Week 2: Mold, Exploration, Charlotte's Web

Another week down!!! We are still trying to find our rhythm with homeschool. I had planned that 9-1 would just be homeschool time, but life keeps getting in the way, so we rocked the checklists this week. Tried to get done as much as we could, then made up what got dropped on other days. 

But this has been an AWESOME week!!! 

Einstein trying to make a rabies vaccine (salt, food coloring, water)

Daily
Each day, we try and fit in:

• Chess practice
• Piano practice (we just started this)
• Exercise (this can be on our indoor trapeze, riding a bike, playing at the park, swimming, hitting a ball outside...)
• Chores
• Something fun!
• Sustained Silent Reading- 20+ minutes quietly reading anything you want. I make sure to do this with him to model good reading habits and because it is the only break I get!

Reading 
We started our new reading unit- Charlotte's Web! I loved this book as a kid, and it is a great read aloud! I had forgotten how many fantastic vocabulary words are in there. 

We used our fisher price toys (that I played with when I was a kid!) to mimic the book's settings-  the Zuckerman farm, the Arable house, and the fair. So Einstein can play with everything while I read aloud.


History
We are finished up our Columbus unit, and began getting into other explorers. We really hit on how diseases such as smallpox and measles came from Europe and wiped out about 8 million of the indigenous population. 

Einstein then asked a bunch of questions about how vaccines were created, so we had a tangent day where we looked up all about Louis Pasteur and his work on chicken cholera and his development of the rabies and anthrax vaccines. 

There is an awesome video about it on youtube if you look up "Louis Pasteur cartoon". It is about 25 minutes long. 

Science
Since we began the exploration/ Spanish conquistador unit in history, it was only fitting to do an experiment involving germs and mold!! 

We have been growing mold (one dry piece of bread, one damp piece of bread) to show that germs are in the air. Mold just started appearing on Wednesday. I guess this will be a good time to talk about penicillin too! 

For fun (and to work on the scientific method of hypothesis, experiment, etc), we did a few other experiments too, like freezing a balloon to see that things shrink when cold.

Math
Worked on identifying roman numerals, time, place values (and where to place commas/ decimals), and we started doing multiplication with carrying, such as 87x5. I was surprised how quickly Einstein caught on! 

And I was thrilled to find that the chapter headings in my copy of Charlotte's Web had roman numerals, so it all worked out!

English
In English, we worked on what proper nouns are, and how to capitalize them. These are extremely easy for Einstein, but the writing part is the difficult part for him, so we power through these just so he gets the writing practice.

We also have been doing reading comprehension outside of the Charlotte's Web reading unit and our sustained silent reading. In comprehension, I want to make sure he understands what is happening. So we read a couple Pecos Bill stories, sequenced events, did some vocabulary discovery, and answered comprehension questions. 

We also quiz spelling in the car, but again, this seems so easy for him. He certainly didn't get that from me! Spelling was far and away my worst subject in elementary school. But my husband is a brilliant speller, so thank goodness Einstein takes after his dad there!

Geography
Every time we learn about something in history, I go over the related maps. But Einstein wanted to learn the state birds this week, so we would quiz each other on states and their capitols, then we would look up what that state's bird is. I had no idea so many states all had the cardinal as their state bird!