Weekly School Summaries - Brazil (October 31-November 11)

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Time really does fly. It's amazing how quickly the days can go by when you're in the midst of living life. (Okay, so I'm not a real deep-thinker there but it does amaze me that time felt so slow when I was a child and teen and now that I'm quickly approaching mid-life, it goes by faster and faster every year. I don't mind.... each day is merely one day closer to Glory!)
However all that time flying did not allow for a school summary post last week so this is a double.

Here's what we did:
Math: Similar to usual. Tenor had 5 lessons each week and is venturing into the land of decimal points in his Saxon 5/4. Soprano had 4 lessons each week and some time to play computer math games. We got to use the scale that came with her manipulatives. She loves her math, which I love.

Reading and Language Arts: Soprano finished Owl Moon  from 'Across the Centuries' with 2 evaluations, then started on The Ox-Cart Man. She had an order-of-events worksheet, a crossword, and a matching activity. She also got to 'fill' the Ox-Cart Man's wagon with little pictures of what he took to market.

Soprano is progressing well through her Phonics book. I can see a difference in other areas of her work (sounding out words, spelling) too. I'm glad we decided to focus some more time on phonics review.

Her English work is out-of-this-world better! Hardly any errors, no tears, and we're caught up to one lesson a day. She doesn't complain about doing it and I think it's really starting to sink in. Again, I can see the evidence in other areas (correct end punctuation, capital letters only where they're supposed to be.) One lesson a day is the perfect amount of work for her too.


We introduced the new spelling curriculum and again, no tears! Love it! We're using Rod and Staff for both kids. I'm speeding it up a bit so that we can try to still finish the book by the end of the year so in the past 2 weeks, she's finished 4 lessons instead of the suggested 2. In another week or so, when the word lists get a little more challenging, I'll back it down to 1 lesson per week.

Tenor continued with his 'A Reason for Handwriting C' and 'Writing Strands.'
Tenor is continuing with The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe from 'Across the Centuries C Level 1.' He's now read through chapter 15, had 3 more evaluations, and finished some worksheets that will be turned into a mini book at the end of the unit. .'

He's doing well with his English (Rod and Staff Level 4) and seems to like the new Spelling (Rod and Staff Level 4.) The lessons are short and to the point which is nice.

Electives:
Typer Island for their typing instruction and continuing with SOS Elementary Spanish.

They wrapped up our study on germs with a review worksheet and then sang a silly song about dental hygiene for health.


Phys Ed.: A little bit of bike and scooter riding on the warm-ish days we had and some soccer playing to coincide with our study of Brazil and South America.

Bible: The past two weeks included:
Reading about the Yanomamo, Animism, and Quechua
Reading Matthew 6:19-8:4
Memorizing Matthew 5:15-16
Reading about Nate Saint

Geography:
Reading about the People and Places, Nature, Farming and Industry of South America

Coloring the Brazilian flag and writing down interesting facts about it

Illustrating notecards for jungle, delta, swamp, and marsh
And of course, playing the geography game with both North and South America.

Tenor's South America pages from World Geography were Islands, Climate, Products and Resources, Animals, Population, Cities, Languages, and Religions.

Science: Discussion on the Amazon and Amazon River, the rain forest floor, and rain forest animals
The kids aren't really "getting" the whole idea of a nature walk or nature study so since they're spending time illustrating facts from the Living World Encyclopedia, I'm skipping it altogether. We might reintroduce it next year.

Soprano completed all of the South American animal pages from The Complete Book of Animals.

We also did the 2 experiments from Week 11. The younglings had a blast piling books up on the eggs. Their original guesses were that the eggs would hold either 1 pound or 5 pounds. We ended up with 10 pounds of books before the eggshells finally gave way. Wow! I was just thrilled that we did 2 experiments that actually worked.

How many more can we add?

This experiment is all cracked up.

Egg and Feather Experiment Sheets

Other MFW: Wee sing: Mi Chacra and Los Pollitos
For more music, I found the Brazilian Channel on Pandora and played that in the background during school time.
2 more substitutions for art. Since we read about the Yanomamo people in Week 10, we created headdresses that week. Week 11, we used toilet paper tubes and water ice cups to make Brazilian maracas. I found the instructions here: http://www.ehow.com/info-tip_8307167_craft-activities-brazil-kids.html

An angry Yanomamo

A Yanomamo that has accepted Jesus

Maracas

To fill in a bit, we did read some other books about various South American countries and borrowed DVDs from the library about Chile, Guatemala, Peru, and Argentina (Countries of the World series by Schlessinger Media.) I also found two Eyewitness DVDs, one on the rain forest and one on the jungle. They also made some lap books using resources from Homeschool Share and animal pictures I found online.

The cover

Opening it up

The inside of Soprano's

Since Brazilian cooking isn't my thing, we're finishing up our week with a family movie night and watching Fern Gully: the Last Rain Forest.


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at at http://discovertheirgifts.blogspot.com/.


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