Our eleventh and twelfth weeks in review: November 8-19

Two weeks for you to peruse this time :)   I missed posting last Friday's wrap up as Mike's up-to-that-point-uncomplicated knee surgery recovery became complicated with a blood clot in his calf!  We spent all day Friday in various waiting rooms and various offices.  I hope to never experience that again.

On to the fun!

Math
We mixed up the math during the past two weeks.  Daisy spent several days with Challenge Math for the Elementary and Middle School Student, working through various sections on problem solving with venn diagrams, charts, and other methods.  She also reviewed the addition and subtraction of negative integers, order of operations, and the associate property.  I found some worksheets on http://www.math-drills.com/ that she really enjoyed---she asked for me to print more one day!  Weirdo.

We missed our Patty Paper Geometry day last week due to the clot.  Yesterday she worked through the Guided Investigations for chapter 1----intersection of two lines, finding the shortest distance between a point and a line, vertical angles, adjacent angles, and linear pairs---and completed one of the exercise sets.  Next week on our geometry day she'll complete the other four exercise sets.  I took a picture to show exactly what is produced in an investigation.  Since the first chapter is really basic, the picture isn't that exciting LOL  The left paper is finding the shortest distance from a point to a line (Daisy drew on the folded paper with a sharpie) and the right is discovering that opposite angles are equal.

Finally, last Thursday was the first homeschool competition day for MOEMS (Math Olympiad for Elementary and Middle School).  Daisy was a bit nervous heading in, hoping she'd be able to answer one out of the five problems correctly (only 50% are able to answer the first one! The percentages decrease with each successive problem.)  She answered the first three correctly and would have gotten the last one correct had she not made a silly addition error.  Yippee!  One other kid of the 20 or so there also answered three correctly.

Science
Last week we covered Chapter 6: Weather and Climate in CPO Earth Science.  In addition to the usual reading and discussion of each section, Daisy watched two Bill Nye DVDs, Wind and Storm.  We totally skipped Investigation 6B as it relied completely on a set of radar image plates only available as part of CPO's lab package.  I didn't have enough time nor energy nor motivation to replicate the plates.

This week we finished Chapter 6 with reading of the Chapter Connection (hurricane scientists) and completion of the Chapter Assessment.  Daisy had a busy science day on Tuesday----we did the first lab for Chapter 7: Oceans (you can see the separate post for our not-so-much-of-an-adaption of Investigation 7A) then met with the other Elementary Science Olympiad homeschool team members (grades 4 and 5) for the first time.  She handed in her event choices and should learn today which events she'll be doing and with whom, in the case of partner events.   This week she also covered the first section in Chapter 7 and watched a very hilarious Bill Nye Oceanography dvd.  This afternoon we'll do Investigation 7B: Wave Speed using our adapted "GeoBox."   If I can get good pictures, I'll make a separate blog post for that lab.

History
Last week Daisy studied ancient China with the addition of a few resources to the reading from Human Odyssey:

This week we've done a quick comparative run-through of world religions with foundations during ancient times, Confucianism, Hinduism, Buddhism and Judaism.   She read relevant chapters from Human Odyssey (unit 2, chapters 3-7) and associated chapters from the Oxford Press series The World in Ancient Times

From the K12 Student Pages for the History Odyssey textbook, Daisy filled out a chart comparing religions and philosophies for Confucianism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Judaism.  She will add the information for Christianity and Islam once she gets to those chapters.  The various categories include founder of the religion/philosophy, date of founding, principal beliefs, principal sacred texts, geographic regions where the religion/philosophy predominates today, and current number of followers.

English/Language Arts
NaNoWriMo continues!  Older Sister estimates Daisy has written about 2000 words.  She's writing longhand in her notebook and Older Sister is typing it up in chunks.  I hope she makes 3000 words by the end of the month :)

French
We finally finished Chapter 3 in Galore Park's So You Really Want to Learn French 1 (aka French Prep).  Now we can converse about all kinds of food and all sorts of rooms in a house LOL

Other fun stuff
This week's Earth Explorers class at the local state park was historical, the everyday lives of boys and girls during World War II, held at a local historic estate.  There were lots of girls this time, including two from the previous classes Daisy had attended :)

Girl Scouts met on Tuesday for a fun meeting.  The girls made apple pies for their families, as they did this time last year.  We put Daisy's pie in the freezer to be baked for Thanksgiving.

She's been crafting up a storm lately.  You may have seen her fingerknitting obsession or her interesting take on Thanksgiving turkeys.  She also decided to do some of the activities in the Klutz sewing book.  This was completed, from cutting out the pattern to finishing with floss, without any help from me (except for knotting the thread occasionally):

Isn't that the cutest little mouse?

Ballet continues with a ramping up of Nutcracker rehearsals.  Oy.

I attended a homeschooling "teacher in-service" night this week, with workshops on topics ranging from early elementary language arts to the college process.  I didn't really learn anything new, just looking on the few hours as a networking possibility.

The best of the week(s): the ability to adapt Daisy's schooling to a destroyed schedule.  Even on the absolute worst days, we've done history and math and she's read and read and read.  And <drumroll please> Older Brother finally submitted a college application!!!!!!!!  He swears the rest will be submitted by the end of Thanksgiving weekend.  I sure hope so as I don't think I could take this stress much longer...

The worst of the week(s): Mike's complicated recovery, duh, followed by sleep deprivation in both of us and a mysterious rash on Older Sister's face.  Just back from the allergist now---possiblity an eczema flare or something viral.  I would like to go a few days without a trip to a doctor or to the pharmacy!

Looking ahead to next week:  Thanksgiving!  We're hosting as usual.  Daisy keeps adding desserts to my meal plan---if she had her way, we'd have 4 different types of pumpkin pie, her apple pie, a cheesecake tbd, a spice cake and cookies.  For 13 people!

I hope you all have an enjoyable weekend, leading to a fabulous holiday :)