One month down! This means...a trip to Pizza Hut! We celebrate the completion of every homeschool month by pigging out at Pizza Hut. We're not big fans of fast food, but the kids LOVE it, so it's a nice reward for them. Our only other "reward" is going bowling, which is earned by completing five lessons in their Saxon math book and getting a grade in the 90's on their math exams (after every 5 lessons is an exam).
This week is our 17th week in Germany without Phil - a huge accomplishment, I think! We have weathered one-third of his total time away (400 days in all). I don't like to think about having 285 days remaining - it seems inconceivable - so instead we are celebrating the fact that we've stuck it out for almost 120 days.
And despite a bumpy start to our school year (my wallet getting stolen, having obligatory medical and business appointments during school hours, my getting sick this week, etc.) we haven't taken a single day off. I'm proud of us!
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CURRENT INDEPENDENT READING:
We're waiting for our book shipment in the mail, so this week the kids just read whatever they wanted to. It was nice for us all to decompress with some mind-candy like teen magazines, Archie comics, and crafts books. We all need fluff sometimes!
EDUCATIONAL MOVIE:
We watched a 1985 recording of A Midsummer Night's Dream with their Dad playing Bottom!!! Yes, Phil was very active in theater at that age (around 13), and he really hammed it up. The kids got such a kick out of it. Bottom's lines, I'm sure, are now indelibly imprinted on the girls' minds (and hearts) because they were spoken by their Daddy. And...it's just fascinating to see one's own parents at one's same age, isn't it? I can't imagine seeing my parents as children in video recordings.
Lvov is seriously interested in joining a theater group, so viewing a community theater production (with her dad acting) was a real inspiration. Now we've watched three different adaptations of A Midsummer Night's Dream, memorized parts of the play, and we're still reading it, little by little each day.
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Monday
MATH:
Today we took a break from our Saxon math to play Multiplication Bingo. The kids can't get enough of it!
SCIENCE READING:
We read a 30-page book, Evolution, by Andres Llamas Ruiz. It chronicles life on earth (with illustrations) from single-cell organisms to the first fish to vertebrates to amphibians to reptiles to dinosaurs to birds to mammals to early man, and then of course, to modern man.
This was fascinating, especially the part about reptiles being able to breed away from the water. They evolved in such a way that they could lay eggs that were filled with water, mimicking a water environment inside of the egg. Each egg was an ecosystem, a microcosm, unto itself. It seems very poetic to me. The girls were absolutely stunned at how little time mankind has been on earth compared to scorpions, sharks, turtles, alligators, etc. Yet we're so powerful, we lord over all other creatures.
HAND-ON SCIENCE:
We did Project 17 out of Janice Van Cleeve's Great Science Project Ideas: How Does Color Intensity Affect the Perceived Sweetness of Food?
This involves biology and behavior. The independent variable is the color intensity. The dependent variable is the sweetness of taste. The control was a drink with no sweetener.
We prepared 3 drinks - clear, pink, and bright red. Each drink had exactly the same amount of sugar dissolved in the water, so with our eyes closed, they would all taste identical.
But the kids noticed that the clear drink seemed the sweetest, and the bright red drink tasted the least sweet. We discussed it afterward, because I was perplexed. I hypothesized that the bright drink would seem the sweetest, because we associate bright red with sweetness. Ironically, because the girls expected the bright red drink to be the sweetest, they were a bit surprised to find that it wasn't as sweet as, say, red Kool-Aid would be. On the other hand, the clear water didn't look very tasty - it looked just like plain water. So when they drank it, they were shocked by its sweetness. It's a bit of a paradox.
BRAIN-TEASER HOMEWORK:
Figure out this teaser at Braingle.com
The second Lvov read this brain teaser problem (about the doors), she shouted the correct answer out. I thought it might have just been luck, but then she explained her reasoning to me and I was shocked that she could deduce all that in about one second. I sure can't!
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Tuesday
POETRY:
We listened to a recording of Frost reading The Road Not Taken and read along
SAXON MATH:
Akychame: chapter 49 review: squares, square roots, percents to fractions, pi, dividing fractions
SOCIAL STUDIES:
We had a discussion about Impressionists being a group of rejected Paris artists who decided to put on a "rejects" show, and who ultimately became very famous. We reviewed many examples of Impressionist art.
GERMAN TEXTBOOK:
We progressed in lesson one, studying the conjugation of the irregular very "sein" - to be. We also studied definite articles (noun gender) and a list of cognates.
LANGUAGE ARTS:
We worked on clarity in writing. Both girls chose a painting and wrote a one-page descriptive essay about it - the colors, the feeling, the layout, etc. Then they passed their essays to their sister to read. Just from reading each other's essays, without having seen the painting themselves, both girls sketched and painted their impressions of the artwork.
The finished product is testament to the writer's powers of description. This was a great exercise; not only was it fun, but it also forced the kids to be descriptive and to approach the paintings from many vantage points: proportion, color, mood, lighting, style of painting, etc.
Here is part of Lvov's description of an art nouveau poster ("The Blonde") by Mucha:
"This painting feels very orange. In the middle of this painting is the profile of a woman with orange hair. She is not smiling, and her eyes are closed. She has a tan cloth on her head with diamonds on it. Over her ear is a big circle like a plate with golden designs and studs on it - it looks like something you would find in a treasure chest. The lady is framed by a huge circle, with red dots all around it. Her orange hair flows out of the frame, curling. Behind the lady, the background has pink and tan designs."
Here is the original Mucha painting that she was describing:
Here is Akychame's interpretation, without having seen the artwork:
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Wednesday
SAXON MATH:
Akychame - I gave her a 20-question test on all of the material up to lesson 49, encompassing all of our reviews
Lvov - she needed no review today
POETRY:
We listened to a recording of Robert Frost's The Road Not Taken. We had a great time copying his thick accent as we read along with him. The girls also scanned this poem for rhyme scheme, which they observed is abaab. We were surprised at how simple these end-rhymes are: fair, wear, there. Wow. Robert Frost poems are pretty accessible stuff, not pretentious or academic at all. It's so simple. Of course there are many ways to "read into" it for hidden meaning or metaphor, but even so, it's simple stuff.
GEOGRAPHY:
We became familiar with major bodies of water in Western and Northern Europe, focusing on the main seas. We came up with pneumonic devices for them. For instance, the Ionian Sea is directly south of Italy's boot heel. It looks like Italy is about to step on the sea. The Ionian Sea is saying, "I owe! I owe!" (I-owe-nian Sea). Because the boot of Italy is the sea's landlord demanding payment, and because the Sea isn't paying, Italy gets so angry, it kicks the rock of Sicily like a tyrant (Italy's western shore is on the Tyrrhanean Sea, as is Sicily). Tyrant-anean Sea).
We make up all kinds of little stories like this. Our mental picture of Europe is teeming with folklore and legend - created entirely by pneumonic devices and silly associations. Another example: we were trying to memorize the location of the Adriatic Sea, on the eastern shore of Italy, but we couldn't come up with any catchy puns or word play. We thought about the eastern coast of Italy, and talked about how we're visiting Venice in October.
I was telling the kids about how Venice is slowly sinking into the Adriatic Sea (or the canals) and it hit me: if your house was in Venice, and started to sink, where would you run to? The attic! So Venice is on the eatsern side of Italy, and it is on the Adri-"attic" Sea! Now we totally have it memorized. When it comes time to fill in the eastern part of Italy on a map, we all scramble to the attic of our submerged minds for the answer.
HOMEWORK:
- Play one game of chess on computer
Akychame - piano lesson (1 hour) - Akychame's teacher said that she has never had a student progress as quickly as Akychame! She said that Akychame is coming along so quickly, she is never quite prepared for her (which isn't true, she's a phenomenal teacher).
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Thursday
GEOGRAPHY:
We did a capital city review, which was really fun. We were a bit rusty on certain cities, so we got creative. For instance:
Bern, Switzerland: What do you do if your land "Berns"? Switch-your-land!
Copenhagen, Denmark: How do you "Cope" with all of those "Dent-marks"?(Denmark is a really scraggly country, and actually looks dented all over - this was Lvov's pneumonic device)
Helsinki, Finland: If you're at sea, your worst nightmare would be to see many "Fins" - shark fins. You'd think, "Oh no! It would be Hell to Sink in these waters with all of these Fins around me!"
I have to give credit to my Dad, who helped me to remember all of the capitals of the United States. For example, Frankfurt, Kentucky:
Can-you-tuck a "Frankfurt" in your pocket? I remember it 25 years later, so there's definitely value in silly associations!
Here's Lvov drawing a map of Western and Northern Europe from memory, including major seas. My goal is for us all to be able to draw a political/geographical map of the world from memory. It's empowering to know one's way around the world, I think. Everything seems to make so much more sense when you know your world.
This is Lvov's completed drawing. Pretty awesome, just from memory.
SAXON MATH:
Further review for Akychame - dividing fractions by fractions
ADDITIONAL LEARNING TODAY:
Akychame - tennis lesson
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Friday
POETRY: We wrote the first 5-line stanza of a poem mimicking Frost's The Road Less Traveled. The rules were, we had to stick with the ABAAB rhyme scheme, the poem had to reflect a decision that we were conflicted about, and the subject had to be nature-related. The more limitations you lace upon a poem, the harder it is to write. By the time we had completed draft two of stanza one, we were up to our elbows in eraser debris!
Lvov's rough draft (stanza one):
An old man looks like he is gawking
at my friends and I shaking
We whisper, acting like he's stalking
now we're scared, we quicken our walking
the old man is still looking, taking our breath away.
Akychame's rough draft (stanza one):
I want to dance on the lake
to spin on my back but is it freezing?
Falling through would be a mistake
I better not spin for my own sake.
The lake is playing with me, teasing.
My rough draft (stanza one):
The park's barefoot path is laid with stones,
bark, leaves, and sand; my load lightened,
shoes in hand, a forest of bite-size pinecones
underfoot: strides of synapse-tripping koans.
My spine's bony path is awoken, enlightened.
GEOGRAPHY:
We did further review on the cities and seas of Eastern and Northern Europe. We looked at satellite images of Europe, which allowed us to see actual proportions and sizes of the countries and the geography. We're surprised to find that Scandinavia takes up so much space. It alone is as large as the main body of Europe, from Denmark and south down the boot of Italy. We're really getting familiar with Europe. It is so fun to learn along with my kids, making mistakes and eventually learning.
When we draw our maps from memory, we exchange maps and correct each other's work - the girls always find just as many mistakes on mine as I do on theirs - but I think it's so important that they see me being interested and curious, and wanting to learn even though I'm a grown-up and I don't have to learn this stuff.
ROSETTA STONE ONLINE:
They both reached Lesson 2 of Unit 1 (of Level 2) - scoring in the 90's
CHESS:
They both played one game of chess against the computer - I have moved them up a level because it has become too easy for them
HOMEWORK:
Work on updating history timelines
