Planning for next year (6th grade)

It's hard to believe I have to plan already for our second homeschooling year.  It seems like I just finished planning for this year!  Some subject are all planned, one subject is purchased, but others are still uncertain.

First the planned:

Math

• Art of Problem Solving Introductory Algebra (website), most likely only the chapters that correspond to traditional Algebra 1 (I think to around chapter 15 or 16)
• finishing up Ed Zaccaro's Challenge Math (though we might finish this year)
• continuing with competition math books such as Math Olympiad Contest Problems Vol. 2 and Competition Math for Middle School
• continuing with Patty Paper Geometry
• Math Olympiad with the homeschool group
• I will investigate the possiblity of MathCounts.

Science

• Continuing with CPO Science, Daisy will use CPO Life Science.
• I'll teach her botany from my class resources. 
• Science Olympaid (division B) with the homeschool group

History

• K12's The Human Odyssey Vol. 2: Our Modern World 1400-1914  (purchased!)
• Oxford University Press series The Medieval and Early Modern World (library)
• other library resources including but not limited to Calliope magazine issues, biographies, documentaries on DVD, and historical fiction

French

• We will finish  So You Really Want to Learn French Book 1  from Galore Park (we're learning French together).
• We will start Book 2.
• I will try to track down some French language stories/books not written for an early elementary audience...

And the uncertain:

English/Language Arts

• vocabulary: Sadlier-Oxford Vocabulary Workshop B and perhaps Vocabulary Workshop C
• grammar:  ?????  continue with Voyages in English/Exercises in English ?????
• writing:  in search of a formal writing program.  Will check all sources in person at the Northeast Homeschool Convention in June.

The Non-Academic

• ballet
• flute---I need to find an ensemble that we can afford and that doesn't meet on Saturdays (ballet conflict).
• art---all local art classes for homeschoolers are scheduled for mornings, which I keep sacred for schoolwork (unless it's my monthly coffee with my friends haha).  I think I might get Artistic Pursuits for next year.

College news for The Boy

The life of a high school senior applying to college is rush, rush, rush, followed by wait, wait, wait.  The waiting has ended this weekend with two acceptances in the mail:  William and Mary as a Monroe Scholar and American University with a Presidential Scholarship of $20,000.  Congratulations to Jamie!  Hard work does indeed pay off.

Back to waiting----for the aid letter from our state school and news from two other universities...

Our 26th week! March 7-11

We can almost pretend that it's spring :)  The grass is greening, there is a red haze in the woods from the swelling maple buds, robins visit our yard during the day, and the witch hazel around the corner is in bloom!

School went well this week, despite having to adjust our schedule for my monthly coffee with friends (Daddy wasn't available to teach so Daisy took her books and work to her little cousin's house for a few hours) and the very last Math Olympiad test of the year.

I finally typed up the Human Odyssey Vol. 1 and The World in Ancient Times / The Medieval and Early Modern World schedule we've been using this year.  It's found in a separate page here on the blog---check the top bar for the link.  I'm going to add the supplemental resources we've used as well, but those probably won't be added until later this coming week.

The school work wasn't very photogenic this week.  My apologies!

Math
Daisy has finally hit the first roadblock of her life in math----solving inequalities using multiplication and division.  The concept of having to flipflop the inequality sign was apparently mindblowing.  We will spend Monday on additional problems until she totally gets the concept. 

She did some ratio and proportion problems from her competition math books on Wednesday and Thursday.  Math Olympiad ended with cookies brought by other kids.  She informed me that next year she would be providing the treat one month.  I was asked by the Math Olympiad coordinator to assume leadership next year but I had to decline.  I cannot in good conscience sign the Statement of Faith required by all in leadership and told her so.  Oh well.

Science
We finished Chapter 9 (Earth and Time) and moved into Chapter 10 (Inside Earth) this week.  On Monday, we learned about using tree ring data to date trees, and to understand climate, ecology, and past civilizations.  Daisy completed the chapter activity on relative and absolute dating.  Tuesday was the Chapter 9 assessment.  Wednesday was a full science day:  Investigation 10A using balls, fruit and a boiled age to create models of the earth; Bill Nye "Earth's Crust" dvd; and investigating Mount St. Helens pre- and post-1980 eruption.  Thursday Daisy read and discussed the first section in Chapter 10 (Sensing Earth's Interior), learning about p-waves, s-waves and seismology.  Then Friday we woke to the news of the earthquake in Japan and resulting tsunami---------that became science for the day.

History
The week Daisy completed the study of the medieval Islamic world with the expansion of the empire to the year 1000(ish).  She learned about Islamic scholarship, mathematics, medicine, art and mosques.

Books used this week include The African and Middle Eastern World 600-1500, Avicenna (Ibn Sina) Muslim Physician and Philosopher of the Eleventh Century by Aisha Khan, and Mosque by David Macaulay.

I spent many hours this week researching fiction books for the medieval period.  Daisy prefers to read books with strong female protagonists, which complicated the search somewhat.  With the aid of wonderful posters on the logic stage subforum of the Well-Trained Mind forums, I've come up with a great list for the rest of the year.  Having an extensive library system to draw from is such a gift!

The rest of the schoolwork was really boring and I don't feel like writing about it lol.

Much free time was spent again perusing Steven Caney's Ultimate Building Book.  I think we'll have to add a copy to our home library.

Daisy is away camping with her Girl Scout troop this weekend.  They're working on "camp skills" like cooking in coals, in a box oven, and on sticks!  Daisy and Daddy packed all her gear into the smallest backpack.  Here she is trying it on:

Best of the week: science.  It was a nice hands-on-y week.

Worst of the week: I'm still not feeling 100% healthy.  Stupid cough.

Looking forward to: Pi Day on Monday, learning about medieval Africa, visiting the library multiple times to pick up all the items requested this week, and planting pansies!

Week of Feb 28-March 4 OR What we've been doing for the past months!

It is so nice to be back blogging!  I've missed this activity and missed reading about what my homeschooling friends have been doing :)

What happened here?

Teenagers played in leaves.

We hosted Thanksgiving, as usual.

Daisy spent hours creating gnomes and Gnomeville out of fabric scraps, beads and other goodies.

Nutcracker (no pictures--on the phone still, oops)

We held the traditional cookie decorating with the cousins.

Followed by the traditional Christmas morning top-of-the-steps photo.  Guess who had to be woken?

Followed by the traditional gigantic brunch, present-opening and dinner at Grandpa's.  (I'm in the red, btw)

Daisy's dearest friend and her twin visited from Georgia for several days of silliness around Daisy's 11th birthday.

And then it started to snow.  And the teens were off school.  A lot.

Older Sister turned 16 and we hosted a Mystery in the Library party for which the guests all dressed as characters from classic books.  I highly recommend Merri Mysteries!

And it snowed some more.  Yes, teens home from school.

And I was sick from early January until last week.

But what happened with homeschooling?

Math
--Challenge Math chapters on Area and Algebra
--from a pre-algebra text: powers and exponents, simplifying equations, solving multistep equations
--a few bits from Patty Paper Geometry
--contest math problems
--Math Olympiad competitions in December, January and February

History
Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome were the focus of our study from Thanksgiving through February.  This week we began our studies of the medieval world with the Byzantine Empire (Constantine and Justinian/Theodora) and the rise of Islam (the geography of the time, life of Muhammed and the basic tenets of Islam).

Ancient Greece sources used:
--K12's Human Odyssey Vol. 1 part 2 chapters 8-9, part 3 chapters 1-4
--Oxford Press The Ancient Greek World almost every chapter, I think
--Calliope magazine Oct 07 issue "Ancient Olympics"
--Calliope magazine May 06 issue "Persia Rise and Fall"
--Calliope magazine Jan 10 issue "Parthenon"
--Dig magazine March 08 issue "Alexander the Great"
--Black Ships Before Troy by Rosemary Sutcliffe  (as literature)
--The Wanderings of Odysseus  by Rosemary Sutcliffe (as literature)

Ancient Rome sources used:
--Human Odyssey Vol. 1 part 3 chapters 5-10
--The Ancient Roman World chapters 1-8,10,11,13,15,18
--Calliope magazine Dec 07 "Heroes of Ancient Rome"
--Calliope magazine Nov 05 "Rome's Master Builders"
--Calliope magazine Sept 05 "Buried by Vesuvius"
--Rome in Spectacular Cross-section by Stephen Biesty

And this week we used
--Human Odyssey Vol. 1 part 3 conclusion, part 4 introduction and chapters 1 and 2
--Oxford Press The European World 400-1450 chapters 1 and 3
--Oxford Press The African and Middle Eastern World 600-1500 chapters 1 and 2

Literature
After reading about poor Odysseus, Daisy switched over to mythology in preparation for the National Mythology Exam (which she took on February 23).  She primarily studied Greek mythology using D'aulaires' Book of Greek Myths and some internet resources, plus a study guide by the Mythology exam people.  As a fifth grader, she was only required to take the main portion of the exam and the Ancient Beginnings subtest.  She had decided early on to take the Norse subtest as well, so she studied from the D'aulaires' Book of Norse Myths.

Vocabulary
Sadlier-Oxford Vocabulary Workshop Level A units 1-9.  This series is/has been used by my teens, though only Levels F-H.  I'm hoping there's a good correlation between the S-O vocab and The Boy's pretty darn good ;) SAT critical reading score that will carry over to his sisters!

Grammar
Jeepers, I can't remember.  We haven't done "official" grammar since before I was sick.  Whoops.

Poetry
Michael Clay Thompson's Building Poems sections on stanza, simile and metaphor

Writing
After NaNoWriMo in November, she hasn't done any writing outside of history and science classes.  I think November took a lot of her and I don't know if she'll do NaNoWriMo next fall.

French
We're through Chapter 4 in Galore Park's So You Really Want to Learn French 1.  We haven't done any new French since mid-January though, as I was coughing way too much even to speak English for sustained periods of time.  We'll resume next week.

So what could be left?????  That's right, it's

Science!!!!!!

When last we left you, Daisy was studying Chapter 7: Oceans in CPO Earth Science.  She then moved into Chapter 8: Mapping Earth, for which we did Investigation 8A Topographic Maps (a picture FAIL, sorry) and skipped 8B as it required a group activity and some specific-to-CPO ocean depth diagrams I didn't feel like reproducing the week before Christmas.  Duh.

After Christmas break, we focused totally on her Science Olympiad events.  It was such a luxury to have the time during the day for studying and practicing as last year we had to do everything in the evenings and on the weekends :)  We spent between 30 minutes and 2 hours each school day from January 3 until the competition on February 12, reading library books (at one point we had 40 books checked out...), visting websites, watching DVDs, and experimenting in the kitchen.

Daisy participated on the local homeschool group's team.  They actually sent one team of fourth graders and two teams of fifth graders!  There were 52 teams total participating in this Division A Science Olympiad.  Her events this year were Chemistry Crime Scene, Food Science, Ocean Life and Estimation.

For Chemistry Crime Scene, she had to identify seven mystery white powders (baking soda, cornstarch, sugar, salt, plaster of paris, sand, limestone) and two combinations of two powders using three liquid reagants (water, vinegar, iodine) and a hand lens.  Then she had to match fingerprints left "at the crime scene" and determine through chromotography what marker had been used to write a note.  This was the most enjoyable event to help with! 

A chromotography afternoon:

The Food Science event was in a test format, with stations for each question.  The topics covered ranged from digestion to healthy eating to specific vitamins and minerals.  Having rocked Fruits & Vegetables as a fourth grader last year (first place) proved to be a great help.

Ocean Life was another test format but as a powerpoint.  There was a mix-up with the start of the event as the supervising teacher was ill that morning.  All that could be found were the actual powerpoint and the answer key but no questions.  Yikes!  The substitute actually made up questions as the powerpoint progressed.  Daisy wasn't really happy about that.

Estimation was the hardest to study for, in fact she only did a few hours total.  Another powerpoint test format, Daisy and her partner had to answer questions like "how many people, hand-in-hand with arms outstretched, would reach from the earth to the moon?"  

The result:

second in Chemistry Crime Scene and fourth in Food Science!

Yippee!

Next year Daisy will participate in Division B for middle schools (grades 6-8) on the state level.  The homeschool group usually does very very well in Division B, with their A team often moving on to Nationals.  Could you imagine?!

The day after Science Olympiad I read in the newspaper about  the Great Backyard Bird Count -----science for that week!  Armed with a checklist of birds likely to be seen in our area during February, a pile of field guides from the library, binoculars and a new feeder in the front yard, we practiced identifying birds prior to the count days.  Alas, we only spotted four different species during our 15 minute period on the Monday (Presidents' Day).  Perhaps the birds knew that the last snowstorm of the year would arrive just a few hours later?!

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  Another snow day.  No pictures this time of my beautiful Cercis canadensis 'Forest Pansy' (aka red bud) coated in snow.  I was so tired of it by February 22nd.

We continued with more birding the rest of last week.  I found a fascinating new library book Global Birding: Traveling the World in Search of Birds with amazing photos of fantastic birds.

Next school year, I think I'll have Daisy keep a notebook of birds she sees. Ornithology is often a Science Olympiad event ;)

Back to CPO Earth Science this week for Chapter 9: Earth and Time.  We conducted Investigation 9A Sedimentary Rocks and Relative Dating (soil-sand mix in the container):

The second picture didn't turn out so well, but there was another sand layer and a second soil layer on top of the first, below all the water.

Investigation 9B: Time and Tree Rings wasn't a photogenic lab, sorry.  It was fun, though!  We didn't have a microscopic tree cross-section slide nor a nicely cut cross-section of wood, so we just used google images for that part. 

So what's up for next week?  Solving inequalities, the last Math Olympiad competition of the year, the spread of Islam, medieval Islamic mathematics, sciences, and arts, a return to grammar and French, and moving on to Chapter 10: Sensing Earth's Interior with a Bill Nye dvd and Investigation 10A: All Cracked Up (modeling the earth with familiar items).

Have a great weekend!

Wordless Wednesday--March 2, 2011

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 :)

Not-much-adapting of the Global Winds and Ocean Currents lab (Investigation 7A)

Almost all the supplies for Investigation 7A are household supplies, so not much adapting was needed.

We used 4 clear plastic cups, 2 foam cups, 2 pipettes (called for 1 eyedropper and 1 pipette), salt, 1 tsp measuring spoon, smidge of cardboard, a pencil, staples and food coloring (the paste-type as that's what we own)-------in addition to hot and cold water, of course LOL

Salinity-dependent layering:
Daisy first made some green salt water.

We created a pouring stick by pushing the tip of a pencil through a small cardboard circle.  The cardboard was held under the liquid in the cup while plain cool water was poured down the pencil, so that no uncolored water splashed into the colored water.  I couldn't get a picture of this process as I was the pourer.  After the water was poured in, we could see two distinct layers simulating two ocean layers separated by salinity.

Then Daisy took a piece of foam cup and added staples, one by one, to it.  It took many, many stapes for the piece to eventually sink to the boundary between the two layers.  I didn't get a picture because my silly camera ate the batteries.  By the time I had changed them, Daisy had fished the foam piece out to add more staples so that it sank all the way to the bottom of the cup.

Temperature-dependent layering:
Using the pouring stick technique, Daisy combined cool blue water and hot red water to simulate ocean layers separated by their temperatures.

Creating an underwater waterfall:
Daisy began with cool water in a clear cup.  Hot, salty red water was mixed up in another cup.  She carefully filled a pipette and squeezed a layer of red water onto the surface of the cool water.

The red layer began to form tiny "waterfalls" within the clear water as the red layer cooled.  At first, the hot red layer was less dense than the cooler clear water but became more dense as it cooled.

Observing underwater springs:
We needed really salty water for this demonstration!

Daisy used a pipette to carefully release same-temperature blue water at the bottom of the cup.  The blue water traveled upward within the cup, simulating an underwater spring.  The blue water, being less salty than the clear water, was less dense and created a upper layer in the cup.

After 15 minutes or so, the layers of the underwater waterfall demonstration (red, third from left) had pretty much disappeared but all others remained long enough to show off to Older Brother after school.

To quote Bill Nye, "Science rules!"