Week in Review- Duncan (wk2 of 36)

On Time4Learning Duncan completed at least one activity each day in Language Arts, Language Arts Extensions, Science, and Social Studies. He completed at least two activities each day in T4L Math. Here is a breakdown of how much time (hours: minutes: seconds) he ended up spending on T4L this week:

LA and LA extensions, combined- 1:54:54 (suffixes, homophones, idioms, nouns)
Math- 0:55:32 (number theory and systems, addition)
Science- 1:39:50 (investigation)
Social Studies- 1:04:02 (Inuit)

5:34:18 may not be much time, but in our three weeks of using T4L it is the greatest amount of time that Duncan has spent doing the computer portion of this product. This week, after he finished the activities and quizzes for the number theory and systems section of grade three, he took the test over that section. When he completed the test, we discovered something fun. When you finish a section test in math, the star you click to enter that section says mastered across it. He went ahead and took the test for the level 4 number theory and systems section. Sure enough, not only did the section star have mastered written on it, but so did every activity within that section.

We added Foerster’s Algebra back into the mix. Duncan started chapter two and completed sections 2-1 through 2-5 without any difficulty. He also averaged about 18 minutes each day at Khan Academy. This week he received his Earth Badge for reaching proficiency in 40 lessons. I think he was more excited about that than any of the previous badges he has earned. One of the lessons he did was scientific notation. I am now supposing I should show him some science where it is used. I just don’t know that he will remember what it is if he doesn’t have any opportunity to use it. He did spent between 20 and 30 minutes each day doing Kumon math.

I guess I should note that, yes, Duncan burned the end of his nose. He was playing with his electric car track when I told him it was getting too hot. He asked how I knew and I told him that I could smell it. At that point he picked up a car to smell the bottom and burned his nose! All I could do was laugh at him.

In language arts we watched just a little bit of IEW’s TWSS, did a word list from Spelling Plus, 4 pages in Spectrum Phonics and Word Study Grade 5, and some grammar ditto sheets from the proper noun sections of the 2nd and 3rd grade free online Scott Foresman grammar texts. It is always bizarre to me what children trip over or forget. This week Duncan worked on nouns at T4L and acted like he had no idea when or what to capitalize, particularly in book titles and other multi-word proper nouns. I wondered if this was due to typing so much, but Word doesn’t always catch those sort of capitalization errors. (I tried several of the typical mistakes he was making.) This makes me wonder if he either just doesn’t write proper nouns frequently enough or if I always correct them without thinking about it. Anyway, it was nice to have a free resource with beginning level activities to do as a reminder.

In history Duncan read chapter 2- Europeans Explore the Americas in Land of Liberty and The Discovery of the Americas by Maestro. He also read chapters 8-26 to wrap up Pocahontas and the Strangers and read poems from The Oxford Book of American Children's Poems.

His science section in T4L this week had him looking at tables, charts, and graphs. The notebooking suggestions had him taking a poll and creating some of his own, so we did this instead of adding any additional science this week. I had planned to cover some oceanography while we covered explorerers in history. I also thought it would have been an appropriate follow up to the Discovery Channel’s Shark Week, but it didn’t happen. I may see if I can work some in next week.

Violin this week was a disaster. I told the violin teacher that until the week after Labor Day our home was going to be too busy to complete much practice. Honestly, if I am short on time, violin is where I am a slacker. I really need to work on that.

This week we also went to Chik-Fil-A Family night. Mei was with us and both of them got balloon things and painted on bandanas.

Mei's kissy-face horse

Duncan's green shark