Second Semester Update

 

I was entertaining the idea of returning to public school in January, but that intention evaporated because the continued mismanagement of the pandemic.

8-th Grade Update:

• Music: both instruments are practiced daily, and Saturday is dedicated 2 hours of orchestra
• Foreign Language: Portuguese is live and well. The way we are managing is with daily reading/listening to an audiobook, and two weekly lessons - one with a tutor to help with grammar, and the second with a tutor to help with conversation. Both experiences are fabulous and both kids have great rapport with their tutors and look forward to their weekly lessons.
• Math: Finished Geometry and moved to Awesome Math 106 for Geometry.  Finished Introduction to Algebra, and moved to Intermediate Algebra and Precalculus. Intermediate Algebra is focusing on factoring polynomials. The first half of Precalculus is focused on trigonometry. As an intro to advanced math we are using the Level 3 class from the Awesome Math Academy
• Competition Math - Mathcounts is in February.
• English: Reading - has three major works remaining (The Alchemist, This side of Home, and Our Town). Writing - we will cover some chapters from Write Shop I and a writing class on outschool to receive independent assessment. We finished with the Virtuoso Vocabulary book, and next we will do some SAT prep in May.
• Science: HS Bio class, Mel Chem. We discovered an interesting class on outschool which teaches a little bit of bioinformatics coupling biology and computation through python. 
• Computer Literacy - Chrome suite,  python through the lessons mentioned above with the intention to continue learning more with Crash Course in Python
• Social Studies - We are adding a world history overview through outschool. The class came highly recommended, it was not very expensive and it will help offload some of the workload from me.

6-th Grade:

• Music: both instruments are practiced almost daily, and orchestra occupies our saturdays
• Foreign Language: Portguese just as above is well and sound.
• Math: Finished Prealgebra, and is almost halfway into Introduction to Algebra now. Geometry is also almost halfway now. We will finish right after we cover angles in a circle. As an intro to advanced math, we are using Level 1 from the Awesome Math academy.
• Competition Math - Mathcounts is going to take place in February.
• English: Reading - the curriculum changed several times. The only three big pieces left to cover this semester are: Truth, Nothing but the. truth. by Avi, The inquisitor's Tale, and Born a Crime. For Writing, we are taking a little review detour through the IEW American History book, before focusing on the last project in Write Shop F. The last month of school will be dedicated to understanding and critiquing Hero Stories and possibly even writing one.
• Science: Measurement Class, Mel Chem,
• Computer Literacy - Chrome suite, Scratch. He is learning self by using others' codes and online forums, and is making games he cares about. This is really good. A self motivated learner.
• Social Studies - We are adding a world history overview through outschool. The class came highly recommended, it was not very expensive and it will help offload some of the workload from me.

Audio Books

During the school year it is difficult to maintain Portuguese fresh. We stumbled upon audio books and we found them to be a wonderful and most importantly painless addition to our routine.

• O Leao, A feiticeira e O Guardaroupa

• O cavalo e seu menino

• Principe Caspian

• O extraordinario

• Volta ao mundo em 80 dias

• Volta ao Mundo em 80 dias

• Robinso Crusoe

• Don Quixote

For some books in English we also resorted to audiobooks, especially ones which come with some explanation of otherwise difficult concepts and words:

• Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry    

We also find lots of movies and cartoons that are on youtube and are in the target language. This is especially helpful when you are fluent and just need to polish some structures, keep some consistency and maintain the language. 

In addition we have two tutors. One tutor focuses on grammar and the second tutor focuses on conversation. 

• Carmen

• Preply

New School Year

We homeschooled during the 2020-2021 academic year, and we will continue to homeschool during the 2021-2022 school year.  My plan is to homeschool at least until end of December when my youngest will be fully vaccinated, but we will re-evaluate and see who wants to do what when. The Public School semester ends at the end of January, so the earliest they would try public school is the beginning of February.

So here is the plan:

8-th Grade:

• Music: piano and violin, daily practice and weekly lessons
• Foreign Language: Portguese - daily practice via textbook exercises, book excerpts, videos, weekly lesson
• Math: Algebra (Algebra II+Trigonometry); Geometry (Finish AOPs Geometry, Awesome Math Camp Geometry as review, Awesome Math 106), Number Theory, Keep Counting in our fingers
• Competition Math - Mathcounts, AMC 8, AMC 10
• English: Reading - Shakespeare, American Short Stories, Raisin in the Sun, a novel; Vocab - Vocab Virtuoso, SAT practice (verbal); Writing - Write Shop 1
• Science: HS Bio class, Mel Chem, Physics home experiments; 
• Computer Literacy - Chrome suite, Python on Google Colab or local; Latex - Overleaf

6-th Grade:

• Music: piano and cello, daily practice and weekly lessons
• Foreign Language: Portguese - daily practice via textbook exercises, book excerpts, videos, weekly lesson
• Math: Algebra (Review PreAlgebra, Intro to Algebra 1-12); Geometry (1-10), Introduction to Counting; 
• Competition Math - Mathcounts, AMC 8
• English: Reading - Shorts stories, but mostly historical fiction about Mao's China, South Africa's Aparrheid, Human disasters such as Chernobyl; Vocab - Vocabulary Virtuoso;Writing - Write Shop F
• Science: Measurement Class, Mel Chem, Physics home experiments
• Computer Literacy - Chrome suite, Scratch; Late -  Overleaf

February 2021

We are struggling with writing. Both kids avoid it as if it were the plague. We are using IEW-Medieval History and IEW-Modern History. To help along with the five paragraph paper template, this month I have both kids write on topic that is of interest to them. So they read, they plan (KWO) and they write. Then they piece the paragraphs together,  and tie them with a conclusion and an introduction. Since we are writing an essay a week, most of the work is mostly sloppy, because we don't spend time editing. Next month, hopefully, we will be able to focus on deliberate editing. 

Fifth Grade Update:

English:

• Reading: Graphical Novel, Life of Frederick Douglas; Through. my eyes; Honest History-The Renaissance
• Writing: Five paragraph essay
• Spelling and Vocabulary: All About Spelling 5&7; Virtuoso 4-5

Math:

• Algebra: rates, ratios, work problems, travel problems, percent
• Geometry: area and perimeter
• MathCounts trainer, 10 problems per day

Portuguese:

• Lessons with tutor once a week
• Daily reading
• Grammatica Ativa 1

Seventh Grade Update:

English:

• Reading: Books about Korea
• Writing: Five paragraph essay
• Spelling and Vocabulary: All About Spelling 6&7; Virtuoso 6-8

Math:

• Algebra: graphing functions
• Geometry: 3D
• MathCounts competition prep
• 
  

Portuguese: 

• Lessons with tutor once a week
• Daily reading
• Grammatica Ativa 1

English Read Aloud:

Portuguese Read Aloud

 We will continue to homeschool next year. 

• Writing: We will switch to Write Shop
• For 6th grade we will use level F
• For 8th grade we will use Write Shop I

• Literature: We will use EIL
• For 6th grade we will use EIL 7
• For 8th grade we will use EIL 10

• Math:
• For 6th grade, we will continue with PreAlgebra and Geometry
• For 8th grade, we will start Intermediate Algebra and Intermediate Counting

November 2020

This certainly has been an interesting month. 

First, it's election month. Things were tense but at least on one account things moved in a good direction.

Second, we had a birthday, so technically, we had two weeks off. Disruptions are not ideal but are a part of life.

Third, the weather has been fabulous. Really, it has been warm for a long time. It is still warm today.

What did we do:

Fifth Grade:

1. English
• Reading: Eleven,  9/11 novel
• Writing: IEW, Medieval History - one lesson per week
• Grammar: EIW - one lesson per day
2. Math
• Pre-Algebra: fractions
• Pre-Algebra, Art of Problem Solving
3. Science
• Chemistry: theory, Mel Science experiments
4. History
• Howard Zinn's first seven chapters
5. Music
• Cello: weekly private lesson and weekly orchestra lesson
• Piano: weekly private lesson
• Daily half hour practice for each instrument
6. Portuguese
• Reading Don Quixote
• Gramatica Ativa
• Review words
7. PE: one hour minimum per day

Seventh Grade:

1. English
• Reading: Unwind, dystopian novel
• Writing: IEW, Modern History - one lesson per week
2. Math
• Algebra: quadratics, optimization
• Introduction to Algebra, Art of Problem Solving
• Geometry: angles and circles
• Introduction to Geometry, Art of Problem Solving
• ACM8 contest
3. Science
• Chemistry: theory, Mel Science experiments
4. History
• Howard Zinn's first seven chapters
5. Music
• Violin: weekly private lesson 
• Piano: weekly private lesson
• Daily half hour practice for each instrument
6. Portuguese
• Reading Jogos Vorazes
• Gramatica Ativa
7. PE: one hour minimum per day

We have stopped reading aloud. I will resume that in the evenings especially for the times when we are not in school. In these cases we can do reading during the day. It is especially important for maintaining portuguese.

Chemistry Unit: October 2020

 We are are learning about Chemistry. My approach is outlined below.

1. We are going to carry out Mel Science Chemistry demonstrations

2. We are going to study the basic principles of Chemistry as outlined in these resources:

1. Free Chemistry Text: Open Text BC
2. Know It All Chemistry
   
3. Kitchen Chemistry
4. Kitchen Chemistry
   
5. Chemistry: a molecular approach
6. Chemistry, 2nd edition by Great Courses Plus

3. The basic principles I want to cover this year are:

• Safety
• History
• Chemical Change
• Mass vs Weight
• Volume, Mass and Density
• Conservation of particles
• Conservation of mass
• Elementary Particles,  Origins, Atoms, Molecules and Mole
• Chemical reactions
• Types
• Limiting reactants
• Solutions
• Applications
• Cooking
• Medicine
• Electrochemistry
• Chemical Engineering

4. Experiments:

• 10/1/2020: These experiments rest on the production of CO2. In the first case it results from the thermal decomposition of baking soda. In the second case it results from the reactions of a base and an acid.
• Safety: 
• what and how needs to be protected before any chemistry begins
• what behavior is appropriate
• how to safely dispose of finished products
• how to safely clean utilities

• Sugar and Baking Soda Combustion: 
• Mel Science Information  
• Mel Science Lesson

•  Citric Acid and Sodium Carbonate
• Mel Science Information Page 
• Mel Science Lesson

September 2020

We continued our homeschooling mostly as planned. My two big failures were not managing to include science and social science as thoroughly as I had planned. My original plan was to cover "Indigenous History of the US for Young People" for social studies, and Gravity and Rocketry for science. Since our reading with both kids focused on Jim Craw during the Great Depression, I decided to add a civil rights movement information in the form of a book and a film. The kids are reading independently "Twelve Days in May" and together we watched Freedom Song. Completely unrelated, we also watched Old Yeller, with the intention to read the book in November when we discuss the Western Expansion and the attitude of the settlers towards the Natives. Regarding science, we did very little, super little, not worth mentioning. The kids did their Tinker Crate projects, one was showcasing chaos, and the other was a. ballista and they explored the relationship of angle vs distance travelled. We briefly talked about gravity, but we will revisit at another month. For September, I am going to focus on Chemistry, since it is easy to relate to. I am going to be using the Mel Chemistry science sets, KnowIt-All Chemistry and Chemistry: a molecular approach both by N.Tro.

September 2020 Homeschool Update:

5th Grade:

Math: PreAlgebra Ch 2 (Rules of Arithmetic), 3 (Number Theory); Geometry - Ch 2 (Angles and Lines)

English: IEW - continued with writing original stories inspired by pictures and summarizing  multiple references;  EIW- continued with the lessons in its sequence, currently at Lesson 14; Novel - Stella by Starlight

Portuguese: Simple Past Tense, Simple Present Tense, Lessons with private teacher using Brasileirinho, reading Pipi

Music: private lessons for cello and piano, and youth orchestra

7th Grade:

Math: Geometry-areas in circle,  Counting & Probability - Ch 8 and review of everything to date

English: IEW 6, 7 ; Novel - Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry (because the dialect was not easy to understand we used the reading by Morgan Myers on youtube, found here). We will also watch the 1978 movie on youtube. 

Portuguese: Present Subjunctive, Lessons with. Private Teacher using Falar, Ler, Escrever

Music: private lessons for piano and violin

Read Aloud: None 

Social Studies: Me: Central Park Five - book, movie; Together: Twelve Days in May (book), Freedom Song (movie), RBG (movie, watched it twice on CNN and Hulu)

Science: None

Movie related to a book: Old Yeller

Exercise: Bike, Run, I hope to go to a Corn Maze