Friday I read some more of Platt's Castle Diary and If You Lived in the Days of the Knights by Ann McGovern, E did math and had basketball practice. Saturday we went to the Chinese New Year Festival downtown, and E had a basketball game.
Today dawned grey and rainy and we didn't feel like school. E did her theory page for piano and some math, then we went to the IMAX and saw Blue Planet, which was pretty good and covered lots of earth science.
Showing posts with label weather. Show all posts
Showing posts with label weather. Show all posts
Monday, February 2, 2009
Thursday, October 9, 2008
34-36
Tuesday: In preparation for our camping trip next week, read It's a Hummingbird's Life by Irene Kelly. Then we went over some of the reasons people went West that were covered in Araminta's Paint Box, and I told them there were some people who went unwillingly, then read The Trail of Tears by Joseph Bruchac. It's a good thing for Andrew Jackson that he's already dead, or E would have his head! And former slaves went, too, for their own reasons, as we learned reading Wagon Train: A Family Goes West in 1865 by Courtni C. Wright. Spelling and math, and then I read The Tale of the Mandarin Ducks by Katherine Paterson. Very rainy--we recorded 1.5" at our Weather Station.
Wednesday: Piano lesson and library.
Thursday:Read Calendar by Myra Cohn Livingston and Apple Farmer Annie by Monica Wellington to T. Read some more of ...If You Traveled West in a Covered Wagon by Ellen Levine, and Wagon Wheels by Barbara Brenner. Spelling, and picked out Japan on the world map. Read Jim Haskins' Count Your Way Through Japan, The Stonecutter by Gerald McDermott, and Ina R. Friedman's charming How My Parents Learned to Eat. Then they colored Japanese flags and made little paper Japanese lanterns, and we went to mom's house for E's first sewing lesson. Currently E is reading on her own The Song of the Water Boatman by Joyce Sidman.
Wednesday: Piano lesson and library.
Thursday:Read Calendar by Myra Cohn Livingston and Apple Farmer Annie by Monica Wellington to T. Read some more of ...If You Traveled West in a Covered Wagon by Ellen Levine, and Wagon Wheels by Barbara Brenner. Spelling, and picked out Japan on the world map. Read Jim Haskins' Count Your Way Through Japan, The Stonecutter by Gerald McDermott, and Ina R. Friedman's charming How My Parents Learned to Eat. Then they colored Japanese flags and made little paper Japanese lanterns, and we went to mom's house for E's first sewing lesson. Currently E is reading on her own The Song of the Water Boatman by Joyce Sidman.
Monday, October 6, 2008
33
Busy day today. With T I read My Apple by Kay Davies and Wendy Oldfield and the ingenious The Turn-Around, Upside-Down Alphabet Book by Lisa Campbell Ernst. Then we read Japan ABCs by Sarah Heiman, The Terrible Eek by Patricia A. Compton, and I Live in Tokyo by Mari Takabayashi. After a break we read from ...If You Traveled West in a Covered Wagon by Ellen Levine and Araminta's Paint Box by Karen Ackerman, which manages in the course of an interesting story to cover many of the various reasons people had for heading west. After spelling and math we did an experiment to make a cloud in a jar, which I found in The Ben Franklin Book of Easy and Incredible Experiments from the Franklin Institute Science Museum and we are now the proud possessors of our own home-made barometer, which we learned how to build in How the Weather Works by Michael Allaby.
On her own, E's been reading The Ordinary Princess by M M Kaye, The Kid Who Named Pluto by Marc McCutcheon, and The Toad on Capitol Hill by Esther Wood Brady.
On her own, E's been reading The Ordinary Princess by M M Kaye, The Kid Who Named Pluto by Marc McCutcheon, and The Toad on Capitol Hill by Esther Wood Brady.
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
27-28
This week has been a mess with caring for my parents' (ailing) dogs and our neighbors' dog...but here goes:
Monday: Celebrated Johnny Appleseed's birthday (even though it was actually last Friday) -- read The Story of Johnny Appleseed by Aliki, and assigned E to read Who Was Johnny Appleseed? by Joan Holub on her own. I also baked an apple pie. This was meant to be a shared experience but, let's face it, peeling and coring a dozen apples lacks the allure of cooking a full multi-course Indian meal. So I did almost all of it myself, but for the eating of course! I read selections from the January '08 issue of Calliope magazine, "Spark Along the Indus", and E went through this neat interactive virtual adventure at Mohenjo-Daro. She did her math on the way to my parents' vet to pick up their doggies.
Today I read the chapter on India in What Your Second Grader Needs to Know by E. D. Hirsch Jr., and then Scott Russell Sanders' The Floating House. Then we made a model of a canal lock from Carol A. Johmann's Going West!: Journey on a Wagon Train to Settle a Frontier Town
(my advice: do the demonstration in the bathtub...it leaked) and I played and sang "The Erie Canal" which I found in From Sea to Shining Sea by Amy Cohn. After taking a break to take care of the neighbors' dog (during which T let him out and he ran away) I read How's the Weather? by Melvin and Gilda Berger, and gave E a weather map reading activity sheet I found, um, somewhere on the internet. After lunch, spelling and math. I was hoping to build a barometer with the kids this afternoon, but went out to catch the neighbors' dog instead. Sigh.
Monday: Celebrated Johnny Appleseed's birthday (even though it was actually last Friday) -- read The Story of Johnny Appleseed by Aliki, and assigned E to read Who Was Johnny Appleseed? by Joan Holub on her own. I also baked an apple pie. This was meant to be a shared experience but, let's face it, peeling and coring a dozen apples lacks the allure of cooking a full multi-course Indian meal. So I did almost all of it myself, but for the eating of course! I read selections from the January '08 issue of Calliope magazine, "Spark Along the Indus", and E went through this neat interactive virtual adventure at Mohenjo-Daro. She did her math on the way to my parents' vet to pick up their doggies.
Today I read the chapter on India in What Your Second Grader Needs to Know by E. D. Hirsch Jr., and then Scott Russell Sanders' The Floating House. Then we made a model of a canal lock from Carol A. Johmann's Going West!: Journey on a Wagon Train to Settle a Frontier Town
(my advice: do the demonstration in the bathtub...it leaked) and I played and sang "The Erie Canal" which I found in From Sea to Shining Sea by Amy Cohn. After taking a break to take care of the neighbors' dog (during which T let him out and he ran away) I read How's the Weather? by Melvin and Gilda Berger, and gave E a weather map reading activity sheet I found, um, somewhere on the internet. After lunch, spelling and math. I was hoping to build a barometer with the kids this afternoon, but went out to catch the neighbors' dog instead. Sigh.
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
22-23
Monday: 1st day of fall! We read: Fall by Ron Hirschi, and started looking at animal migration with Amazing Animal Journeys by Liam O'Donnell, and Wings of Light by Stephen R. Swinburne. I also gave them some fall-related mazes. We read Down Comes the Rain by Franklyn M. Branley, and E read Welcome From India by David Cumming to T. I read Rum Pum Pum by Maggie Duff and E had spelling and math.
Today: Read The 512 Ants on Sullivan Street by Carol A. Losi, How Do Birds Find Their Way? by Roma Gans, Why Do Leaves Change Color? by Betsy Maestro, Weather Forecasting by Gail Gibbons, and Monsoon by Uma Krishnaswami and The Gifts of Wali Dad by Aaron Shepard. Math and Spelling.
Today: Read The 512 Ants on Sullivan Street by Carol A. Losi, How Do Birds Find Their Way? by Roma Gans, Why Do Leaves Change Color? by Betsy Maestro, Weather Forecasting by Gail Gibbons, and Monsoon by Uma Krishnaswami and The Gifts of Wali Dad by Aaron Shepard. Math and Spelling.
Thursday, September 18, 2008
19-20
Wednesday: E had a really great piano lesson, then we went to Grandma and Grandpa's house. In the afternoon she read Toliver's Secret by Esther Wood Brady.
Today: We've added a temperature component to the Weather Station--Alan hung a big themometer outside our office window, underneath the eaves, so it's out of direct sunlight. We are graphing the morning and mid-day temperatures with bar graphs, and we'll overlay a line graph of the day's recorded highs as reported in the paper. Read Heat Wave at Mud Flat by James Stevenson, Feel the Wind by Arthur Dorros, and Twister by Darleen Bailey Beard. Then after a break we read Buddha by Susan L. Roth, Samsara Dog by Helen Manos, and Foolish Rabbit's Big Mistake by Rafe Martin. E completed some worksheets about the water cycle that I got from the Discovery Education website, and had a math and spelling lesson.
Today: We've added a temperature component to the Weather Station--Alan hung a big themometer outside our office window, underneath the eaves, so it's out of direct sunlight. We are graphing the morning and mid-day temperatures with bar graphs, and we'll overlay a line graph of the day's recorded highs as reported in the paper. Read Heat Wave at Mud Flat by James Stevenson, Feel the Wind by Arthur Dorros, and Twister by Darleen Bailey Beard. Then after a break we read Buddha by Susan L. Roth, Samsara Dog by Helen Manos, and Foolish Rabbit's Big Mistake by Rafe Martin. E completed some worksheets about the water cycle that I got from the Discovery Education website, and had a math and spelling lesson.
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
17-18
Monday: Watched two short video clips from Discovery Education about clouds and the water cycle. (We get this service free through our public television station) Then read India ABCs by Marcie Aboff, The Children of India by Jules Hermes, and Savitri by Aaron Shepard. E had a spelling lesson. After dinner she presented her interpretive dance of the life cycle of a flower, which was fun. That night after the kids were asleep, I put up a Weather Station in the hall. Right now it has a page for each day, with little pictures of the three main types of clouds (cirrus, cumulus and stratus) and the different types of precipitation and weather conditions (wind, snow, rain and sun). The pictures are velcro-backed so they can stick to the pages for each day, and the kids can put up the weather conditions for that day. We'll be adding to it as we get more into weather.
This morning (after playing with the new weather station!) we read We Hate Rain! by James Stevenson and Where Do Puddles Go? by Fay Robinson (I should say that E had already read this book and yesterday after viewing the videos, she ran into the kitchen to show T how to prove that air has water vapor in it (put a glass of ice water out and watch the condensation form). Then Water, Water Everywhere by Mark J. Rauzon and The Cloud Book by Tomie de Paola. After this we went outside to look at the clouds (and hang up laundry). The kids were having so much fun outside (our first beautiful fall day) so I let them play for a while. When they came back in, we got back to India with This is My Faith: Hinduism by Holly Wallace, Sacred River by Ted Lewin, and The Monkey and the Crocodile by Paul Galdone. We had a spelling lesson and a math lesson after lunch and then we went to the library. I also gave E Jinny Johnson's Maps and Mapping to read on her own.
This morning (after playing with the new weather station!) we read We Hate Rain! by James Stevenson and Where Do Puddles Go? by Fay Robinson (I should say that E had already read this book and yesterday after viewing the videos, she ran into the kitchen to show T how to prove that air has water vapor in it (put a glass of ice water out and watch the condensation form). Then Water, Water Everywhere by Mark J. Rauzon and The Cloud Book by Tomie de Paola. After this we went outside to look at the clouds (and hang up laundry). The kids were having so much fun outside (our first beautiful fall day) so I let them play for a while. When they came back in, we got back to India with This is My Faith: Hinduism by Holly Wallace, Sacred River by Ted Lewin, and The Monkey and the Crocodile by Paul Galdone. We had a spelling lesson and a math lesson after lunch and then we went to the library. I also gave E Jinny Johnson's Maps and Mapping to read on her own.
Monday, September 8, 2008
12
On Saturday we found one of the butterflies dead at the bottom of the cage, so we spent a good long while looking at various parts under the microscope, which was cool. On Sunday, we found another one dead so we decided it was time to set them free. It was really neat to see them fly out and really stretch their wings, and we saw a couple of them later at some of our flowers, so the kids didn't feel so bad about it.
Today we finished off life cycles reading Bobbie Kalman and Jacqueline Langille's What is a Life Cycle?, and I gave E a "homework assignment": she has to present or demonstrate the life cycle of an animal or plant or insect (but not the butterfly) in any medium she chooses, to be worked on in her own time, due Friday. I figure "homework" is kind of an oxymoron in homeschooling, but she will likely have such assignments some day, so I plan to throw one at her occasionally so she can get the hang of them. We also read On the Same Day in March: A Tour of the World's Weather by Marilyn Singer, and the rather long but beautifully illustrated Taj Mahal by Caroline Arnold. After her spelling lesson, she did the "A" page in her new cursive handwriting workbook, and after lunch she worked a page of math problems dealing with "addition with renaming".
Today we finished off life cycles reading Bobbie Kalman and Jacqueline Langille's What is a Life Cycle?, and I gave E a "homework assignment": she has to present or demonstrate the life cycle of an animal or plant or insect (but not the butterfly) in any medium she chooses, to be worked on in her own time, due Friday. I figure "homework" is kind of an oxymoron in homeschooling, but she will likely have such assignments some day, so I plan to throw one at her occasionally so she can get the hang of them. We also read On the Same Day in March: A Tour of the World's Weather by Marilyn Singer, and the rather long but beautifully illustrated Taj Mahal by Caroline Arnold. After her spelling lesson, she did the "A" page in her new cursive handwriting workbook, and after lunch she worked a page of math problems dealing with "addition with renaming".
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
8
Read Flash, Crash, Rumble, and Roll by Franklyn M. Branley and Sergio and the Hurricane by Alexandra Wallner, then Look What Came From India by Miles Harvey. Started on the War of 1812 with The War of 1812 by Lucia Raatma. That was all I intended to read today, but when we got to the part about the USS Constitution, E got very excited and told me all about the book she read on her own: The Story of Old Ironsides by Norman Richards. I was amazed at how much she remembered from the book! She wanted me to read it to her so I did. After lunch, she read a book to T: Angelina and the Butterfly by Katharine Hollabird, and had a spelling lesson. All our caterpillars have become crysalids and got moved into the butterfly habitat over the weekend. We also spent some time looking at a really fabulous huge stick insect on our screen door.
Thursday, August 28, 2008
7
Read some more of the Bergers' Where Did the Butterfly Get Its Name? and started weather with Weather Words and What They Mean by Gail Gibbons. Then Patricia Ryon Quiri's The Supreme Court. E had spelling and did a grammar page, and after lunch we went to the science center, where they have a new shark hatchery. They have backlit the egg sacs so you can see the embryos swimming around inside.
They also had a new tank full of jellyfish and a docent was there who let the kids touch a live starfish, spiny urchin, and sea snail.
They also had a new tank full of jellyfish and a docent was there who let the kids touch a live starfish, spiny urchin, and sea snail.
Friday, January 11, 2008
81
Well, today I decided to bail on my friend Jennifer, who wanted us to go with them to Park Day. But, we got a lot done, so it was good. E read Blizzard! The 1888 Whiteout by Jacqueline A. Ball, I read Terrible Storm by Carol Otis Hurst, and T wanted me to read Kevin Henke's Sheila Rae the Brave and Guess How Much I Love You by Sam McBratney. Then we read the Cherokee legend "Grandmother Spider Steals the Sun" in From Sea to Shining Sea by Amy L. Cohn, and Mounds of Earth and Shell from Bonnie Shemie's Native Dwellings series. We made "birch" baskets (out of paper), a craft I found in Laurie Carlson's More Than Mocassins. Then E did her math. After some Peep, and some lunch, we got back to work with What is the World Made Of? All About Solids, Liquids and Gases by Kathleen Weidner Zoehfeld, and we did a demonstration from 365 Simple Science Experiments by E. Richard Churchill et al, which used a box and some marbles to show how molecules move in solids, liquids and gases. We went to the library and got some books, and E made a birthday card for her basketball coach. Tonight she has basketball practice.