We have been very consistent with completing our school work, all the math and language arts lessons were completed every day. Andre switched in the new year his spelling, grammar, and writing curriculum and so far we are both very pleased with the change. He is now back to using Growing with Grammar, which we feel is a better and complete curriculum than the Gage Language Power. When I was ordering his grammar, he noticed that they also offered spelling "Soaring with Spelling and Vocabulary" and writing "Winning with Writing" at his level now and after checking it out further, we decided to try those as well. He has done well with the spelling so far and the writing is interesting for him and gives him more practice than the assignments from Lightning Literature (which he still doing too).
In other subjects, we have learned about animal classification, cnidarians, worms, and echinoderms. Celeste and Andre are working with the same curriculum and we are all enjoying this one. R.E.A.L. Science Odyssey has been a winner in our family this year! I add library books and internet links to our lessons and we complete the labs suggested. I have found that this curriculum has been helpful in helping Celeste discover the field of life science and for Andre, it has been a great review.
A couple of notable links we visited related to what we studied were (we were very interested in jelly fish and in starfish!):
Monterey Bay Aquarium Jelly Fish Animal Guide
National Geographic Kids - Jellyfish (check out the video)
Jellyfish colouring page
For starfish, we enjoyed watching a few videos on youtube, especially this one:
Starfish eating
We will be doing the lab part of our worm study in the spring, when we can find them. We did read a couple of library books about them, and enjoyed Yucky Worms by Vivian French especially. You can see inside the book here.
In ancient history, we studied Greece, Crete and the Minoans, and we are now listening to the Tales from the Odyssey by Mary Pope Osborne. We found this seven disc set at our local library and we have all enjoyed this.
In world geography and cultures, we were also in Greece last week! We tasted Moussaka, an entree made with eggplants and ground lamb or beef (I used turkey).
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| Moussaka straight out of the oven! |
This week, in geography, we studied Italy. We used the Enchantment of the World book and I found a great book of old Italian tales retold by Domenico Vittorini called The Thread of Life. We also used google maps to "visit" Venice and another area of Italy where I had spent some time vacationing with a friend and her family many many years ago!
Last Monday (23) marked the start of the Chinese New Year. We found this page interesting Chinese New Year for Kids and a friend on facebook shared a page with gorgeous photos of the celebrations.
Canadian Home Learning is now on Google+ ! You can find the link on the left side of the blog. I am keeping the facebook page as well. I have been on Google+ for a while now, but haven't used it a lot yet! I have been quite busy over at Pinterest (that's quite addicting!!), you can also find the link on the left. I have pinned many links related to homeschooling, I have tried to organize them efficiently. All of them start with "learn" then the subject. Let me know if you use either Google+ or Pinterest by leaving a comment!
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| Some of my Pinterest boards |
You can follow other weekly wrap-up posts at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers.
Moussaka....mmmmmm.....
ReplyDeleteSounds like a great week! How do you like the Mary Pope Osborne version? - I was eyeballing it but undecided.
ZOMG, KITTY!!!
ReplyDeleteOK, that's the first thing I noticed. Heh. Hmm, moussaka sounds interesting. The only Turkish food I had was living in Korea (oddly enough) - so delicious. I wish I could remember what it was. It wasn't kebab, but it was some sort of take-away that you could eat with your hands, while shopping in Itaewon.
Anywho, the point is, I'd probably enjoy moussaka. ^.^
WE love Moussaka at our house!
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