Week 18 - 2012 - First Semester's Finally Finished!

I really don't like coming back after Christmas to finish up our first semester.  Something in me likes the idea of finishing up before we break.  However, I just can't figure out how to start when we want and take off all the time that we want and still fit in 18 weeks worth of work prior to the new year, so I guess I will have to just grin and bear it....  So let's see, what sorts of things did we do this week?

We eased back into more outside classes.  My son is moving into Faber's level 5 books for his piano studies (lesson, performance, and theory) and I continue to love their music selections!  I have always appreciated that their music is very boy friendly.  He continues to work with a lot of jazz pieces.  I need to update what he's working on in my home page listing, too....  His teacher says that these level 5 books are really going to be a lot of fun - I can't wait to hear the pieces!



We finished up the B module of Videotext this week and will begin the C module next week.

He finished reading The Good Earth and is about halfway through Murder on the Orient Express right now.  When he finishes we're going to talk about Christie's "Code".



He began his written work for My Side of the Mountain.  He has a couple of short papers to write next week related to the book.  We continued his memory work, too....

His outside Spanish class resumed and we continued with our other daily lessons as usual.  He's just working through some Which Way, USA? books right now for fun.  I have some for western states that we had never gotten to, so we're finishing those up.... 

In history this week, we read two chapters from National Geographic's The Making of America, Robert Johnston.  We finished up the Cobblestone book on the Dust Bowl that we started last week.  My son finished up reading chapters 8-24 in Volume 9 of History of Us, which he's been working on the past couple of weeks.  He also completed the last story in the book Disaster! by Leroe.  We backtracked a little to read Lenin, by Abraham Resnick, in preparation for getting into our further study of fascism, communism, socialism, etc. in the coming weeks.

  


In science, we're studying mechanical waves right now.  While I am using a Prentice Hall book for some of my info, they are reading from online websites on the subject.  We'll be moving into looking at light waves and working with light and optics next.  Here are some of the websites they've used thus far:

http://www.kettering.edu/physics/drussell/Demos/waves-intro/waves-intro.html

http://www.kettering.edu/physics/drussell/Demos/waves/wavemotion.html

http://www.school-for-champions.com/science/sound.htm

http://www.physicsclassroom.com/Class/sound/u11l1c.cfm

Powerpoint all about waves (but it lumps surface waves in with the others):

www.greenville.k12.sc.us/eastside/simmons/docs/ps/Module%207.ppt

Activities to do:

http://science.k12flash.com/sound.html

They tried out one crystal radio then we built another and they tried it out.  They will continue fiddling with it this next week, too....

Here's a current version that looks very much like the one they built (I've had it a long time):



This is similar to the crystal radio they tested first:



I believe his co-op physical science class resumes next week, too, so can't wait to see what they'll be doing.... 

We're finally getting snow here (had to drive home from an out of town swim meet for my older son tonight - glad we made it home okay)!  Maybe it will be cold enough next week for me to pull out some of our bubble making liquids from the beginning of the school year so we can try our hand at blowing frozen bubbles....

Regena