What we are using

05 February 2010

WR19 - All about predators


This week, I'll start at the end. This morning when the girls went out to care for the hens, they found that a fox had been in the hen yard. We've raised poor Goldie since she was a day-old chick. She was our best layer providing us with a big, brown egg everyday. We spent the rest of the morning, looking for and identifying the tracks of the predator using our trusty Scats and Tracks book. We decided that it must have been a red fox then we talked about the food chain, foxes, predators and prey. Next, we worked on ideas for protecting the remaining hen, since we are sure the fox will be back now that he knows where to get an easy meal. I couldn't think of a way to transition this day into a school day in the little time that was left before I went to work, so school was canceled for the day.

The rest of the week was much more predictable.

CC worked her way up to the next bridge in Life of Fred. She also started working on Problemoids - these are terrific. We really enjoyed the mathematical thinking involved in solving them. And she has mostly mastered her multiplication facts - she only missed three from the whole flashcard set. In addition to all that, she did Saxon lessons three days this week. I think we are spending close to two hours per day on math now, and she is enjoying math more than ever.

French is awesome. CC is still deeply enjoying Rosetta Stone, but she is starting to ask more questions about why things are the way they are. I finally ordered a grammar based French program to supplement. Again, she spent two hours a day for three days on this (not counting working on it over the weekend last week). She is scoring in the 90's for all of her evaluations and is quite happy to have some work that is graded.

LB is still enjoying working in the ETC online although I'll be happy when she moves past those short-a words. She and I volunteered at CC's school this week, and she was able to see some of her "old friends."

Tuesday was almost completely devoted to art and nature.
After our 4 hours of real school, we had 4 hours of art classes between the two girls, and we spent a chilly couple of hours at the park feeding geese, mastering monkey bars and braving jumps onto and off of the merry-go-round. We experimented with getting on and off at different speeds and trying to stand up at various places inside the merry-go-round.

Besides all of that, we saw a one-person play, read the first four chapters of Grammar Island, giggled at Lewis Carroll, studied and tried to predict chain reactions with dominoes, discussed square numbers, pi and that illusive division by zero, enjoyed some Jataka tales and Hans Christian Andersen fairy tales, and tried to sing some songs in French. I apparently forgot history and am still looking for some magic solution for writing.

5 comments:

Mandy in TN said...

Oh, I'm so sorry about your hen. It was nice that you made it into an educational moment.

WildIris said...

Thanks for the link to Prolemoids. I've never heard of these before. I have 'em bookmarked for later.

Iris

Cyn said...

I'm so sorry to read about your hen! Also, a big thanks to the Problemoids link! Much appreciated.

laughinglioness.lisa@gmail.com said...

We lost some hens to skunks a couple of years ago- sorry to hear you lost a good layer and playmate! I'll be checking out Porlemoids, too! Loved reading about your week- and love the quote from Sunday = )

Liza Q said...

I am so sorry to hear about your hen! It's wonderful that you were able to take the rest of the day off, after such a productive week.

You asked me a question about French on my WR and I answered. Now I am off to check out First Start French!