Jedi had another really busy week with homeschooling. It was the 6th week completed for our school year (it looks like we’ll have 8 completed weeks before our local school districts start up for the year…not bad!) But, it’s not all books and labs this summer…Jedi gets lots of free time for playing and having fun, too…see?
Jedi working with Magnetos on a day off.
Jedi building a robotic duck from a kit
Aaaand....the duck can walk!
Making patterns with the pattern board
Art: This week in art, Jedi learned about shapes, and then the 3-dimension manifestation of shapes–forms. For shapes, he observed a scene outside, and then drew and cut out the shapes of the objects to make a collage. For forms, he created a 3-d paper sculpture of a zoo animal of his choice (he picked giraffe)
Working on his shapes collage--he was supposed to go outside and observe something, and then create paper shapes to represent those objects. He chose the mailbox and posts outside.
His scene
Jedi making his giraffe
Math: In math, we worked on place values up to 1000. We also worked on trading 10 10’s for 100 and 10 100’s for 1000. Jedi seems to be getting this fairly easily. Finally, we worked on adding long series of single digit numbers on the abacus.
Using the math cards to add with the abacus, and learning to change 10 10's for 100, and 10 100's for 1000.
Life Science: It was a busy science week for us. We worked on the muscular, heart, & circulatory systems over the past few weeks. We reviewed those systems again, and observed them with both the human torso model and with giblets from our dinner chicken. Jedi also watched some Bill Nye videos on human organ systems that I found in the library. We also began learning about the digestive system.
Working with the human torso model
After taking out all of the organs, this is what he found.
****WARNING….THE NEXT PICTURE HAS ORGANS OF A CHICKEN IN IT….SKIP IT IF YOU FIND THOSE TYPES OF THINGS GROSS OR DISTURBING***
We were also fortunate to have found the giblet pack inside a chicken that we rotisseried this week, so Jedi was able to observe a real heart (with it's chambers), liver, and gizzard.
We were talking about how long a human digestive track is by using a 21' long piece of yarn. On the yarn, we taped cards where he wrote his 5 favorite foods. Card 1 is at where the mouth is (3"), card 2 is the esophagus, card 3 is the stomach, card 4 is the small intestine, and card 5 is the large intestine.
Then, we counted how many times longer a digestive track is than Jedi...you can fit 5 Jedi's on the 21' long track, plus have a few additional inches left to go.
Watching Bill Nye videos
History: In history, we completed our unit on Ancient Mesopotamia. Jedi took his first ever history test, and scored 16 correct out of 17! He really enjoyed learning about Sargon and how Sargon conquered and unified Mesopotamia.
Writing: Jedi really really dislikes handwriting and spelling. Both of those subjects are extremely challenging for him, to the point of them being frustrating for him. This week, I came up with an assignment that made him excited to write, at least for awhile. Homeschool Creations (http://www.homeschoolcreations?.com/StarWarspreschoolpack.htm?l) had a Star Wars preschool pack available, and in that preschool pack were Star Wars puppets. I had Jedi cut them out, laminate them, and glue them onto popsicle sticks. Then I had him write a script for a puppet show, and my only instructions were that he had to use every character he had puppets for, and every character had to have a minimum of two lines in the script. Since I knew spelling would be a problem, I told him that after he wrote the script by hand, he could type it into the computer and we could work on editing in the computer (he’s still working on it…typing’s also a little difficult for him, but I’m pretty sure he hasn’t really learned typing yet). After we’re done editing his script, he’s going to perform it for the family.
Cutting out his Star Wars puppets from http://www.homeschoolcreations?.com/StarWarspreschoolpack.htm?l
Spelling: In Spelling, Jedi continued to work on alphabetizing the letters of the alphabet…he’s getting much faster with it now! We also worked on the short a, short i, and short 0 sounds for three letter cvc words.
Working on making CVC words
English: In English, we worked on comprehension questions with both fiction and non-fiction short essays. We discovered he has a very easy time comprehending fiction, but a very very difficult time comprehending non-fiction. But he’s also a fantastic reader when it comes to fiction! But it does show that he knows how to comprehend what he’s reading…he just needs more exposure to non-fiction! We also worked on the “WH” question words (where, what, why, when)
English workbook
Health: In health, we talked about family rules and why families have rules (safety, health, and comfort). I had Jedi choose one family rule, and then make a poster explaining the rule. He chose “we can’t watch too much tv”–his poster had to show why we have the rule (for his health), and what happens if you break the rule (an unhealthy body, being too tired, etc.)
Music: In music, Jedi continued to work on his piano playing. I haven’t showed him how to read music per say, but in his Alfred’s book, they start very simply by just reading the finger numbers. He learned to play a couple more short songs this week.
Misc: Since we went creeking and found crawfish recently, I decided to do some tie-ins this week. I found Jedi three worksheets. One practiced graphing, as it was a story about three people using crawfish as fishing bait. Jedi was supposed to graph the number of crawfish each person used. The second sheet was one where he was supposed to write three facts about crawfish. The third sheet was one where he worked on a crawfish food chain and food web.
Working on his crawfish graph
Barefoot in Suburbia 