Back to school time! My perfectionism wants me to go back and recap the months of October-December where I wrote nothing for this blog. I'm not going to give into that pressure, but just start again. Like Flylady says: You are not behind! Just jump in where you are!
This week we started a new, more simplified schedule. In the morning we start with a devotional, do math, writing, exercise, read aloud literature, then history, geography or science, and finish up with computer technology.. After lunch Noelle does all of her independent work, which includes spelling, grammar, literature, typing, Spanish, piano practice and chores.
For devotionals we are learning to lead music, memorize the current song we are singing in co-op (which this month is "Quickly I'll Obey"), memorizing all the Articles of Faith (finished up #10 this week) and reading from the Book of Mormon.
In math we continue to study multiplication facts, review addition and subtraction facts, and worked on time telling concepts this week. Converting from analog to digital and back again is now easy for her, but the concept of elapsed time and the idea of quarter-to an hour and quarter-after an hour still need work.
In writing, Noelle had a huge breakthrough this week. Writing has always been a struggle for her--getting ideas from her mind onto paper seemed impossible. This week we have been using a program called Utah Write in preparation for the state's required 5th grade writing test called the Direct Writing Assessment (DWA). She submits essays on pre-determined subjects and receives an immediate score based on fancy algorithms that tell her how she is doing in several areas like organizing ideas, spelling and grammar, sentence structure and variety etc.
For exercise, since it is January and snowy and very cold, we stay in and do fun things like Wii Fit or Just Dance Disney for the Wii. On Friday she joined me in my 30 minute walk at home DVD--she didn't like that one as much.
Read aloud literature is still Swiss Family Robinson. We took a long break over the holidays, and I'll be surprised if we finish this thing before the end of 5th grade. I purposely found the edition considered to be as close to the original as possible, and it is no easy read. But we are finding much that we do enjoy about it. I'll be interested to watch the old Disney movie version of it after we read it. I remember loving the movie but the older I get the more I realize how much Disney has manipulated real stories sometimes to the point that they are absolutely false.
For history we didn't do anything this week. I hope to get back into her Landmark History book next week.
For geography all we did was look at our co-op geography books, do a little practice on filling in state names on blank maps by region, and get an assignment to do a report on something related to Indiana for next week.
For science we just did our co-op chemistry lesson. We learned about these categories: atom, element, molecule, compound and mixture. We built molecules with gummy bears and toothpicks and learned how to group them as compounds and mixtures, and then found real life things like sugar and peanut butter which fall into those categories.
For computer tech we began a unit on Microsoft Excel. I've never been trained on this program and it is a mystery to me. We just did a little exploration and learned about workbooks, cells, and how to use the alphabetize and auto sum features.
In the next couple of months we will have a science fair with our co-op and we are planning a trip to Virginia in February to visit family and possibly visit Mt. Vernon and some other D.C. sites.
