Weekly School Summaries - Antarctica (May 7-18)

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Tenor's Handwriting for week 31

One more week, one more week, one more week, one more week! (Shouted while jumping up and down gleefully!) We only have one more week of school left. Wow!!! There were times I wasn't sure we would finish the year and still be alive! We're so close! God is faithful, and we've only got one week of work left!
Here's what we did the past 2 weeks:

Math: Back to our regular schedule. Tenor had 4 days of math lessons and 1 day of computer math. Soprano had 3 days of lessons last week and 2 lessons this week since we're almost to the end of Saxon Math 2. The other days she practiced flashcards for multiplication or subtraction and played math games on the computer.

Reading and Language Arts: Soprano finished reading "The Little House in the Big Woods" from 'Across the Centuries'. She wrote a story about what it would be like to live in a time with only lanterns and candles, and did a patchwork math worksheet. She also had a couple evaluations and will finish with a final evaluation next week.

She's doing well in her third Phonics book and is almost done. She's working on synonyms, antonyms, and homonyms. In English, she's working on alphabetizing and synonyms. Don't you love it when 2 separate subjects line up with the same thing? Spelling and handwriting are continuing well. 

Tenor continued with his 'A Reason for Handwriting C'. He got back to work in his writing workbook with persuasive letters.

He finished 'Helen Keller' from 'Across the Centuries C Level 2', and began his last book of the year, 'The Family Under the Bridge'. He did some vocab work, a worksheet about descriptive words, and did a few evaluations. English (synonyms and antonyms, like J) and Spelling (Rod and Staff Level 4) are going well. 

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

Tenor is doing extra lessons for the next few weeks to finish the entire Elementary Spanish program this year.

Phys Ed.: Same as before... they're doing Tae Kwon Do each week but that's been about it. It's finally nice enough for them to play outside so they're out riding bikes, shooting baskets, and being total daredevils on scooters. I'm so thankful we live on a cul-de-sac!

For My Father's World, we're off to another continent. These past few weeks, we've been studying Antarctica. 

Bible: The past two weeks included:
Reading about Samoa and Iceland
Reading Matthew 27:31-28:20
Memorizing Matthew 28:18-20

Geography:

Things we did included:
Filling out our passports to travel to Antarctica (no flag to add though because Antarctica doesn't have an official flag) 

They did create their own version of what Antarctica's flag could look like.
Tenor incorporated flags from different countries that have scientific bases there. He also put in 2 penguins and 2 norwhals. Soprano put a penguin on an ice floe and added some water since it's surrounded by water.

Reading about Antarctica and comparing it with the Arctic. I found a printable Venn diagram that I had the kids write their observations on.

 

Illustrating notecards for iceberg, crevasse, glacier, and peninsula.

Taking a geography post-test to see what they learned from this year. They both did a fantastic job. T only knew 14 out of 105 countries at the beginning of the year. He was able to label 111 countries at the end. J only knew 1 country (the USA, which is good I guess) at the beginning of the year. On the post-test, she labelled 92 out of the 105 countries that we learned.

Other stats:
Tenor knew 21/22 studied capitals; all the continents, all the oceans, and identified 17 other elements (seas, mountains, rivers.)

Soprano knew 19/22 of the capitals we learned this year; all the continents, 3/5 oceans, and identified 2 other elements. That was working from pure memory. I think they would have gotten everything if I had given them a list of all the countries and capitals we studied this year.
If you do MFW and are worried about a 2nd grader tagging along and learning anything, don't be! :)

Tenor did 5 of the Antarctica pages from World Geography. We had one head-scratching moment... our 'Climate of Antarctica' worksheet has the answers printed on it. Tenor didn't seem to mind much. :) Soprano finished the Arctic/Antarctic Animal pages from The Complete Book of Animals. She did the whole book and loved it!

Science: We had a few pages from the Living World Encyclopedia again these past two weeks. 

They read about polar regions and the Antarctic.

We also finished up with Properties of Ecosystems and did several experiments about penguins, icebergs, and glaciers.

 

Seeing how fat on a penguin helps to keep it warm.

Seeing how much of an iceberg is below the surface of the water.

To include some fun, we rented Mr. Popper's Penguins at the library and watched it during a family pizza night. It was really, really good! There are 2 words that they use ('sexy' and 'freakin') that I wasn't thrilled with but the rest of the movie was tame. (Considering Jim Carrey was in it, I was pleasantly surprised.) 

Tenor told us (through the whole film) that it didn't match the book but he was okay with the storyline changes.

Other MFW: 

Wee sing: review songs I let the kids pick their favorites: Hello to All the Children of the World, Zum Gali Gali, and Nani Wale na Hala.

Art: crystal water snowflake (Caution: this gets messy! We did it on a cookie sheet.) and sweet snow sculptures

Soprano made a 'J'

Tenor was making a science research base, I think.

To supplement, we read other books about Antarctica, the Arctic and penguins and borrowed DVDs from the library. One of the best DVDs was "Antarctic Antics" by Scholastic Storybook Treasury. It was based on the book of the same name. It was funny and the singing is fantastic. There's a Josh Groban sound-alike that sings a penguin love song. We also finished up Kingdom Tales.

So other than a geography vocab review (my doing, not MFW's), we're finished with My Father's World: Exploring Countries and Cultures. It was a wonderful curriculum this year, which makes us excited to do Creation to the Greeks after summer break!

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