Tuesday's Active Learning Group and Week in Review 3/4-3/8

Duncan and I decided to share our last trimester studies by inviting a group of friends to share our introductory day on Tuesdays. So, here is what we did in just under three hours with a group of six middle schoolers and a kindergarten tag-a-long using a little Waldorf, a little Montessori, and a little lapbooking and then tying it all together with Charlotte Mason's patience and short lessons.

Active Learning Group Week 1 

I. Poetry

    A. Introduce ourselves

    B. Define poetry, stanza, end rhyme, and poetic license

    C. Read and discuss Fields section of TheTree That Time Built

 II. Geometry

    A. Short quote about geometry

    B. Brief biography of Euclid (I used the info in the first 2 paragraphs and in the last 2 paragraphs.)

    C. County map to discover points, lines and line segments

    D. A starry night drawing to discover rays

This is my teaching sheet. It is made from small pieces of water color paper glued to a 12x18" sheet of black construction paper.

Mei's County Map

Mei's Starry Sky

Mei's Definition Sheet

III. Biology- Introduction to Botany

    A. Lead students in the Activity for Introducing Botany

    B. Tell the made-up story of Elzeard Bouffier. Here is the story on youtube. I have the book, but told the story more like the woman in the video except with a Southern accent. :)

    C. Read poem Smells by Kathryn Worth 

    D. Define botany

    E. Give students choice of activities

        1. draw tree from my instruction sheet

        2. copy poem from my instruction sheet

        3. work with the parts of a flower set

        4. work with Montessori 3-Part Plant cards

        5. fill in the parts of plant mini-book

This is my instruction sheet. I drew it on 18x24" drawing paper.

Close up of the top left

Close up of the bottom right. This was here.

First page of Duncan's plant mini-book on left and the coordinating teaching card on right

Montessori 3-Part Cards

Parts of a flower learning booklet, pictures from the booklet, and definitions to match to the pictures

IV. Social Studies- Achaemenid Persia week 1 of 4

    A. Physical geography of Iran

    B. Story of Esther 

    C. Fill in a mini-book retelling the story of Esther using WIN's The 7 SentenceStory

    D. Eat hamantaschen

The outside of Sevanne's Esther mini-book, the inside of Mei's mini-book, and the inside of Duncan's mini-book. At the end of the 4 weeks they will be able to put all their work on Achaemenid Persia into a lapbook.

Duncan and I made hamantaschen on Monday and shared them with the group on Tuesday. Here is our hamantaschen ready to go into the oven.

I am not giving grades or assigning homework. This is just a casual three hours of fast-paced introduction of topics. My son will be doing more work with the poetry after reading the poems on Tuesday using the student pages from Moving Beyond the Page Ages 10-12- Concept 4: Systems and Interaction, Unit 2: The Tree That Time Built (LA). Duncan is using MUS Geometry, so this geometry on Tuesday is just for fun. Because he is using Science Daybook the rest of the week, Duncan will not be doing anything else with botany unless he wants to explore it further on his own. He will not be specifically working on the ancient culture introduced, but will be studying that region of the world through stories, poetry, literature, and cultural geography.This week he continued reading in Clouds of Glory, a collection of Jewish Midrashim, and A Picnic of Poems: In Allah's Green Garden. He also read two books by Demi: Rumi and Muhammad.

I guess this is all the stuff that is interesting to share, but he also watched a couple of MUS Algebra 2 videos and did some MCP Word Study, Evan Moor Daily Math, Evan Moor Daily Paragraph Editing, Kumon Math, and Time4Writing.

Mei, the Cuppycake

Mei, the Cuppycake, is back! She is my friend Sarah’s 11yo daughter and I am privileged to have her with me about two days each week. Mei is in the sixth grade.

Mei's Chick-Fil-A face paint from this summer.

Here is what Mei did at my house this week:

Time4Learning

LA and LA extensions, combined- 0:52:43
Math- 0:17:51
Science- 1:39:41
Social Studies- 1:36:09

So, 4:26:24 is the total time that Mei spent doing the computer portion of T4L in the two days that she was at my house this week. The level 6 T4L Science and Social Studies are quite time consuming. Mei is working through the reading and filling out fill-in-the-blank worksheets that I have created. It really is quite a bit of material to wade through. The T4L math is just supplemental to the rest of the math she is using, so the time spent on T4L math should never be particularly high.

Math

In math Mei completed Saxon 76 Lessons 10 and 12. She completed pages 10-14 in Key to Fractions Book 3 and also worked 11 minutes on day one and 11 minutes on day two at Khan Academy. She earned a proficiency star each day and a Moon Badge on the second day!

Language Arts

At my house in language arts she worked on Sequential Spelling both days. In IEW this week Mei narrated and wrote a paragraph from her Key Word Outline about vulture bees. We also did a Key Word Outline of The Fox and the Hare. Mei began studying Essentials of the English Language in preparation for Classical Conversations- Essentials. She copied the 112 Different Types of Sentences Chart. We reviewed parts of speech, types of sentences, and we came up with sentences of our own modeled after the examples on the Essentials of the English Language chart. She also read a couple of poems from Poetry for Young People: Walt Whitman.

Other Stuff

In preparation for Classical Conversations- Foundations that will be starting the week after Labor Day, we headed over to youtube and watched the first three weeks of the Lake Norman timeline song with hand motions. She also recited the U.S. Presidents. I wish I could blog that we did some cool art project or something, but alas that did not happen this week. IEW and Essentials of the English Language really sucked up our time this week.

This summer we made clay critters.

Week in Review- Mei

Mei‘s mother had a birthday this week. Happy Birthday, Sarah!

Math
Mei finished through lesson 96 in Saxon 65, wrapped up Math Mammoth Division 2, and almost finished Key to Fractions Book 1. We also read Life of Fred: Fractions, chapter 1. Mei’s math skills have really taken off this year… to the point where I actually heard her say that her Saxon lesson was easy! :-)

English
Mei worked on Classical Conversations English memory work, completed four pages in Megawords book 1, and read a chapter in The Story of the U.S.A. book 3. She has also been flying through Future School’s grade 5 language arts and only has six lessons left to finish the whole year. The plan is to do two each week for the next three weeks, but she is on such a roll she may finish sooner.

Our gameroom on a homeschoolin' afternoon.

Science
We studied light, based on our Classical Conversations science memory work.

History
We studied history based on our Classical Conversations history memory work.

Other
On Friday, Mei went to drama and art. She has also started piano lessons again.

Friday- Week in Review

Duncan is my 2nd grader.
Mei is my friend’s 5th grader.

Over on The Well Trained Mind forums there is a thread about what you are doing consistently. I thought I would do a weekly update talking about the things that Duncan and Mei are doing consistently.

The Well Trained Mind is a history/ LA focused curriculum. The Latin-Centered Curriculum is of course focused on Latin. We do math, math, and more math. Is there a curriculum that has math at its center? If so, I probably ought to check it out.

Duncan
The little man is wrapping up Key to Algebra book 3. I had pretty much planned on using Art of Problem Solving beginning in the fall… until I saw Foerster’s Algebra. Now I am the proud owner of the Prentice Hall Classics Edition of Foerster’s Algebra 1. I want to order the Math without Borders lectures to go with it. Instead of waiting until fall, when this arrives, we will go ahead and start Algebra.

Duncan still has quite a bit to go before he finishes the geometry section of The Complete Book of Algebra and Geometry, but this week I pulled out Patty Paper Geometry. I am debating whether or not to do this or MUS Geometry. I own them both and need to look through them to decide where I want to go next. Duncan doesn’t have fabulous fine motor skills and he isn’t very patient with origami, so I am leaning toward MUS.

Duncan is chugging through Kumon Math level G, but we are only doing a few sheets a day and doing multiple reps, so this level may take until next fall.

In language arts we are plugging away. Duncan is still working through MCP Plaid Phonics D. Towards the beginning of February he started Spelling Plus. I started at the beginning doing it orally just to make sure we hadn’t missed anything. A couple of weeks ago he started Early Reading Comprehension in Varied Subject Matter Book D. I wanted to start him where I felt he would already have complete mastery of skills in order to just work on this type of answering the questions format. When he is finished with this, I plan to go directly into Reading Comprehension in Varied Subject Matter Book 1. He finished his beginning cursive book and I don’t really want to start a new one this year, but he is asking for handwriting. Although we are on hiatus from MCT, I am still covering a couple of sentences each week.

Mei
Mei is plugging away at Saxon 65. She has completed through lesson 78. She was working in a Kumon division workbook, but this week she began working in Math Mammoth Division 2 and completed through page 16. She also started Future School Grade 5 Mathematics back in January. She will not finish this by the end of the school year. However, through its exams it is a good testing tool to determine if a skill has been mastered or as a quick review of topics that are not covered in this level of Saxon.

Mei began doing language arts grade 5 through Future School in January. I don’t think that it is unreasonable to anticipate that she will finish the entire year before the end of May. She is reading The Story of the USA for reading comprehension and to cover some of the US history that may be included on the 5th grade standardized test that she may take. She has completed Book 2 A Young Nation Solves Its Problems and is now working in Book 3 America Becomes a Giant. I hope to be well into Book 4 Modern America before the end of the school year. Mei is also still working in Evan Moor’s Daily Handwriting Practice: Contemporary Cursive. She is on hiatus from Winston Grammar, but we are still looking at a couple of sentences each week.

Both
Both Duncan and Mei are using Classical Conversations as the spine for their history and science. This has been an easy to accomplish thing. I write the history sentence on the white board and we go through it many times while I erase sections of it until they can say it with the entire sentence erased. Then, we read about the topic in one of the many reference books that I own. We do the same thing for the science. Whenever we are in the car, we listen to the audio CD. I like taking the focus off of these subjects and placing it squarely on math and language arts. (alright, I admit it: primarily math)

The weekly presentation at Classical Conversations on Tuesdays has been great. Mei and Duncan are both talkers and a weekly presentation where everyone must listen to them is just fabulous. This past week Mei had to do a presentation on a prominent historical figure from somewhere around WW2. She did her presentation on Eleanor Roosevelt. Duncan had to do a how-to presentation. He had his class build simple catapults from Mini Weapons of Mass Destruction. (We have been enjoying this book. Thank you, Karen in CO!)



Mei sending a small marshmallow into our common area.



Duncan's marshmallow flying.

All our memory work is now from Classical Conversations and this too has been fabulous. This time the fabulousness is for me, because I no longer need to figure out memory work!

On Friday they both went to their art and drama classes which they thoroughly enjoy.

Duncan went to his individual violin lesson on Wednesday and went (for the first time) to a group lesson on Friday afternoon. Monday wrapped up school year swimming for Mei.

We also do a number of things inconsistently, but I guess if I cared about those things they wouldn’t be inconsistent!

Friday- Week in Review

Yeah, I haven’t posted a week-in-review since before Christmas. This is partially due to the blahs that I go into this time during the school year and partially due to needing to begin the college search and application process with my second ds, Grayson. So, what have we been doing and where are we now?

I spent Christmas looking at schools/ tutorials for my youngest. I was a little panicked about Grayson and was feeling like I needed to free up some time to work with him. We ended up visiting and enrolling my youngest in Classical Conversations- Foundations. I was looking for next year, but my little man loved it. They didn't have space for my extra student, but she will now be following some of the Foundation material as well.

Anyway, back to our week. We picked up Foundations in Cycle 2 week 12. Our group meets on Tuesday. On Tuesday afternoons I have my extra student Mei and review the material from that morning for her benefit. Duncan has a fabulous tutor and I like to see how she covered the material and reinforce that at home.

I have decided to introduce new Foundations material on Thursdays. I do this on Thursday, because Mei is here and I want her here on the day I introduce the new material. Yesterday, I introduced week 16.

Our director gave me the list of the Kingfisher 1999 pages that coordinate with our history statement and I cover these. I have been using the Usborne Internet-Linked Science Encyclopedia to go over the science memory statement, but I think that I will use something else next year. (This is just the science encyclopedia that I had on my shelf.) Right now we are on the art history portion of the arts rotation, so we look at the artist that will be covered on Tuesday. I also go over the rest of the memory work.

Either before Mei arrives on Thursday or after she leaves I discuss with Duncan his presentation for the upcoming week. I have not been doing very structured composition lessons with Duncan, so now I am doing a lot of modeling of IEW methods to prepare for the presentations. However, as next week he is just needs to read a favorite passage from the Bible, we haven’t had to do keyword outline or anything like that.

For those who don’t know- My dh was raised Muslim. I was raised Christian. I am completely aware that CC is a Protestant organization. Anyway, Duncan is going to read excerpts from the NIV Bible’s story of Noah in Genesis. Noah happens to be one of dh’s favorite prophets and he was the one who chose this passage.

We review memory work, blob maps, and other CC stuff the rest of the week. Currently this is taking some time, because the little man wants to memorize everything he missed first semester. He is not doing the Veritas Press timeline (I don’t want to spend the money on all those cards right now.) and I see no point in going back to do the Latin as they repeat the same material second semester. Duncan would love to do this too, but there are only so many hours in the day and if he wants to do this he will need to do it independently.

He is almost caught up in everything else except geography. I can’t tolerate memorization out of context. History and geography are taking some time, because I am not giving him new memory work until he understands the material. And argh doing it this way is not ideal. I have no idea how much he will retain.

OTOH- Duncan really wants to be able to compete in the weekly reviews. There is also a quarterly jeopardy type game where our entire CC group is divided into 4 teams that compete. We watched this when we visited and Duncan thought it was fabulous.

In addition to CC Foundations we are continuing with our own math and language arts. This week Duncan completed Key to Algebra Book 2, worked in the geometry section of the Complete Book of Algebra and Geometry, and did some Kumon. Mei worked in Saxon 65. Duncan, Mei, and I are continuing to read MCT’s Sentence Island together. We will be finished soon, but I may read through it again. They were missing things that I thought they should know, so I decided to back up in both Practice Island with Duncan and Winston Grammar with Mei. Duncan is still working through Plaid Phonics C and this week Mei started ElizabethB’s phonics lessons. Duncan also practiced violin.

This is long and without exciting pictures, but I think it gets me caught up.

Friday- Week in Review

Duncan is my 2nd grader.
Mei is my friend’s 5th grader.

Our poetry, language arts and history memory work.
Poem 2
The Tiger by William Blake

List the 8 parts of speech.
Noun, Pronoun, Adjective, Verb, Adverb, Preposition, Conjunction, Interjection

Tell me about Charlemagne.
In 800 A.D. Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne Holy Roman Emperor of Europe.

Duncan's memory work for math.
What is the legal move when solving an equation.
Whatever you do to one side of an equation you must also do to the other side.

Mei’s memory work for math and LA.
What do we call the answer to a division problem?
The answer to a division problem is called the quotient.

Language Arts
Together we continued with MCT’s The Music of the Hemispheres and Sentence Island. Duncan tried Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. He tried it a while back and couldn’t get into it. This week he finished through chapter 11, so that is going well.

At my house Mei read The Story of the U.S.A. Book 2 Chapter 1 and completed the comprehension work. I think this will give some of the comprehension guidance I was wanting.

We finished the noun side of our parts of speech lapbook.

Mei's completed noun section.

Duncan's completed noun section.

The plural noun minibook is the coolest!

We reviewed verbs (action verbs, linking verbs, helping verbs and verb tense) using worksheets from the Scott Foresman Grade 5 Grammar Book.

Math
Mei has completed lesson 51 in Saxon 65, continued working in Math Mammoth Blue Series- Fractions 1, and finished lessons 3 and 4 in Hands on Equations.

Duncan did Kumon, continued Math Mammoth Blue Series- The Four Operations, and completed Hands on Equations Lessons 3-7.

History
In history Duncan and Mei covered Chapter 21 of Gombrich’s A Little History. We also read about Charlemagne and Vikings in SOTW2. We completed a minibook for Charlemagne and match books for Erik the Red and Leif Eriksson.

Outside of Duncan's left. Inside of Mei's right.

Duncan's inside green. Mei's closed pink.

Science
We didn’t really move forward in science this week, but Mei and Duncan did watch the Moody science video The Red River of Life.

Spanish
Both Mei and Ducan started Learnables Spanish 1.

Other Stuff
Cool Stuff
On Tuesday Mei and Duncan went climbing.
Mei is a spider. She moves so fast I had a difficult time snapping photos and keeping her in frame. She made it to the top on 10 of her 12 climbs.

Duncan is just a little too small and just couldn't reach quite far enough with his little legs and arms, but he gave it a good try. While he never made it to the top he made it a pretty good way.

On Friday Duncan, Grayson and I went to see the Impressionist exhibit at the Frist with Mei, her mom and the rest of our art class. Of course I couldn't take photos in the exhibit, but the all kids had a great time in the art project room after the tour.

Duncan's print.

Mei's print.

My print.

Not So Cool Stuff
This afternoon we had the thrill of taking Grayson to the doctor to get an ankle x-ray. His ankle has been wrong since sometime during volleyball, but the x-ray showed no problem with the bone so it is a muscle/tendon thing.

Friday- Week in Review

Duncan is my 2nd grader.
Mei is my friend’s 5th grader.

Is it Friday again?!
We have finished week 16 and next week we will be taking time off from school to celebrate Thanksgiving. Hopefully, Duncan will not be sick, but this week both Mei and Duncan had a pretty good case of the sniffles.

Our poetry, science and history memory work.
Poem 2
The Tiger by William Blake

What does the cardiovascular system consist of?
The cardiovascular system consists of blood, the heart, and the blood vessels.

Tell me about Muhammad.
At age 40 Muhammad received his first revelation from God. Three years after this Muhammad started preaching these revelations and by the time he died most of the Arabian Peninsula had converted to Islam.

Duncan's memory work for math and LA.
Tell me the order of operations.
PEMDAS                                            
Please excuse (my dear) (Aunt Sally)                        
parentheses, exponents,
multiplication/division from left to right,                                                           
addition/subtraction from left to right

List the 5 uses of a noun within a sentence.
subject, direct object, indirect object, object of preposition, possessive

Stuffy nose Duncan in front of the computer

Mei’s memory work for math and LA.
What is circumference?
The length of the smooth curve that makes a circle. Circumference is to a circle as perimeter is to a polygon.

Tell me about interjections.
An interjection is an emotion word.

Mei and her weekly Chik-fil-A face painting. It was supposed to be a bouquet, but it looks like an ice cream cone!

Language Arts
Together we continued with MCT’s The Music of the Hemispheres and Sentence Island. Duncan continued reading from Open Court titled From Sea to Shining Sea. He finished section one which wrapped up with a Thanksgiving story. At my house Mei began reading from Open Court’s Sound of the Sea. I like the stories, but I think that I would prefer to use something that has some guidance. I lean toward McGuffey, because I can get it online free. However, I would like to have a nice textbook like Glencoe or EMC Paradigm.

We reviewed nouns- definition, proper, plural, collective. They both began working on a parts of speech lapbook. We spent way more time than I had anticipated decorating the front of the lapbook.




Duncan left. Mei right.

  

Mei's minibook

inside Duncan's lapbook

Inside Mei's minibook


Math

Mei has completed through lesson 50 in Saxon 65 and finished her Kumon multiplication workbook. She continued working in Math Mammoth Blue Series- Fractions 1. Duncan did Kumon and continued Math Mammoth Blue Series- The Four Operations. They both completed Hands on Equations Lessons 1 and 2. It is sooo nifty! I am so glad I finally worked up to spending the money on it.

History

Moving on to history, Duncan and Mei covered Chapter 20 of Gombrich’s A Little History. We also completed an Enchanted Learning worksheet on the Saudi Arabia and made a minibook on Charles Martel.

Duncan green. Mei pink.



Science

This week we discussed the circulatory system in Great Science Adventures and looked over this section in DK’s The Human Body Book.

Other Stuff

On Monday we did the cub scout and Kumon thing. On Tuesday we went to Chik-fil-A's family night. On Wednesday Duncan went to violin, Grayson went to his math tutor, and we went to the library. On Thursday we took Grayson to his IEW composition class, Cici’s Pizza and 4-H. Then, Thursday night Duncan, Grayson and I went to see Harry Potter with Mei and Sarah (my friend and Mei’s mom)!