, but I don't have one to show you here.
Anyway. I got it right. YAY!!
And Brian seemed quite happy that I was bringing him math problems- even easy ones...LOL

Sunday, November 1, 2009

despite

Highlighter + Pens + Planning Calendar + Notebooks = A Great Afternoon! I emailed schooling tasks to G&C. I made a Study Guide in Connor's science notebook based on his CD-Rom lessons this week. Ki's list in in a small handheld notebook. on Monday-Thursday I left space at the bottom of each page and told him to draw a picture. Some were specific (like favorite snack or an alien) and some not. Friday he's to choose one of his drawings about which to write a detailed description.

With blue & yellow highlighters I marked weeks of school and vacation. School for the first 3 weeks of November. No School last week of Nov -1st week of Dec. School for weeks 2&3 of Dec. No School until Jan 4. Then 4 weeks J-Term followed by a week off.

Brian marked the days off work in purple for the rest of the year.
Connor & Gavin's list are a lot of "Weekly Goals". So no specifics for daily work as long as it's all done before Saturday.

here's Connor's:

DAILY
Read -whatever you think is a good amount
Math- do something towards your weekly goal
Science- work on weekly Goal
Research- work on weekly goal.
S.A.T. Daily Question.

WEEKLY GOALS
Math- learn 8 topics
Science- Fill in Notes in your notebook (do through experiment 1.4 )
Research- turn your research into an outline
Make a Christmas Wish List

Gavin is in charge of making dinner Friday.
In the Mornings I 'll be reading the Bible Passage of the week and alernating Story of the World and Geography Mind Builer Questions.

LinkWithin

Related Posts with Thumbnails