Learning Log #12

This has been another week of sickness for our family - this week it was the stomach flu!  6 out of the 8 of us all got sick at the same time.  We were a pathetic lot.  Wednesday was the worst, but wiped everyone out for many days.  Today was the first day in 10 that my kids have finally gotten to play with the neighbors.  I hope we are done with sickness and can enjoy the holidays.
Despite being sick, we still managed to get our school in.  We even made it to all the classes and lessons we were supposed to, somehow. 
For math, Peter finished chapter 21 and took the test.  I corrected about 10 previous tests of his (I was way behind), and we spent a couple days going over those tests and making sure he understood everything.  Kimball finished chapter 18, except for the test, learning how to count by 8s.  He reviewed some addition and multiplication and did some story problems. Elsie starting on chapter 22.  She learned how to divide a one digit number into a 4 digit number.  She practiced estimating the answer first, and then checking her answer by multiplying her answer by the one being divided.  It was tedious work. Anna is waiting for her new math book to arrive, so she practiced building three digit numbers with her math blocks.  We also reviewed counting and adding.  She really enjoyed doing a couple color by numbers. 
For Language Arts Peter started reading a book called The Mystery of the Periodic Table.  He read about 25 pages of it.  He wrote a short story about a tire that was disobedient to the car for his writing class.  He also learned about different types of poems, like limericks and haikus.  For his debate class he prepared for another debate on the Olympics.  Elsie was quite sick for most of the week.  She loved to listen to me read The Little Princess to her.  She started the book The Railway Children, and read about 30 pages.  She also started reading Little Britches, and read 70 pages of that.  She also did a couple pages of handwriting.  Kimball read from his Climbing Higher book, and read about 20 pages.  He also did a couple pages of handwriting.  Anna learned that she could read her Dash into Reading books all by herself!  She read 5 or 6 of those as review, and then she reread the last one outloud to me, Six Kits.  Everyone enjoyed listening to me read an abridged version to Pilgrim's Progress outloud.  We had several great discussions and learned what an allegory is.
For Science, Peter went to his Forensics class and learned more about finger printing.  The class was set up into stations where they practiced taking finger prints, pulling finger prints off objects, and matching finger prints.  He learned the art to the science:).  He also learned that there are 9 different types of finger prints.  Peter, Kimball, Elsie, and Anna learned science from a youtube channel called Wired.  We learned how to build the paper airplane, "Susan" (which is the model of the airplane that holds the Guinness Book World Record for longest flight) from John Collins.  He taught us how to overcome drag and gravity using lift and the center of gravity on the paper airplane.  We also learned more about pendulums, that a good paper airplane will work as a pendulum, with its wings and its bottom weighing it down.  We built lots of different types of paper airplanes using what we learned and went to a gym to see which technique worked the best for us.  It was really fun.
For Peter's tech class, he switched from JavaScript to Minecraft this week.  He built a spaceship in Lava Land and also a house in Creator.  He is having a fun time exploring.  He still needs to turn in his creations.   For business, Elsie, Kimball, and Anna and I had a discussion about how our values and integrity will shine through the products or services that we sell.  We discussed how that works, and why having good character will create loyalty to the people that we sell to.  I printed off some questions about their purpose for their business and they answered them in their business journals.
For music, all the kids were miraculously able to make it to their lessons on Tuesday and Thursday.  Although there wasn't as much practicing this week due to illness, they still learned and practiced a bit.  Elsie is really excited because she is now working on putting both hands together for Musette, which is the last song of the book.  She is working really hard at polishing her songs up and passing the book off.  Peter is working on new Christmas songs for the viola, and on the duets and A Short Story for the piano.  Kimball also got a Christmas song for the cello and is working on putting both hands together for his song in piano.  Anna is really excited because she learned how to play Twinkle Twinkle little Star all the way through on both the piano and violin.  She is having fun fine-tuning those.
That about wraps it up!