Homeschool Day 1/21

 Kindergartener

• Math workbook page
• Handwriting without Tears - one workbook page + working with the capital letter chalkboard
• Read a story from the Reader - All About Reading
• Played Playdough

Five in a Row - Mirette on a High Wire

We went through the art sections in the teacher's guide.  We also got out some watercolor paints and paper.  We made a color wheel with complementary colors - paired blue/orange, red/green, and purple/yellow. 

13 Year-old

•  Watched an algebra lesson
• Language Lessons for the Secondary Child
• Worked on spelling the books of the Old Testament
• Free reading from her book crate and I read aloud
• Apologia's Anatomy & Physiology - still reading about skeletal muscles.  I came to a realization today that she is getting more information from this middle school anatomy text than the high school sophomore is getting from her high school level Health course (ACE).  I've already been beefing up her labs with high school level labs to accompany the textbook.  She participated in several of the high schooler's biology labs at this point already.  If I can add a unit on First Aid/CPR, I'm planning to give her a half credit in Health.  She's literally covering the exact same material as the high school health course, but in better detail.  Because she wants to be a dentist, I plan to go through Apologia's Human Anatomy course anyway in a few years.
• Ballet class

15 Year-old

• Algebra 2 - we have reached a point where there are only a couple of lessons left of solving algebraic equations.  I'm now having trouble solving them.  I completely forgot about the Quadratic Formula.  I'm trying to remind her that there's light at the end of the tunnel.  After this unit is measurements and more graphing.  Then, on to Precalculus.
• Wordsmith Craftsman - I'm dropping this after this week - this isn't working out
• Huckleberry Finn
• Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
• German together
• Music Appreciation - last week, she asked, "What's bluegrass??"  Well, you're going to find out!  She listened to Earl Scruggs and Friends 'Foggy Mountain Breakdown' - a famous bluegrass song used in car chase scenes in old movies
• Apologia Biology - lab 3.2
• Ballet class

LAB 3.2

This lab entailed viewing different slides of protists under the microscope.  These are slides you can buy as part of a kit through Home Science Tools.  The protists are dyed, so you can see them more clearly.  Here's some examples of what we could see in our microscope:

Paramecium

Volvox

From my understanding, the circles that look like lily pads are the individual cells.  They group themselves together in colonies - which is what the pink bag-like thing is that's surrounding them.

We saw this under the microscope - it looks like the colony broke apart.

I love Apologia Biology and basically anything from Home Science Tools.  This is the third time I've taught this course and I really enjoy all the labs.