Learning Log 13

For science this week the kids learned that potatoes originated in the Andes and they all looked at a potato and found the eyes in it that could propagate.  Then we cut a couple up, stuck a stick through it and put them in some water to see if we could get them to propagate.  They also watched a YouTube video of Mark Rober about the importance of trees and how much carbon they consume.  They learned how they are trying to plant trees using drones.  They are excited to donate some money to plant 20,000,000 trees.

For music, Elsie, Kimball, and Anna went to their piano lessons and their Bows and Bridges music school.  Anna is learning how to play Cuckoo on the piano.  Kimball is learning how to play Allegretto on the cello and is practicing making good sound when he plays Long Long Ago.  Elsie is on her last song in the book for violin.  She is working hard on Gavotte so she can move to book 2.  She is also polishing up The Happy Farmer.  
Adam played a Zombie game with his siblings and neighbors (like tag).  He also walked all over the neighborhood as he went trick or treating.  

For Language Arts I read The Witches by Roal Dahl to my kids.  We got half way through, and all the kids were entranced.  It inspired Anna to dress up as a true witch for Halloween.  Elsie dressed up as a half-blood from Percy Jackson.  Anna went over the blends sm, sp, sc, sk, sw, st, fl, gl, cl, and bl.  she read several short stories and some directions on how to build something.  She also went over some sight words and read a book called Lucky for Me.  She also reread the book Slim Sam to herself and then to me as well.  She practiced writing her entire name, first, middle, and last.  She also did some copy work.  Elsie read the 3rd book of Harry Potter again (making it the fourth time this month). She also read 10 pages from The Hobbit and about 80 pages from The Princess Academy.  She wrote a couple chapters in her story about bears and 1 chapter in her story about dragons.  Adam reread the book Cat from the previous week and learned the blends ad and am.  He reviewed previous blends by reading words and by playing kinesthetic games to help.   He also read the short stories "Dad Had A Cat" and "Pam and Sam".  He practiced writing his first name as well as he learned to write J and e for Jeppson in his last name.  he had to practice the "e" lots. Kimball read 2 chapters of Harry Potter.  He also wrote in his journal and did some copy work. 

For math Adam learned to count by 2s in chapter 17.  We also sang a song that helped him learn how to count my twos, and he reviewed some addition facts he had already learned.  We realized Anna was behind on a bunch of math tests, so she spent the week taking a bunch of tests (5).  To do so she had to review her addition and some subtraction facts as well.  Elsie did chapter 13 where she learned how to find the prime factors of numbers by either using a factor tree or by repeated division.  She also learned how to simplify a fraction by finding all their prime numbers.  She reviewed adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing fractions and then she simplified her answers.  Elsie also reviewed long division, for example 9442 divided by 53, and did several related problems.  Kimball finished chapter 16, learning to divide with a remainder, and took the test.  He also did lots of story problems and did some review adding, subtracting, and multiplying.
For tech, the Elsie and Kimball worked on mapping out their rooms for their minecraft assignment.  They mapped their rooms and and then scanned, uploaded, and turned in their assignment.