Slowly-- Slowly Climb Mt. Fuji!: Friday- Homeschool Week in Review for Duncan

As some of you may have noticed, Kumon was conspicuously missing from last week’s week in review. Well, Duncan is taking the month off. A little girl who has been in Kumon with him for over two and a half year is taking the month off, so I made a split second decision to give him a break, too. I am still working there three half days a week and he will return in February.

Language Arts
Duncan continued his study of Christina Rossetti. He participated in Teatime Tuesday Poetry where we talked about onomatopoeia and read Chickadee by Ralph Waldo Emerson.

He read Los Ojos del Tejedor- The Eyes of the Weaver by Cristina Ortega from Calvert Grade 3 Discoveries in Reading. We didn’t do any beautiful Chimayo weaving, but Duncan did weave a potholder!

He loved making this. There were enough loops to make two potholders. However, while making the second one he messed up a loop. Then, he became very upset that he wouldn’t have enough loops to finish. Needless to say, I went online and ordered more loops, but now he must wait until they arrive to finish the second.

I read aloud pp. 37-39 from Milo Winter’s Aesop for Children, King Lear from Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare by Nesbit, and chapter 2 Excalibur from Merlin and the Making of a King retold by Margaret Hodges.

Duncan played some in his beginning cursive book, did Wordly Wise Book 2 Lesson 10, completed Easy Grammar 3 pp.65-68, Plaid Phonics C pp.73-77, and continued copying his poem that teaches the names of the Presidents through Wilson.

Math
He completed Key to Fractions Book 4 pp.9-13 and Saxon 65 lessons 53-56.

Science
This week Duncan read Let’s-Read-and-Find-Out Science: Earthquakes. We also read about earthquakes in Lyrical Earth Science and Geology Crafts for Kids. Unfortunately, we were able to read about and see on the news the destruction caused by the earthquake Haiti.

“An earthquake is the sudden shaking of the earth caused by slipping of the crust.” Lyrical Earth Science
This was the sentence we repeated this week.

He also watched some science videos from the library: Magic School Bus Gets Eaten (food chains), Magic School Bus Inside the Haunted House (sound), and Magic School Bus Ready, Set, Dough (kitchen chemistry).

Duncan played with a Gearbotics robot kit this week. These aren’t absolutely wonderful, so I’m not going to rave about them. Once assembled, they tend to fall apart when the robot moves. Anyway, we own it and he likes it.

History and Geography
Duncan again played with The Seven Continents of the World Jigsaw Book.

We continued studying Vikings and finished The Real Vikings by Melvin and Gilda Berger.

We learned that although many Norsemen did go i Viking to raid and to loot, many others took to the sea as merchants and explorers.

Foreign Language
Duncan used Rosetta Stone Farsi three times this week for about 10 minutes each time.

Twice he listened to Buenas Noches, Luna (Good Night, Moon) on audio while he looked at the book.

Arts
Duncan practiced violin about 20 minutes a day, but he didn’t have a lesson this week. He just started at end of the summer/ beginning of this school year. His instructor is a fiddle player who uses some traditional, some Suzuki, and some fiddle material. We end up going to see her maybe three times each month, so nothing super serious- just fun.

We just started using Essential Elements Violin Book 1. This week he did a line each day from page 7. After he finished that, he played in order-
Lightly Row (Suzuki)
Go Tell Aunt Rhody (Suzuki)
Allegro (Suzuki)
Mary Had a Little Lamb (for fun)
Old Joe Clark (fiddle)
May Song (Suzuki)
Long, Long Ago (Suzuki)

We listen to the song on the Suzuki CD before he plays it.

We continued looking at Masaccio. This week we looked in Sister Wendy’s 1000 Masterpieces.

We continued listening to the music of Hildegard von Bingen.

This week Duncan played with tissue paper. All you do is cut up squares of tissue paper and apply them to paper with liquid starch on a large paint brush. These were difficult to photograph, because Duncan put on so much liquid starch that the paper didn’t lay flat once it dried. So, lesson learned. If you just hand off a cup of liquid starch and squares of tissue paper, use a cardboard backing.

Then, we also used the tissue paper and some crayon shavings to make wax paper stained glass. These are pretty. If you hold them in front of a window, the light comes right through the tissue paper like stained glass. The child arranges the tissue paper and crayon shavings on a piece of wax paper that is sitting on an old towel. You place another piece of wax paper on top of it, throw an old t-shirt over the wax paper, and iron the two wax sheets together. Remember- the crayon shavings melt and spread. These are fun and kids seem to like them.

You can use Ed Emberley’s Drawing Book of Animals to cut out basic shapes and assemble them as animals. This is Duncan’s fox. One of his eyes melted and spread too much, but I love the wildflowers. (The tissue paper pieces are brighter colors than they appear in the photos.)

I named this one Fiesta, but upon looking at it more closely I see a smiley face. The two purple dots are the eyes; the big green blob coming from the right is the nose; the little purple dots in a curving row are the mouth.