Week 9 - One Quarter in the Books

It was another great week here at the AAAE.  Coincidentally, the weather was also lovely, which made everything go very smoothly.

We did mixed math again. It was smooth as butter.  I am making him rise to the challenge, and he isn't resisting (too much). I think a mix of rounding, multiplication and division makes his brain ping around in different spots, so he doesn't get too frustrated with one thing. Because he had finished all of the work I printed for the week on Thursday, I let him do a couple of easy money counting pages in his math book. He was all over that and we finished the week on a high note.

We started a unit on volcanoes for science.  We learned about the Salton Sea in California, which was incredibly interesting. Henry did  an activity that involved plotting various volcanoes around the world using grid instructions. Not only was it a science lesson, but a good geography lesson, too.  He wants to build a baking soda and vinegar volcano.  We might do that during the short week we have before Thanksgiving.

We're still exploring Ancient Egypt for social studies. We read and answered the questions for the articles (all two of them!) in the book I bought for social studies.  We also read some more mythology. Egyptian mythology is some seriously kooky stuff.  I did tell Henry that he needs to remember the themes of babies being saved, gods going to the underworld, gods changing form, and the main god being somewhat meddlesome.  He'll see them again and again.

The spelling words this week were the prefixes op-, dis-, im-, com-, ex-, and pro-, to all go with the root pose. He rocked with knowing the meanings of the words. He balked a bit at writing the sentences, but we got through it.

Today, October 27, is apparently Black Cat Day. In order to celebrate, Henry posed with one of our barn cats, Black. Yeah, we're super creative when it comes to names.  See you all next week!

Week 8 - Much Better

What a difference a week makes.  This week was so productive at the Austin Academy of Academic Excellence.  The unbelievably nice weather certainly didn't hurt. Any time we can do school outside in October is a good day.

Math was better this week.  I went back to www.edhelper.com, a website I have used for years.  They have mixed math for each grade.  I thought it might be a little above his level, but he muscled his way through it. I am going to use the Critical Thinking book as a supplement, but not the spine for the rest of the year. Henry did long division, two-over-two multiplication (that was new), rounding, and order of operations (also new). I was so proud that he didn't put up a fuss and was willing to learn how to do new things.

Science was also a big winner. We a lesson about the domestication of dogs. Henry loves dogs, so he was very attentive for the whole lesson.  Part of it was a video about Balyaev's foxes.  If you don't know about this experiment, look it up. It's pretty cool.

Spelling included the prefixes a-, dis-, inter-, and e- and how they go with the root -rupt.  He found ways of using the word, "abrupt" as much as possible, which I thought was funny.  I love that he's building his vocabulary in such a noticeable way.

Finally, for social studies, we continued out exploration of ancient Egypt. We read about the Middle Kingdom, and a bit about the New Kingdom. King Amenhotep married his daughter. According to Henry, "Dude, you should not marry your daughter. That's not how it works!" I'm telling you, this is why I love homeschooling. The hilarious asides totally make it worthwhile.

Reading has fallen by the wayside a bit. I hope to pick it back up soon.  The weather might turn any time now, which will make it a bit easier to be inside. Not that I'm looking forward to the weather changing...Such a conundrum.

Week 7 - I Need a Reset

The saga of long division continues. I showed Henry the videos on how to do partial quotient division, and he thought it seemed a lot harder than what we were already suffering through.  After three long days, I thought I would be nice and give him a break with a page of adding up grocery prices.  One would think he had never added numbers before.  I'm just going to take a deep breath and plunge back in this coming week.  Baby steps all the way.

We started Ancient Egypt this week.  This is somewhat my jam.  On Tuesday, we started mummifying an apple.  It looks pretty gnarly.  It's supposed to take two weeks to finish.  Thankfully, there was no removing of the brains through the nose involved.  We did some general reading about the history, and we read the Egyptian creation story. Henry already knew about Geb and Nut from a game that he plays online.  I guess not all video games are complete trash. 

Spelling and reading were honestly just "meh" and not really worth talking about.

Big Sister having Monday off was a big ding in my week.  I like it better when I have five good days to work with.  I sincerely hope this week is a bit less stressful, and slightly for exciting.

Week 6 - Long Division Blues

Fall has come to our little corner of the world, even if the temperatures are more like those of late August.  Since October is Fire Safety Month, we satisfied our requirement by going to a tour of the fire department and watching a car get cut apart with the Jaws of Life. It was pretty cool.

As for academics this week, it was a long slog. For math, as the title suggests, we stuck with long division for the whole week. Oh. My. Goodness. This is the first multi-step math Henry has done, so he's still trying to get everything done in the right order. He knows how many times one number goes into the other number, but then, he can't remember what the multiple is without some serious thought. After the first bit of subtraction, and the bringing down of the next number is done, he's lost. We're going to practice more this coming week.  I haven't told him that they won't always divide evenly yet. It might make his little head explode.

We are FINALLY finished with Mesopotamia. I didn't make him memorize all of the kings, empires and dates. He knows the highlights from the era, and that's good enough for me. We read the story of Gilgamesh - the clean, less womanizing version in Story of the World. He thought Enkidu was pretty funny.

We had another good week of spelling. We had the prefixes uni, bi, and tri. We did some dictionary work, looking up words with those prefixes and defining them. 

We didn't do any formal science lessons, but we did some impromptu work. While we were doing school work outside (such a treat in October!), a giant wooly bear caterpillar came across our path. We looked it up, found out what it eats, found out what it looks like when it turns into a moth, etc. On another day, we read about why some leaves turn red, and others turn yellow. I am really hoping to get back on track with formal science lessons this coming week.