Learning Log #39

This week we studied a smattering of things for science.  We learned about the healing properties of chickweed.  We learned what happens when the light goes off on an incubator with a robin egg in it (so sad, we won't expound).  Kimball watched a Mark Rober video on physics about Newton's laws, for every action, there is an opposite and equal reaction.  We also watched a Pompeii documentary and learned about how the volcano, Vesuvius, blew.  We learned about volcanry and archeology. 
The kids all worked on their language arts.  Kimball read the first couple chapters of Ben and Me, as well as the first chapter from the book The Apple and the Arrow (the story of William Tell).  He wrote an acrostic poem, took a spelling test, learned about open syllables, studied homophones, and wrote some opening sentences to stories.  Elsie read from the book Unbroken (young adult edition) and reread the book Restart.  She also started reading Little Men.  She wrote a couple poems, corrected them, and rewrote them in her poetry book.  Elsie also worked on the spelling rule of turning nouns plural by adding es or ies.  She read several poems by Eliza Lee Cabot Follen, learned about conjunctions and compound sentences with independent and dependent clauses, and learned about the 4 types of sentences.  She worked on diagramming several sentences as well.  Adam read several mini books (2 every day), and reread them.  He is practicing his fluency.  He practiced sight words as well, and reviewed the vowels.  Anna worked really hard at reading a chapter from the Book of Mormon reader every day.  She worked on understanding the difference between the homophones to, too, and two.  She worked on the br, tr, and dr blends, read two stories from her Level 1 reader, practiced reading fluency, practiced reading ing and ed words (and their different sounds), and wrote several sentences (either copied or dictated).  She listened to a short biography about Beatrix Potter as well and is excited to read her books.  Anna was stuck on the couch one day due to a bee sting on her foot, and read the entire day.  She read all the Good and Beautiful sets of books from box sets B, C, and D.
For music, Kimball, Elsie. and Anna practiced their piano and string instrument.  Elsie started on a hundreds chart for Happy Farmer on the piano and progressed on Bouree.  Kimball has learned most of etude on the cello, and nailed a new line in Chant Arabe.  Anna has continued to develop her songs as well.
Adam went along with the rest of the family to a bike park and tore the trail up!  He tried all the loops on his bike, and absolutely loved it.  He also went to the local track with his siblings and I and ran the 100 and 200 meters for time.  He learned about the long jump and also tried jumping his farthest into the sand pit.  We have had a lot of fun!
For math Elsie worked on solving for the unknown in equations with fractions and multiplication.  She practiced multiplying fractions, finding the area of circles, and finding the average.  She took the test for chapter 28 and started on chapter 29, converting fractions into decimals and percentages.  Kimball did chapter 3 of Epsilon and started on chapter 4.  He learned how to add and subtract fractions with a common denominator, and also how to create equivalent fractions, using manipulatives.  He also reviewed finding the perimeter of shapes and did lots of story problems.  Adam learned how to tell the hour on face clocks. He also reviewed subtracting numbers from 10 and other addition and subtraction math facts with worksheets.  Anna reviewed counting money, counting by 4s, and addition and subtraction problems.  She measured lots of things using centimeters and millimeters.  She also practiced line graphs and how to read information from them.  Anna reviewed all the mental math strategies she has learned and applied them to her tricky subtraction math facts.  Lastly, she learned how to add multiple numbers together in an equation. 
For tech, Kimball did 2 Minecraft assignments and turned them in.  He wrote a story about Minecraft and took pictures and turned them in.  He learned how to use the Story builder software and is excited to use it during the summer.  Elsie took pictures of her creations she made for her story and submitted those.  She also created her story on Story Builder, but then lost all the information somehow.  She did not have the time to redo it all.  She is excited to continue to play with Story Builder, however.