Week 8: Harry Potter Week

This week was SO much fun!!! We continued on with our Hogwarts classes, and did a big Harry Potter birthday celebration, complete with a replica of the cake Hagrid made for Harry for his 11th birthday. 

Astronomy
We looked up some constellations and tried to find some in the sky. Luckily, we have a friend adept at astronomy, so he was able to point out some. I could only find the Big Dipper, oops. 

History of Magic
We learned about famous magicians over time like Houdini, and about the Salem witch trials. We also looked up a couple magicians on youtube and marveled at their magical abilities!

Herbology
We studied the use of different plants, and reviewed the process of photosynthesis that we learned last week!

Flourish and Blotts
We read a bunch of Harry Potter and some of the fairy tales in The Tales of Beadle the Bard. 

Potions
Science experiments!! I let Einstein play with his chemistry set while we listened to some of the audio chapters from Potions class with Snape/ Slughorn.

Arithmancy
We pretended to be goblins at Gringotts and counted out gold, divided it, subtracted... All the fun things you can do with fun manipulatives!

Charms
We made our own quills and recorded spells, and wrote a letter to Dumbledore. That felt magical, and Einstein loves birds, so was excited to get to write with a feather. 

Ancient Ruins
It was astounding how much we learned about latin and greek roots when dissecting spells! No wonder they flow so naturally!

Defense Against the Dark Arts
Again, this was our scripture study time. Ya know, gotta defend our souls against evil! (It still cracks me up that we did devotionals for this subject)

Wizard Chess
Because Einstein LOVES chess!

Forbidden Forest Exploration
This was really fun! We did a bunch of hikes in wooded areas, and pretended to be walking through the forbidden forest. We even came across a place with TONS of spider webs, so it felt like we had come upon Aragog's lair. 

Transfiguration
We tried out a bunch of magic tricks! Some worked and some were flops, but our favorite by far was the turning water into ice! 

Week 7: Hogwarts Classes!

Next week will be Harry Potter's 39th birthday. So OF COURSE we had to read Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone and do some Hogwarts classes! It was a super fun week, and we didn't do any worksheets, and didn't spend a lot of time on each subject. But we had a great time, and can't wait for our official Harry Potter party day on the 31st!

Care of Magical Creatures 
For this one, we went to the zoo and on a nature hike, and wrote down facts we learned about all the different animals. My favorite part was that there was a cool dinosaur exhibit at the zoo, and some of the dinosaurs really did look like magical creatures! 

 

Herbology
For herbology, we studied plants (of course!) and learned a little bit about the magical process of photosynthesis! We looked up a couple videos on youtube and went over the "ingredients" in making glucose, and talked about the byproducts made from the process.

Arithmancy
We really didn't do much math at all this week. For a game in the car on the way to the zoo, we tried to come up with a bunch of different ways to make 9 and 3/4 (for platform 9 3/4), so 10 minus a fourth, or 5 plus 4 plus a half plus a fourth.

Potions
This was our combo cooking/ science experiment class. We redid some of our favorite science experiments and would pretend to do spells as we did things, like "wingardium leviosa" for the egg that gets sucked up into the bottle. 

Charms
We put together our own little spellbook, then skimmed through the books looking for spells to write down. Mostly it was me just trying to get Einstein to write something at any cost. But it morphed into Einstein figuring out the most gruesome and deadly spells then running around the house firing spells at me and his sister. 

Einstein trying to sneak out after bedtime to read

Transfiguration
For transfiguration, we tried out some of our own magic tricks. We watched a show about a magician who goes around pranking people, and then Einstein tried to make a "self-bending straw". It was a cook trick, but his fingers weren't quite big enough to cover the hidden secret of the straw, so it didn't pan out the way he had wanted. But he still thought he was the best magician ever. 

Astronomy
We learned about how the sun shines during the day, and the moon reflects the sun at nighttime, and then we pulled out a mirror and flashlight to bounce the beam off the mirror to show how that works with the sun-moon-earth. We also were out late one night, so looked up at the night sky and I taught Einstein how to distinguish another planet in our solar system from a star. 

Ancient Runes
Just brushed on this one, but we looked at the latin/ greek roots of words- Harry Potter spells are full of them! And we looked at the word photosynthesis- photo meaning light and synthesis meaning to put together. 

Not my genius idea, but what a great way to teach!

History of Magic
This was actually Einstein's favorite this week! We talked about witch hunts throughout history, and particularly about the Salem Witch Trials- why people got accused, the methods of testing whether or not they were witches, and all of that jazz! 

Defense Against the Dark Arts
I felt very clever with this one- this was our Bible study! Ya know, defense against the dark arts... I couldn't stop laughing. 

Wizard Chess
We watched the clip of Harry, Ron, and Hermione playing with the giant chess set, and Einstein got to play lots of chess, to his immense pleasure!

Quidditch Practice
This was our physical fitness stuff! We did running with broomsticks (I hoped our neighbors weren't looking into our backyard!), catching a "snitch" and came up with a "lumos" game, where we would shine a flashlight on something, a wall, ceiling, or floor, and the other person had to run and slap it or throw a stuffed animal to hit it. It was super fun!

We also did "avoid the bludger" and threw water balloons at each other, and pretended to be competing in the 2nd task at the Triwizard Tournament when we went swimming, and we dove down to save our hostage (diving rings). That was probably one of my favorite parts!

Week 6: Exploration, Mad Libs, and Eggsperiments

Oh my goodness, homeschooling is difficult!! Einstein has been a little toot this week- just refusing to do work, and challenging my authority as a teacher. Trying to strike the balance between housework, doing non-school related things, and juggling all the other kids and responsibilities... Whew! 

But we keep on keeping on the best that we can! We took a day to go to the zoo and be amazed at the animals in our world!

Math
We are still working on those long subtraction problems with lots of borrowing, and long division. Einstein really doesn't fight me on math, he enjoys it, and a little bit (about 20 minutes) each a day adds up quick! He really likes me quizzing him on math facts as we run around at the park or are in the car.

History
We finished up the early exploration period of America, and Einstein is eager to move on, especially since we just had July 4th and discussed the importance of Independence Day. He is eager to move through this time period and get into more things!

Science
This was far and away the favorite for both of us this week! We looked up a bunch of experiments about eggs, and had a BLAST! The favorite was the "burping egg". 

We got our idea for this week's experiments from the DadLab. Our goal with science isn't specifically to teach specific things and then test on cloud formations or photosynthesis. Our goal is to learn to love learning and discovering.

English
For English, we still did some Mad Libs to target the parts of speech. Einstein really understands noun/ verb/ adjective, and has come up with a wide variety of words he uses!

Reading
I was all excited for us to read Stone Fox together, to carry Searchlight across that line together, but Einstein snuck the book off and read it all by himself in an hour or two on Sunday, so we started in on Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone instead.

Harry Potter is one of my favorite books, and it is slow at first, but once we get to Harry's 11th birthday, it should pick up. Ideally, I'd like to finish it by July 31st, because I have an epic Harry Potter day planned for then. 

Extras
Einstein loves all the extra things we are learning. His favorite motivators are playing chess and going swimming and spending time with his baby sister.

He also likes his art class with his Grandma. And I taught him to tie his shoes (which I have been meaning to do for ages, so it was good to finally do!)

Weeks 4 and 5: Conquistadors, Scientific Method, and Subtraction

We fell behind these last couple of weeks. We had a minor flooding incident, so some 1st story ceiling and 2nd story flooring had to be ripped out, and my older daughter was home from school, so that complicated things, as well as having a teething, not sleeping baby.

BUT- we still did the best we could!

Math

Einstein hit his first struggle in math. I say struggle, but that means that he only got 80% on these questions, as opposed to his usual 100%. He is having a hard time with the correct way to borrow when there are multiple 0s in the minuend. 

So 20,000 - 4,962= ___

He has been very frustrated about it, even though I told him we can go as slow as we want. Einstein has grown so accustomed to everything coming so easy for him that when he doesn't understand a concept the first time through, he melts down. 

But on the whole, math is his favorite subject. Besides chess. 

History

We moved on to the Spanish conquistadors. Einstein has a bit of a dark flair, so is drawn to the villains in history. He loved reading about Hernando de Soto and how the Alabama area native tribes lured him into a trap. 

We kept up with our US history timeline, and the water mitigation man who came to assess the damages left with his measurements and a full understanding of de Soto's evil plan to enslave or slaughter natives while searching for gold. 

Geography

For geography, we traced the route that de Soto took while searching for gold in southeastern United States, and quizzed each other on the capitols of the areas he visited (though they obviously weren't constructed at the time)

Science

We had a lot of fun these last couple weeks! We are working on learning the process of the scientific method, and so would look up fun experiments, then Einstein would write down in his research journal his questions, hypothesis, etc. as we conducted the experiment. We made and used a solar oven, created elephant toothpaste, and attempted ice cream in a bag (and failed at that one).

English

We are working on the parts of speech (adjectives, nouns, verbs, etc), so I got some mad libs books, and we have been doing mad libs. I really liked the junior version, because it gave a bunch of ideas for words, and it is nice to have examples when first starting out so we don't end up with a constant barrage of simple words like "happy, walked, man" 

Reading

We read James and the Giant Peach, and Einstein loved it! He really likes Roald Dahl, and we had a great time reading this one together! He finished the reading program at the library already, and one of his prizes was a new book. He picked out Stone Fox, which I had given him a brief run down on as a bedtime story months ago, and he wants to read that one next. 

Extras

Still working on piano (which he HATES practicing), and art (which he LOVES), and we finally found a way to get Einstein to do his chores each day! I told him that if he isn't finished by 2:00, then he gets my chore of the day (floors, bathrooms, laundry catch up, whatever). I haven't had to remind him to do his chores once since starting that policy! He pops out of bed and does it first thing after breakfast. I love it!

He also finally broke through his chess barrier. He had been stuck on a certain chess lesson on his chesskid account, and I had no idea how to help him. But he kept at it, and finally beat it! He then leveled up about 15 levels right after. No idea why he struggled so much with coordinating a battery, but he is all set now

Week 3: Germs, Early Explorers, Charlotte's Web

This week was mainly a continuation of last week's units. We struggled on Thursday and Friday with Einstein's sisters needing a lot of attention (teething baby and special needs older sister), and there were a lot of appointments I had made. 

So we didn't get nearly as much done as I had hoped, but we still covered significantly more material than Einstein would have covered at public. Here is what we targeted this week:

Math
We are working out of the A Beka curriculum, level 3. This is roughly a 3rd grade level, so challenging for Einstein, but also doable. He learned multiplication with carrying very quickly, factors, we introduced long division, and we reviewed subtraction with 0s in the minuend. I also had him count out his change when he wanted to make a purchase.

Math is far and away Einstein's favorite subject- he will request multiple pages a day for fun! So I feel like he is moving very fast (I certainly didn't pick up concepts this quickly when I was his age!), but he is comfortable with this pace he has set for himself, so full steam ahead!

History
We studied the lives of Juan Ponce de Leon and Jacques Cartier this week. My husband read the bloody battle scenes between the Spanish/ French to Einstein at bedtime, and they both seemed to really enjoy that! Einstein kept asking for more and more. 

Geography
We went over all the state capitols this week again. Einstein knows 85-90% of all the USA state capitols, and loves quizzing me on them. He has a church friend who is every bit as gifted, and they like to size each other up by shooting off math and geography questions. It is hilarious!

Science
The mold and germ unit went so well last week that Einstein wanted to continue it. He watched mold growing each day on his wet/ dry bread experiment, and read several books about germs, strange medicine, and "tiny killers" that he checked out from the library. 

He would follow me around while I cooked, listing off gross remedies (like cockaroach brains) that people would use to "cure" all manner of ailments. We did a few experiments just for fun, like seeing how candles need oxygen to stay aflame.

English
As much as Einstein loves math, he despises writing. I don't know why gifted kids hate writing so much other than that their brains go so much faster than their pen, so everything looks sloppy, and then the perfectionism sets in and melt downs begin.

This is the area that becomes a power struggle between us, and we are trying to figure out a balance between learning to love learning and actually fixing his pencil grip/ handwriting. Right now, I am requiring some difficult work, and if he wants to write notes or journal or whatever (cursive or print), then I am okay with that, as long as he is writing.

During English time, we work on reading comprehension, spelling, and the parts of speech. So we defined and gave examples of adverbs, verbs, nouns, adjectives, etc. 

Reading
We finished Charlotte's Web! Einstein loved the book, and his favorite character was Templeton. 

We acted out the book using toys, and when I asked Einstein what his favorite part of the story was, he said that it was when Templeton brought back the word "Crunchy", and then Einstein tossed the toy Wilbur up onto the barbeque grill. 

We also watched the 1970s video, and I really liked that one because it stayed so true to the book. I know there is a more recent movie, but I hadn't previewed it, so I didn't attempt a comparison. Einstein kept yelling "Mom come quick! Templeton's egg is about to get smashed!" or "Mom look! Templeton is so fat!"

Extras
Einstein's grandma is teaching him art and piano, so he is in charge of practicing piano each day, and he likes drawing by himself, so I let him have all the paper and writing utensils he wants. 

Einstein studies chess each day. I learned to not challenge him to two chess games at once. He beat me twice in a similar amount of time.

We are working on our garden too. Some days we don't make it out in the 100 degree weather, but we try to get out when we can!