Our sixth week in review: 10/4-10/8

Another four day week for us because today (Friday) is our big field trip to the Pennsylvania Renaissance Faire!  <insert happy dancing>  We are all set to enjoy the shows, demonstrations, food and the gorgeous weather----pictures will be up over the weekend :)

It was a pretty good week with only one FAIL...

Math
Chugging along with percents.  I've been making her do problems backwards and forwards, solving using either using decimals or fractions.  Daisy became much quicker by the end of the week at deciding which method to use.  There is a light at the end of the percent tunnel ;)  No fun math this week due to the Faire.

Science
If you're a good blog reader, you'll have noticed that I've been putting up separate posts for labs we've been doing (that's ok, go check now...)  This week we continued with Chapter 3 (Physical Science Connections) in CPO Earth Science:

(Monday) Section 3.3 Density and Buoyance, see separate Density Column demo blog post

(Tuesday) Physics Connection about the science behind hot air balloons plus the chapter activity (modeling radiation of heat energy from the Sun to the Earth).  The pictures didn't turn out well for the activity, alas.

(Wednesday) Daisy took the Chapter 3 assessment (aka test) orally.  So far, no problems at all with retention.  I love CPO.

(Thursday) We began Chapter 4: Water and the Water Cycle by reading and discussing 4.1 Water on Earth's Surface and started Investigation 4A: The Water Cycle.  This lab requires 4 days of observations so she'll be checking the set-up through the weekend.   As a preview:

(And yes, that is a telescope in the corner of the home office.)

History
This week we covered the 1st and 2nd intermediate periods (Ancient Egyptian World chapters 8 and 10), hieroglypics (AEW chapter 4,  Dig magazine March 2010 issue, Write Like an Egyptian through the UPenn Museum), the Rosetta Stone (The Riddle of the Rosetta Stone), and daily life of regular Egyptians (AEW chapters 9, 12, 17, 19, 23).   Some additional books were used for visual reference.

We also made Egyptian flatbread from Great Ancient Egypt Projects You Can Build Yourself, which was our FAIL of the week.  Blech!  They would have been greatly improved by more oil or salt.  Or sugar and egg!

Grammar
Finished up pronouns with indefinite pronouns and the always-fun double negatives.  Daisy took the test to end the week.

Literature
As shown above, she read The Riddle of the Rosetta Stone for history.

We moved further into poetry, studying alliteration, assonance and consonance using

We had a lot of fun reading the selections from both books aloud, identifying the various sounds and doing the exercises in Figuratively Speaking.  I have to dig out all of our poetry books from the attic, basement, and various kids' bookcases.

French

What have I gotten myself into?  One day we listened to the audio selection 10 times and still could not understand how to say one thing as the speaking was moving waaaaay too quickly.  Older Sister rescued us when she was home!  I like how this text is arranged, with a dialogue (also on CD), with vocab and grammar information, followed by a few exercises.

We're reviewing the previous day's lesson and audio selection each day before moving onto the new information.  Daisy's having a good time and so far I haven't confused German pronounciation too much with the French... Next week she's going to start writing some exercises.  I've also decided to purchase the CD containing additional exercises and tests, to make sure she (and I) are really understanding the French.  My eventual goal is for Daisy to comfortably pass out of French 1 as a high school freshman.

Other
We spent a long time reading the PA RenFaire website!  We'll be attending the special elementary school day (geared for grades 3-6)---here's the information about the day.

Best of the Week:  fun with poetry!

Worst of the Week: that awful flatbread.  Yuck.  The activity book is fabulous, btw, but probably geared to slightly younger than Daisy.

Looking ahead to next week: a ballet performance on Sunday (a special in-studio event tied with a fundraiser at a schmancy restaurant downtown), Girl Scouts at our house Tuesday night (I've got to get those badge activities planned out....), a shortened day on Wednesday (Older Sister will be finished at 11:30 after taking the PSAT), finishing up one lab, doing another AND an activity from one of the skill & practice sheets that I'm turning into a lab-------watch for separate blog posts!  Whew!

And will Older Brother get an application or two submitted.....??????  Will I have hair left?????  Will there be homebrew left in the basement?????  Stay tuned!