Week 26 - 2012

On to a study of the Americas this week - mostly the Latin American countries.  He's reading Latin American Tales, Genevieve Barlow, and a biography of Che Guevara by Kate Havelin.  He is also still doing some Holocaust reading with In Kindling Flame: The Story of Hannah Senesh, Linda Atkinson.

    














He read chapter 34 in Story of the World (the section on South America) and chapter 31 in volume 10 of History of US.  I'm reading about Latin America from our standard round of encyclopedias and atlases.



In science this week, they fiddled with the electric bell and motorized boat kits.  Both are old and fiddled with before by my older son.  There are some parts that need to be replaced so I've got to go to Radio Shack to see if we can get these things to work for us.  No luck thus far. 



We did, however, have far better luck with the little Scholastic Electronics Workbench.  It is really great!  I'm sorry that they don't make this any longer.  Snap Circuits may be fun (and they're certainly a lot more expensive), but I think that wiring the components into the circuit yourself is more meaningful than just snapping together components already put together for you.  The book that goes with this is great, too, and provides a lot of info!  It's very satisfying to run the tests and have all of them work correctly!  We all had fun with this kit and have more work to do with it when they get back together.  We are also going to work through a kit on static electricity before we move on to gravity and flight studies....



I put together a study sheet for them reviewing the math of motion, mostly, as well as some of the terms related to our earlier motion studies.  They aren't going to meet for 2 weeks as my son's friend is going on a trip out of state.  I also gave them some work on Newton's Third Law to work with and discuss when we get back together. 



We finished going over all the worksheets on magnetism and electricity that they had done prior to this week, plus a review of those areas that they completed.  We also went back over the review of simple machines I gave them last week.  I'm getting ready to prepare some worksheets reviewing terminology that we've been covering this year to see how they do on that....



My son is reading Experiments with Magnets and Electricity, Margaret Whalley, this week.  I am reading aloud some from  Eyewitness Light, Eyewitness Electricity, and World Book's Invisible Journeys: Energy, Caroline Grimshaw.




         

   

We were supposed to meet for geography club this week, but the leader can't do it, so we will meet next week. Instead, he continued working in his workbook on Europe, and we played The 50 Great States Game.

 

(Another good Scholastic product.  I was on their circulars mailing list for years and stockpiled tons of good games, kits, and models, as well as books for my children.  I don't know if they still sell such great things or not!)



Mid-winter bowling league started in earnest this week.  I'm glad he's able to do this because he got kicked or stepped on in soccer and wasn't able to play his next-to-last game on Monday night.  His foot is still swollen on the side and painful if he moves it the wrong way.... 



He started his spring chemistry lab work today.  He's almost finished with the program!



We saw a production by Diavolo dance theatre at Centre this morning.  It was pretty good - for modern dance (not really my thing)....



Tomorrow is my son's 14th birthday!  He's going to shadow at a new, local Montessori high school on Monday.  If he decides to go to an organized school next year, I hope that this is the one he will choose....



Regena