Homeschool Day 2/4

 Kindergartener

• Put together an alphabet puzzle
• Handwriting without Tears workbook
• Math workbook page (adding)

Five in a Row - The Story of Ferdinand

This wraps up the week with Ferdinand.  Today, we learned about turkey vultures.  We also watched a video with a zookeeper introducing a 30 year-old turkey vulture that lived at their zoo (I didn't know turkey vultures lived that long).  We learned about why vultures ride thermals high up in the sky (because they are resting).  We watched a video comparing hawks and vultures.  

He played outside for a long time again today.

13 Year-old

• Algebra Honors page - coordinate graphing
• Language Lessons for the Secondary Child
• She did some free reading from her book crate.  She also read To Kill a Mockingbird and I read aloud.  
• Apologia Anatomy & Physiology - she worked on the note booking journal that goes with the textbook
• She practiced piano
• Ballet class

15 Year-old

• Continued with 1 Samuel
• Algebra 2 - did about half of one workbook page - Quadratic Equations - she hates them and I told her she could finish on Monday
• Huckleberry Finn
• Language Lessons for the High School Student
• Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass - she finished this and gave me a spoken narration/review of the book.  Overall, she liked the book, but she said it was a bit dry.  She also wanted to know more about how Douglass escaped slavery, but the book didn't give any details.  This was a difficult book to read because of the subject and level of writing (the author was very, very educated, of course).
• German together
• Music Appreciation - she listened to the Legend of John Henry's Hammer by Johnny Cash.  This is the first year we have ever used American folk songs for Music Appreciation.  I should've been introducing the kids to these songs a long time ago, instead of focusing so much on classical music.  We've learned (even I've learned) American history and cultural history by listening to these folk songs and reading about their backgrounds.  Some of these songs I'm hearing for the first time in about 40 years and it's jarring, because I remember hearing them as a small child.  Because we didn't listen to these in school, I never heard them again until now.  When you see homeschool Music Appreciation curriculum, it is always classical music.  Students should be introduced to other kinds of music, too. 
• Ballet class
• Apologia Biology - microscope lab - she looked at diatoms and green algae

  The view from our microscope.  Spirogyra with Conjugation.  A filament of green algae.