Our focus for this week is multiplication. We began the week working with a review of what we have learned so far, which covers our 1-6 multiplication tables.
We practiced in a fun way using a game that is similar to Sequence. We rolled two 6-sided dice and multiplied the two numbers together. We found the product on the board and marked it off. The first person who got four in a row won (there were several copies of each number to choose where on the board to mark.) I won this round, but only barely. This was a great way make practice fun.
Zoey also covered her seven and eight times tables this week. We did some practice with these as well with fun math games.
We also practiced coordinate by playing a pirate Battleship style game. I won, but only by a couple turns, Zoey had my ship in her sights and I wasn't lasting long!
Science
We learned about the scientific method in preparation for more science projects. We also read about several sea creatures, which we will expand on soon.
Reading
We read several books this week, mostly having to do with the midterm elections and what it means to vote, pirates and sea animals.
The Pirate Meets the Queen by Matt Faulkner
The Pirate Queen by Barbara Sjoholm
When you grow up to vote by Eleanor Roosevelt
Elizabeth Leads the Way by Tanya Lee Stone
The Magnificent Book of Ocean Creatures by Tom Jackson
Writing
Writing thank you notes is a good habit, to acknowledge the generosity of others. Zoey wrote in response to holiday cards and to supporters of her Extra Life Game-a-thon, which benefited the children at MUSC.
Spelling/Language Arts
Spelling and Language Arts went hand in hand this week. We covered our Spectrum Spelling Lesson 9, which included words where you have to drop the "e" and at -ed or -ing. As she studied this skill, she also practiced her spelling words. We also discussed Alliteration and how it can be used as a writing technique.
She improved greatly throughout this week in spelling, her practice really paid off.
History
History and reading combine in our study of Grace O'Malley, an Irish Pirate Queen. There is a lot of lore surrounding this strong female leader during the 16th century. We first heard of O'Malley while reading Lives of the Pirates by Kathleen Krull and Kathryn Hewitt. We continued our study by reading The Pirate Meets the Queen by Matt Faulkner and The Pirate Queen by Barbara Sjoholm. These offered great information about how Grace met Queen Elizabeth I and successfully got her son released from prison.
We also finished up our pirates unit this week (at least officially, though Zoey is still interested in the subject). Zoey created a large booklet for Blackbeard with a dynamic picture she picked out because it showed why "everyone feared him." She did great gathering her notes and creating a final project.
Gathering Information
Blackbeard Booklet Cover
Social Studies
We studied how the government works so Zoey could understand what a midterm election is and why it is so important to vote.
PE
Swim is a wonderful way to spend our P.E. time. Zoey has swimming lessons on Monday afternoons and we went another day this week to practice the skills she is learning in her lessons and to have fun and play in the water.
Art/Music
Zoey spent some time drawing a character this week. Meet Lazzari...
She was also really interested in learning a couple different contemporary songs, so she made herself a stage to practice and perform. She also spent some time with her musical instruments (guitar, ukulele and recorder) following along with the songs she learned.
Extras
In Girl Scouts this week, Zoey created a McCusker Family Crest as they are working on their Family History badge.
It was a busy week, with lots of outings, but we got through our work and had fun too.
Gamers will play all different types of games for 24 hours straight to support Children's Miracle Network Hospitals. Extra Life is a fundraiser, which began ten years ago to play games and heal kids. Since it's foundation in 2008, Extra Life has raised more than $40 million for sick and injured kids.
The fundraising stays local to support any Children's Hospital you choose to help fund critical treatments and healthcare services, pediatric medical equipment and charitable child care. Each gamer can pick between over 170 hospitals throughout U.S. and Canada.
Stephen and Zoey chose to support MUSC Children's Hospital in Charleston, SC. Stephen volunteered at this hospital for quite a while back when we lived in South Carolina. He would wake up every Sunday morning and go play video games with the kids stuck in hospital rooms. It seems fitting that he plays games now to help them as well.
When Stephen asked Zoey about doing this game-a-thon challenge, she was fascinated. She got to stay up all night and play videos for an entire day straight!?! She was definitely in. She even spent the week leading up to it prepping, in her mind at least, by thinking of the games she would play and how she would stay up all night.
Though only nine, Zoey is a night owl. She naturally would rather stay up later and then start her day later. Stephen and I are both the same way, so it works out well for us. Especially when it means staying up to play video games for charity.
In preparation, we got lots of snacks and some Coke to keep them going. I made muffins for breakfast and then a huge Nachos spread for lunch.
The day started strong. Stephen and Zoey were both in their happy place. They played Stardew Valley for almost five hours. At this point, it was just another Saturday morning. We are gamers, so this sight is not a rare one for a lazy Saturday afternoon.
I supported them along the way with Solitare, Ticket to Ride and Mini Metro. Mostly I cooked food and wrote. I'm working on Nanowrimo (a 50k word writing challenge during the month of November), so I spent a good bit of the day working on that.
See here's my contribution, lol.
I took several pictures through out the day, but most of them look the same. Here they are still playing Stardew Valley while eating lunch.
It was a perfect day outside for a game-a-thon. The cool, blustery day made me very glad we were cozy and warm inside.
We did come together for a round of Super Mario Party on the Switch. Here Zoey is showing us the secrets of the map since we had never played it before, but she had.
Seeing these two do what they love and have it help out others was really exciting. They had so much fun playing all kinds of games on their own and together. It will be a well remembered experience.
I went to bed about 2 am and they were still up, each playing their own game. Zoey said she wasn't even feeling tired yet, so she was still going strong. She's a night owl anyway, so this kind of challenge is right up her alley.
The next morning I woke up about 8 am, an hour left in their challenge. It wasn't until then that I realized it had been Daylight Savings through the night, so that last hour came from the time change. Stephen was still going, playing one last round of Dead Cells. He even defeated the final boss for the first time on his last play through of the entire game-a-thon.
Zoey, however, was passed out on the couch. Stephen said she made it until a little after 5 am. I thought that was fantastic. She did a great job and really understood how this was raising money for charity and could help kids her own age.
At some point in the evening, they also built legos. Late night Lego builds...It might just catch on :)
Together, Stephen and Zoey raised $100 dollars to support MUSC. Extra Life raised $8.8 million #forthekids in just the first night of their game-a-thon. The fundraiser is open until December 31.
You can read more about their adventures by visiting their fundraising page Temmie Making a Ruckuswhere Stephen updated their progress and the games they played throughout the night.
As part of our social studies unit this week, we learned about El Dio de los Muerto, the Day of the Dead. At first, it was just about learning what the day is all about, since many cultures and families celebrate it at this time of year. It ended up being a fascinating unit.
First we read about the Day of the Dead through a reading comprehension essay to get an overview. Then we read “Halloween and Day of the Dead Traditions around the World” by Joan Axelrod-Contrada. This gave us a great overview of how these autumn celebrations are observed throughout the world with some similar themes, but unique traditions.
Zoey's was really interested in Bolivia's tradition of keeping real skulls preserved and setting them in their own box to dress them up like their deceased ancestors and give offerings of things they liked on the Day of the Dead.
The unit also gave us an impromptu geography lesson as well looked up where all of these countries were. Most of the countries that commemorate El Dio de los Muerto reside in Central and South America. We looked up where Mexico, Bolivia, Guatemala, and Haiti were on a map. We also listened to some traditional Spanish music and colored skulls to understand these countries traditions a little better.
Once we got to this point, Zoey was ready to make her own Day of the Dead altar to remember the deceased and celebrate their life. We are very fortunate that Zoey has not lost anyone close to her, so she focused on creating a memorial for the two cats we had when she was little that passed away.
While she worked on this project, we reinforced our knowledge of The Day of the Dead with some YouTube videos:
They offered some great facts and footage from various El Dio de los Muerto festivals around the world. These were a great edition to our study.
Zoey's cat memorial came out really well, she put a lot of thought and effort into her design and construction made out of boxes. While she worked she talked about the Day of the Dead traditions and what the day meant to her. She liked the idea of celebrating the life of the dead instead of staying sad. I hope she can keep that in her heart as she goes through life.
Zoey constructing her Day of the Dead Cat Memorial
Front and side views of Zoey's cat memorial. She has pictures of her deceased cats Lazarus and Creampuff all over it. She also has leaves for Creampuff to remember the adventures they used to go on outside and balls of paper because that is what Lazarus like to play with around the house. She added her stuffed kitties to keep Creampuff and Lazarus company when they came to play.
Do go with Zoey's cat creative memorial, we also printed out pictures of our deceased ancestors. On my side we honored my grandfather, who we called Papa and my grandmother, Nanaw. On Stephen's side we celebrated his grandmother, Nana. We lit a candle for each one of them and we told Zoey stories about their life and how much they meant to us since she didn't know either great-grandparents in my family and only knew Stephen's Nana when she was very young.
Zoey went to Girl Scouts in the evening and they studied the Day of the Dead too. She is really enjoying her Girl Scout troop this year. It's very cool to see her standing around chatting with her friends after the meeting ended, she's growing up so fast - a true celebration of life.
We had a lot of fun with Halloween in homeschool this year. We spent the last week working on review using Halloween themed exercises. We covered parts of speech in language arts; multiplication, time, place value, comparing numbers, rounding and graphing in math; shape poetry and creative writing in writing; catapult construction and physics as well as a vampire bat study in science; Halloween history and traditions in history and social studies; and we read The Haunted Library: A Ghost in the Attic by Dori Hillstad Butler, Frankenstein by Ludworst Bemonster and Frankenstein Makes a Sandwich by Adam Rex for reading.
Zoey using candy corns to represent the greater than/less than signs while comparing numbers.
Zoey's Shape Poem We even saw a black cat while we were out Trick-or-Treating.
For Halloween night, we decided to go Trick-or-Treating in our neighborhood. It was a great adventure. Zoey dressed up as a Pink Princess. She did her make up and everything. We went down a stretch that didn't have as many kids on it. Most of the people we visited were glad to have some one stop by.
Pretty Princess Zoey
I really enjoyed our walk through the neighborhood. Everyone was really nice too. We got to check out all of the awesome decorations. One house had a fog machine that flooded out onto the street making it even more spooky that the natural clouds were already doing. We even got invited in for a beer at one point. It was great to see everyone out and making local connections to celebrate the occasion.
Fog machine rolling out onto the street
There were some great decorations while we were out.
A black cat crossed our path.
The next day, we collected data from our Halloween candy run. It was great to turn such a fun event into a learning opportunity. Especially when we got to taste test all the candy for science!
Our Halloween candy data collection
Zoey graphed the results for a visual representation
Then we got to test each candy and decide our favorites
It was a great Halloween and we covered a lot in our homeschooling lessons in the process. I hope you also had a great celebration!
October has been a beautiful month with lots of activities and learning. The weather has greatly cooled off this month and we are enjoying the beauty of the leaves changing colors this fall. Halloween has also been a predominant part of our month as we've connected many of our homeschool activities and lessons with the Halloween theme. We also had my friend from South Carolina come to visit us for a week that gave us opportunities for even more exploration of our amazing city. We even took a trip to Canada! It's been a busy, but fun month. Happy Halloween!
Math
Our mathematics study for this month has been a lot of practicing times multiplication tables. Zoey is up to the six times tables now and we are practicing through word problems, practice sheets and our most effect way - math games, including multiplication war. We are focusing on these basic concepts to make sure she has them down before moving on to the more complex problems.
Multiplication Mosaics are a fun way to practice times tables
We also covered place value, comparing numbers (i.e. greater than, less than and equal too), and rounding. Zoey was spot on with place value and comparing, but we need a little more time to focus on rounding. We did several exercise and she has improved greatly, but we will continue to practice.
Halloween themed time practice
We began to cover time as well this month, focusing on the phrases "quarter til" and "quarter after." Telling time is not the problem, but these are well used descriptions of time that we are practicing so she can understand them more easily. We've used fun practice sheets like this as well as games of bingo and matching.
Zoey original word problem
Reading
This month our reading focus was "Matilda." We finished the book pretty quickly. Zoey really enjoyed it. It's one of my favorites. We also watched the movie and did a compare and contrast of the two. Zoey has really good reading comprehension and will offer details of the story I don't even remember. We had a lot of fun with this story.
Reading "Matilda" at the coffee shop.
Zoey does a great job talking about the book and how it compares and contrasts to the movie. It was a heart breaker because she did a video earlier with over six minutes of detailed explanation and the video messed up and didn't save. She is a little less enthusiastic in this redo video, but I still wanted to share it because you can see (even in a frustrated state) how much she understands about what she is reading. Though, she will tell you she'd rather watch the movie.
Spelling
We have found a good rhythm for our spelling unit. We are using a Spectrum Spelling workbook to find words. Every other week we go through one or two Spectrum lists to find words where Zoey needs extra practice. Once we have a list of ten, she practices the words in different ways. She has a Graffiti wall that she writes them all in unique lettering. Then she has a spelling menu that offers many different way to practice the words. Some examples include writing them in alphabetical order, writing them with the vowels in different colors, looking up the definition to each word, creating a crossword puzzle, and many more. She picks a couple of these to practice, then we have a spelling test where I call out the words to her. If she still has trouble with it, we save it for another week. So far, this has been working out really great.
Spectrum Spelling, Lesson 8
Language Arts
This is an interesting subject because it goes hand in hand with several of the other English subjects. When we go through the Spectrum Spelling workbook, there are all kinds of different mini Language arts lessons. This month we've learned about how to add "-er" and "-est" to the end of words, including the special rules of doubling the constant after most short vowel, one subject words (i.e. "wet" becomes "wetter" and "hot" becomes "hottest"). We also learned how to turn nouns into adjectives by adding a "y" (i.e. "cloud" turns into "cloudy" or "rain" into "rainy").
We are also learning different dictionary skills including how to see what part of speech a word can but used as and how that can change the definition slightly. Zoey is also doing very well with syllables of words, she can identify how many a word has and where the emphasis is on the word.
We are working on Parts of Speech. This is one subject that we integrate a little bit into all kinds of activities surrounding reading and writing. By understanding the parts of speech, Zoey is able to make sentences easier and add more details in her writing. These are small steps, but they add up quickly as we begin to learn more vocabulary.
Writing
In "Matilda," Ms. Honey talks about limericks and then Matilda creates one on the spot. We read several limericks and then tried to write one ourselves. It is a complicated poems style because there are several rules to follow. We did out best, though they ended up being really funny as we tried make different words rhyme.
After reading a short story called, "The Bubbling Cauldron" about a magic potion going hilariously wrong, Zoey created her own magic potion and wrote about it. Her potion was a more efficient way to test your DNA.
We also learned about Shape poetry. Zoey wrote this awesome poem about a Halloween cat. We even saw a black cat while we were out Trick-or-Treating!
Science
Science is one of Zoey's favorite subjects, so we've done several large and small projects over the course of this month.
Fruity Ice Slush Experiment
This science experiment came from our Usborne "50 Science things to make and do" book. We learned how salt lowers the freezing temperature to make a liquid turn into a slush without direct contact to the ice. It was a fun experiment, but we used V8 instead of fruit juice, which caused us to have a faulty outcome. You can read more about this experiment HERE.
The Human Body
We studied the Human Body in depth last month, but Zoey got some new information from watching some of her YouTube videos and wanted to share with me what she learned. She explained how the stomach holds our food and then how our liver and kidneys work together the digest, absorb and process our food before it goes to the bladder or intestines. Since we focused on the circulatory system last month, I was impressed with how she wanted to take it a step further and found out more.
Tinker Tank Construction at the Science Center
The Pacific Science Center is one of our favorite places to go, explore and learn. We can spend hours at the Tinker Tank where they have all kinds of supplies to use to make anything your mind can imagine. On this day, Zoey made a complex arena for her friends to battle, full of arrows and hideaways.
Animal Habitats and Ocean Diorama
This section on Animal Habitats paired well with the Girl Scout badge her troop worked on this month. We learned about the different classifications of animals (i.e. mammals, birds, fish, reptiles, amphibians and mini beasts) and the various parts of the world they live in. Zoey chose to focus on the ocean first (which worked out perfectly with our field trip to the Vancouver Aquarium).
Zoey did such a great job on her Ocean Diorama. She spent some time painting it and choosing which animals to represent. She even got out her Skylander's ship to place in the ocean because the the coral would have a place to attach to and more animals could live around it.
She also looked up some animal facts about a seahorse, which is displayed in her ocean habitat.
Vampire Bats
In honor of Halloween, we did an animal study on Vampire Bats. This was a fascinating topic for both of us to learn about. We watched several good YouTube videos and read through lots of material to learn more. Zoey completed an animal fact sheet about Vampire Bats. Learn more about our study of Vampire Bats and the sources we used HERE.
Candy Catapults
We were really excited to build catapults and launch Halloween candy to begin our unit on data collection and graphing. This was a great STEM activity to design and engineer a construction and then see how it worked. We then launched candies to see how far they went and how accurate the three different catapult sizes were. We drew some great conclusions like the smallest catapult didn't launch very far, but it was the most accurate. Whereas, the largest catapult launched the furthest, but was also unpredictable in it's aim. You can read more detail about this experiment, how we made the catapults and our conclusions HERE.
This month was full of interesting things to learn about history. We had Columbus Day and Halloween to learn about. It is a lot of fun to learn with the seasons.
Columbus Day
A Study of Christopher Columbus
Columbus Day fell on Monday, October 8, this year. We learned about who Christopher Columbus was and what he is known for. Zoey was really interested in this study, so we spent a good bit of that day on it. I thought it was really fascinating how controversial this holiday is. Columbus wasn't really considered a very good guy and a lot of people think he shouldn't have a holiday in his honor. Zoey seemed most intrigued by the fact that he never realized he discovered a new world, he died thinking he had made it to the West Indies. That is how we got the term "Indians" for the Native Americans.
Halloween History and Traditions Around the World
We spent almost two weeks covering Halloween history and traditions. It was a lot of fun to apply the theme as an overall review for what we've learned in these past couple of months.
Social Studies
Canada
P.E.
Art and Music
Occupational Education
Extras
We do a lot in a month. Some of it is exciting and some of it is practice to learn more and master basic skills. Zoey loves being able to learn about things that are interesting to her, which helps us learn more than we thought we would about many subjects. Zoey loves to listen to music and do hands on activities during our school hours. We do lots of activities in and out of the house, sometimes on our own and sometimes with friends. We are both making new friends as we meet more people who also homeschool and try out new activities. I am very thankful that we have the opportunity to homeschool. I can see Zoey benefiting from this method of learning and I am so glad to have a curious, creative kid who is really appreciating studying new things.
