Unit 14 :Preparing

This week was a short 3 day week for us. We took 2 days off for holiday activities and some time with family. Both our 4th and 1st grade curriculum are only 4 day per week programs anyway. So we doubled up on work one day and managed to do 4 days in 3. This new schedule has made our school week so much less stressful than a 5 day school week. There's more time for things we want to do, extra activities, and most weeks we get a 3 day weekend.

History: I did not love our history this week. It seemed to be disconnected and all over the place, with too much information to remember. There were parts that we enjoyed though. First we looked at India and what was happening in that part of the world during the time period we've been studying. We learned how Buddhism began and about social castes. Then we jumped over to China and learned about the Shang Dynasty, geography, and about Chinese silk and inventions. The next day went back to Greece and we learned about many of the rulers and laws that were made. Finally we looked at Rome in 509 B.C. 

We did enjoy a new book we started reading about a Roman boy and his Greek slave. It's called A Triumph For Flavius. This book paints a picture of what Roman culture was like in those days, but is also a story about compassion.

In her Draw and Write through History Sis drew a silk moth. The Chinese discovered how to make silk from the cocoons of silkworms. For many years they kept their secret of how to make silk hidden and it was coveted by much of the world. She also drew a Chinese panda.

Her history project had 2 parts this week. First was to research the "silk road," and draw a map showing the trading routes that were used to trade silks. The second part was to make a booklet showing the steps to make Chinese silk. 

Reading:
In reading we started our 
fantasy genre! For our kickoff activity we just talked about what makes a book fantasy and what is the difference between a realistic nonfiction book and a fantasy. We pulled a handful of fiction chapter books off of our shelf and discussed whether they qualified as a fantasy or not. Sis read 2 fantasy books this week. The first was small so she read it in one day. It was called "Catwings," and was a story about a family of cats that were born with wings. The second book was called "A Mouse Named Wolf." Sis really liked this book about a tiny mouse who's mother named him after Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart thinking a "big important name" would make up for his size. She read both of these books on her own, but next week we will start a 3rd fantasy book that I will have her read aloud to me.





Science: We're still learning about nutrition in science. This week we learned about vitamins. We learned all of the important vitamins that our bodies need, what those vitamins do for us, and where we can get each of these vitamins. We also learned about vitamin deficiencies. We looked at diseases like scurvy and rickets that are cause by not getting enough of the right vitamins. One experiment we did to show how vitamin C is an antioxidant was to crush a Vit C tablet and put it on half of an apple. The other half we left alone. We let our apple pieces sit for 2 hours. Then observed that the vitamin C had kept half of the apple from turning brown.

  
After day 1 it was apparent that Boo again needed some extra practice with her phonics. We spent the week reviewing Unit 10 instead of moving on. So I will not be writing a post for her work this week.