Homeschooling

Zoe is really loving her Life of Fred Beginning Algebra book. She is doing really well at it too. We had a few mix-ups with multiplying a negative by a negative. But otherwise her only mistakes are those inevitable errors of carelessness. (I am assuming my child is not the only one to write down the wrong numbers or equation signs)

For Language Arts she was supposed to write an Epic Simile but ended up misunderstanding my instructions and she just wrote a poem made of several similes.

The noise we make is like a siren
blaring out across the horizon,
screaming, shouting all along,
singing out a familiar song,
like an ambulance emitting a blare,
our poor voices we did not spare.

As if we were a cattle stampede,
running about, taking no heed.
And when at last it is time to go,
We shout in unison, "Oh, please no!"
And like a horse around we run,
play on the rings, and have merry fun.

Then, as if traversing placid Rome,
the wild adventurers then go home.

For history we are studying Jamestown and I found this fun online interactive website for it. - On The Trail of Captain John Smith


Yesterday she made this model of a DNA double helix from her esciencelabs kit.


Today we were inspired by a new science book we are supplementing with, How To Be a Genius - your brain and how to train it. The title is misleading. it is not really about being a genius. It is a science book about the brain. We decided to take a detour from our Singapore Science book to read it because Zoe wants to enter into the 2010 NEUROSCIENCE FOR KIDS POETRY WRITING CONTEST.

Today we were inspired to paint a Network of Nerves.


Like how we are tying science to both art and poetry. ;)


For Literature Zoe is reading The Hobbit. As I read this is she is singing the dwarves song about the Misty Mountains.

She also just started Little Women. I can't wait to see how she likes it!! She was extra excited when I told her that Louisa was taught some writing by Emerson and Thoreau.

For Read Aloud time I made up a new game, each time we read poetry from a different letter of the alphabet. We choose a poem where either the first or last name of the poet or the title of the poem begins with the letter of that day. Then we take turns reading the poem we chose aloud. Today the favorite for us both was The Flesh and The Spirit by Anne Bradstreet

Now that we have finished reading Treasure Island we are watching a movie version of it. From my reading I found that a made for television version, with a young Christian Bale as Jim Hawkins and Charleston Heston as Long John Silver, was considered very good. They didn't have it on Netflix but I found what looks like the entire movie, broken up into 10 minute portions, on youtube. It is very good! Zoe doesn't know but I have Muppet Treasure Island on the way from Netflix. It is hardly like the book but who can pass up Kermit as Captain Smollet?? Not I! Or is that Not Aye!

Last week we read The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner and then, for fun, we listened to the Iron Maiden version of the song. I am a big Maiden fan and I have got Zoe hooked. She appreciates that they write songs a books and poems and myths and historical events. RotAM is a really long song, 13 minutes! Still that is short compared to the poem. :P

Hmmmm... what else? Well maybe another day I'll write about Japanese, her new piano teacher, gymnastics, choir, math academy, and Hebrew. This post is too long already!