Learning Log 29

For science this week the kids learned about the Law of Conservation of Energy.  We did experiments where we watched energy transfer to one item to the next.  We built a pendulum and watched it swing, we dropped a smaller ball on top of a bigger ball and watched it bounce higher, and we watched some rub goldbers online.  We also learned much about Covid-19 and how it is infectious.
Adam went to wrestling Tuesday and Thursday and worked hard.  His goal on Thursday was to sweat, which he did.  He learned new wrestling moves as well.  Elsie, Kimball, and Anna all went to their piano lessons and string lessons.  They practiced really hard for their String Festival they participated in.  They also have an upcoming piano recital they are practicing hard for as well.

For Language Arts Anna started The Good and the Beautiful, reading and spelling out words with consonant blends and long and short vowel sounds.  Anna also worked on reading and sounding out words with the silent e and the ar blend.  She read a ton of books!  She says about 20 beginner books.  She is loving to read!  Anna listened to a book online called Story of Pilgrims for Children.  She learned a lot and discussed at our family book club as we discussed what we learned from our various readings about the pilgrims while we ate spudnuts.  Kimball started memorizing a poem called September by Edwina Fallis.  He practiced spelling words with qu, ar, and or.  He worked on using the correct homophone such as for/four and where/wear.  Kimball also worked on a set of spelling words that break regular spelling words.  He studies several paintings and wrote some sentences about them.  He read about 50 pages about the pilgrims, called Pilgrim Stories by Margaret Pumphrey and discussed with us at our book club.  Kimball also wrote several entries in his journal.  Elsie learned about commas in a series, and about all the rules to the silent E, when to double the letters s,f, and l,and how to apply them to her spelling.  She learned that not all books are equal, and read an essay about what makes a good book.  Then she started on a one paragraph essay on what SHE thought made a good book.  She read about 50 pages of Argonauts of Faith, which is about the pilgrims, and then she discussed with us at our book club as well.  Adam reviewed his letter sounds and started reading short, 2 letter words.  He also practiced his handwriting and did lots of handwriting workpages.    

For Math Anna learned about parallel, intersecting, perpendicular, horizontal, and vertical lines.  She did lots of math fact reviews, solving for the unknown and learning extra tricks to solve addition math facts.  She practiced counting by 2s and 10s and reviewed telling time on a face clock.  We discussed fact families and reviewed some subtraction facts as well.  Kimball did half of chapter 28, where he learned how to read and write in Roman numerals.  He also did some story problems and reviewed finding the area of a triangle.  Elsie did chapter 23, but she did everything wrong.  She was learning how to find the reciprocal of fractions and using that to divide.  She also was turning mixed numbers into improper fractions and dividing them.  She has a lot of work to do.  Adam learned how to read a calendar and practiced continuing patterns.  He learned the equals and not-equal, and greater than and less than signs.  He practiced reading and writing out number.

For Tech Kimball finished electrifying his town.  He used red stones and trap doors.  He also took a picture and turned it in. Elsie has spent hours trying to put electricity to her town, and she is almost done with it.  Her brother helped her find herself when she got lost in a porthole, which was exciting.