What We Studied

A flex week and a regular week all rolled into one post. I took to heart my November goal of Take It Easy. We have continued our activities, but I lessened the frequency of a few to slow everything down. It has definitely helped in the wake of world events this past few weeks. And an extra bonus: when the boys got sick during last week, we didn’t have too much that we had to cancel. We ended up getting ahead in our schoolwork allowing us to take off the entirety of Thanksgiving week.

Literature and Poetry

Arthur is primarily using Hearth and Story G5 for his language arts this year. We finished our current read aloud and moved onto the next one. This book is actually our coop book club selection for November. We needed to finish it by the first week of December, so I switched around our books to accommodate. We also covered more grammar and extra language arts assignments.

• Poetry for Young People: Carl Sandburg

• The Goblin’s Puzzle by Andrew Chilton

• A Rover’s Story by Jasmine Warga

Quentin is primarily using Blossom & Root G1 for his language arts this year. We will pull some elements from Build Your Library Level 2 and random books that we have around the house. We continued with our classic read finishing it at the end of the week. Perfect for a break for Thanksgiving.

• Poetry: The Alligator's Smile and Other Poems by Jane Yolen

• Poetry: Dinosaur Dinner (with a Slice of Alligator Pie) by Dennis Lee

• The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum

• Zoey and Sassafras: Gnomes and Sneeze by Asia Citro (Q independent read)

• Write Shop B

• Eggasaurus by Jennifer Wagh

• If Dinosaurs Had Hair by Dan Marvin

• The Long Lost Secret Diary of the World's Worst Dinosaur Hunter by Tim Collins (Q independent read)

Math

Arthur is using Singapore’s Math in Focus Course 1. Effectively this is Singapore’s 6th grade math text. Arthur finished a chapter on percents. We only have one more chapter of 1A left.

• Math in Focus Course 1 Book A

Quentin is using Singapore’s Primary Mathematics Common Core edition 2B and 3A. He started with the lessons in 2B. He finished the entirety of 2B last week. We switched over to our Financial Literacy G2 book. We should finish that book the week after Thanksgiving.

• Primarily Logic

• Singapore Primary Common Core 2B

• EM Financial Literacy G2

Social Studies

Arthur is using Curiosity Chronicles Early Modern History Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 this year. Arthur learned about Britain and Ireland focusing on the Glorious Revolution and the Act of Union. We also covered a Culture Corner about John Locke which dovetailed nicely into our co-op civics study. Because we suddenly had more home time because of sickness, we moved onto the next few sections of history. We covered a section about the Ottoman Empire and Russia (focusing on Peter the Great), a section about West Africa and slavery, and a section about the Caribbean including pirates.

• Curiosity Chronicles Early Modern History Vol. 1

• DK History

• DK Timelines of Everything

• DK Timelines of Everyone

• DK A Child Through Time

• A Pot O’ Gold: A Treasury of Irish Stories, Poetry, Folklore, and (of Course) Blarney by Kathleen Krull

• Lives of the Scientists: Experiments, Explosions (and What the Neighbors Thought) by Kathleen Krull

• The Twelve Dancing Princesses by Marianna Mayer

• Anansi and the Moss-Covered Rock, by Eric A. Kimmel

• Anansi and the Talking Melon, by Eric A. Kimmel

• Anansi and the Magic Stick, by Eric A. Kimmel

• Anansi Goes Fishing, by Eric A. Kimmel

• Anansi the Spider: A Tale from the Ashanti by Gerald McDermott

• I Lay My Stitches Down: Poems of American Slavery by Cynthia Grady

• If You Lived When There Was Slavery in America, by Anne Kamma

• Blackbeard the Pirate King, by J. Patrick Lewis

• A Pirate’s Life for She: Swashbuckling Women Through the Ages by Laura Sook Duncombe

• Sea Queens: Women Pirates Around the World by Jane Yolen

• Lives of Pirates: Swashbucklers, Scoundrels (Neighbors Beware!) by Kathleen Krull

• The Whydah: A Pirate Ship Feared, Wrecked, and Found by Martin W. Sandler

• The Golden Age of Pirates: An Interactive History Adventure (You Choose: History) by Bob Temple

• Pirate by Gail Gibbons

• How to Live Like a Caribbean Pirate by John Farndon

Quentin is using History Quest Middle Times with Build Your Library Level 2 as his main history curriculum. This week we covered a chapter about Great Zimbabwe and Ethiopia.

• History Quest Middle Times

• DK When on Earth?

• DK History

• DK Timelines of Everything

• DK Timelines of Everyone

• DK A Child Through Time

• Kingfisher Atlas of the Medieval World

• DK Explorers

• Great African Kingdoms by Sean Sheehan

• Ancient West African Kingdoms by Mary Quigley

• Great Zimbabwe by Mark Bessire

Science

Arthur is using RSO Biology 1 this year has the main science text. Our academic coop will also be using RSO Biology 1 as a basis for the fall semester course, so we will be just supplementing at home. We will also be doing some of Blossom & Root’s Book Seeds and various other small units in between. Arthur covered the digestive and excretory systems in co-op. Last week had to miss co-op because of sickness. Instead of learning more biology, we caught back up with our Story of Science chapters. We supplemented with some extra materials at home. We also caught back up in our Story of Science, covering multiple chapters about physics and chemistry. And we watched a documentary about Einstein and Quantum Theory.

• RSO Biology 1

• Story of Science Vol. 3 by Joy Hakim

Quentin is using RSO Earth & Environment and RSO Astronomy 1 as a base. Of course, we have a ton of extra science resources laying around the house. And I will be hosting some one-off science exploration days that align with the units. We switched gears slightly to tackle Blossom and Root’s Prehistory Unit. we covered the first couple of eras and epochs of Earth’s history and did a big picture overview of Big Time. We ended up getting through all the wonder stories the end of the Paleozoic Era. Thus, we dove back into Eons and covered a lot of videos during our documentary time. We also watched a NOVA episode about volcanoes.

• RSO Earth and Environment

• DK First Earth Encyclopedia

• Older Than the Stars by Karen C. Fox

• One Million Oysters on Top of the Mountain by Alex Nogues

• Out of the Blue: How Animals Evolved from Prehistoric Seas by Elizabeth Shreeve

• Fossil by Bill Thomson

• Stones and Bones: Fossils and the Stories They Tell by Rob Wilshaw

• Fossils by Cynthia Light Brown & Grace Brown

• Fossils by Ann O. Squire

• DK My Book of Fossils

• Fossil Type Sort

• DK Eyewitness: Fossil

• Our Family Tree: An Evolution Story by Lisa Westberg Peters

• Grandmother Fish: A Child's First Book of Evolution by Jonathan Tweet

• Annabelle and Aiden in The Story of Life by J.R. Becke

• The Story of Life: Evolution by Katie Scott

• Life: The First Four Billions Years by Martin Jenkins

• Stones and Bones: Fossils and the Stories They Tell by Rob Wilshaw

• When the Whales Walked by Dougal Dixon

Academic Co-op

For math, Arthur covered perimeter and area, creating a entire city. In biology, they covered the digestive and excretory systems. In civics, we finished the election project with presentations and a discussion about candidate evaluations.

Art and Music

Art will be very sporadic this year, but we do have some fun excursions planned. And I will incorporate art projects into a lot of other subjects and unit studies. We had our monthly Joslyn Art Museum visit and focused on light and shadow. We covered a Harbor + Sprout module about World Art.

For music, we are using Music Lab: We Rock! as our spine. Each week we will be learning about a different rock musician and focus on a particular song. I have also created Spotify playlists so we can listen on the go. We covered Pink Floyd (a house favorite), Black Sabbath, Yes, and Cream. Lots of music these past two weeks.

• Music Lab: We Rock!

• DK Music and How it Works

• DK The Arts

Field Trip/Activities

Not a field trip, but we did get in a nature hike at Platte River. I didn’t want to go, but it really did us good to be out in the fresh air and hang out with friends for a few hours.

High

Q and I have been butting heads a bit over basic language arts and math skills. I decided to try a different tactic and signed him up for IXL. He’s engaging with the lessons as supplementary class time, but it’s been going really well. We’re going to continue through the winter and see where it takes us.

Low

The boys both caught a cold (it’s been going around all our friends) and we had to cancel plans this past week including missing the Homeschool Dance. The boys look forward to the dances and I was looking forward to getting a drink with J while they were at the dance. But alas, we ended up staying home to rest and get better.

Next Week - We got so far ahead on school that I decided we would take the entirety of Thanksgiving week off school.

Next up on the TBR pile: