LEARNING LOG WEEK 16

MATH:  I was doing word problems and a lot of division.  I thought I couldn't do division until I figured out it wasn't that hard.

LANGUAGE ARTS:  I did sentence diagramming.  It is fun and hard at the same time.  I had to sentence diagram the ones that were full sentences and the ones that were fragments I just crossed out.  I did spelling and handwriting.  I'm reading The Rithmatist.  I've gotten pretty far into it.  I know something called the basic Easton defense.  You make a circle and put lines through it that connect on the inside close to the end of the circle, then you put smaller circles on the outside.  That's part of the story.

SCIENCE:  The order of the planets are Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune.  Mercury has lot of craters because it has no atmosphere to burn meteors.  It gets super hot and super cold, so you would either freeze or just disintegrate.  Venus is orange and red and yellow.  It's named after the god of beauty because Venus is really beautiful in the sky.  It's my favorite planet that I know about so far.  I also learned about the moon phases.  We got a ball and we got a flashlight and we spun around to see the different phases of the moon.  The moon rotates around our earth every month.

ENGINEERING:  I built a water gun out of cups, straws and clay.  You take the top part of the cup and you push it and all the pressure builds up and it squirts the water out of the straw.

KARATE:  I have karate class tonight.  I'm working on low defense reverse punch and other defense punches.

LEARNING LOG WEEK 15

MATH:  I worked on division and word problems.  I also added and subtracted.

LANGUAGE ARTS:  I'm reading The Rithmatist by Brandon Sanderson.  I like it a lot.  I know the basic Easton Defense.  It's the strongest defense I know so far in the book.  The prologue ended in a funny cliffhanger.  I also did spelling and writing and handwriting.

SCIENCE:  The pattern of how close the planets are to the sun goes Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune.  We only have one star in our solar system.  It's the sun.  Mercury takes 88 days for a year to pass because it moves faster and it's closer to the sun so it has a smaller orbit.  It takes about 225 days for Mercury to rotate on it's axis one time.

ENGINEERING:  I made a claw with syringes filled with water.  The pressure makes the claw move.  It's pretty cool.

KARATE:  I'm working on my back stance.  It makes your legs sore!  I'm also working on a new form.

LEARNING LOG WEEK 14

MATH:  I'm still working on exponents.  They're kind of hard.  I also did multiplication.

LANGUAGE ARTS:  I worked on writing out the seven continents.  I practiced handwriting and writing.  I read 20 minutes a day.  I did spelling.

SCIENCE:  I'm learning about space.  I learned about the planets and our solar system called The Milky Way.  The sun is in the middle of our solar system.  Earth is the third planet away.

ENGINEERING:  I'm still working on my planetarium.  I'm waiting for my next Tinker Crate.

KARATE:  My brother helped teach class this week.  I reviewed kicks and punches.

OTHER FUN THIS WEEK:  I also learned about the StoneHenge and we made our own with play dough.

LEARNING LOG WEEK 13

MATH: I worked on exponents again.  I had to figure out how many times to multiply a number by itself to get the right answer.  So it could be squared or to the power of 3, or 4, etc.

LANGUAGE ARTS:  I've been reading my classics book.  I also read a book of Boxcar Children comic book style, and I finished the book a little bit ago.  I also did handwriting and writing.  I also did All About Reading.

SCIENCE:  I learned about how you can get power from water.  I drew an example of how it might work.  We made a spinning water wheel with spoons, roasting sticks and a ball.  Then we put water on the spoons to make it spin.

ENGINEERING:  I worked on my planetarium again.  I put the month stickers on and we're going to turn it every month for that sticker to face North and see if the stars in the sky match up.

KARATE:  I reviewed some stuff, and I earned my orange belt officially this week and got it.  I did some drills and there's one thing where we put our hands on a bow staff and you try to twist it towards you.  Whoever pulls it to their side most wins.  The other side gets to do push ups.

LEARNING LOG WEEK 12

MATH: I did order of operations with exponents. The order of operations is parenthesis, exponents, then multiply, divide, add, subtract left to right.  I did problems where I had to move the parenthesis around to find the right answer.  When you move the parenthesis around the answer becomes different.

LANGUAGE ARTS:  I read a poem and learned about poetry.  I did spelling, writing, and handwriting.  I read from my Classic Reader. 

SCIENCE:  We learned about icebergs and the Titanic.  We got a big piece of ice and put it in a bowl.  We discovered that you can only see 10 % of the iceberg.  It can look like a really small iceberg floating in the water, but really there could be this huge iceberg under.  Then we took ice that had dirt in it, and we rolled it down a little bit of dirt and it picks up that and when it melts it leaves land.

ENGINEERING:  I'm still working on my planetarium.  Next, I'm going to put stickers that have months of the year and then I'll keep track of what month and turn it that much.  The stars on the planetarium should match up with the stars in the sky.

KARATE:  I earned my orange belt.  I went to a seminar for the whole day in Las Vegas.  I stayed there for Friday, Saturday, and then left Sunday morning.  I learned how to do some fun protection.  I did a kid's drill.  I did some sparring and won once.  I had fun with my dad and my brother.

LEARNING LOG WEEK 11

MATH: For math I did filling in the blanks for multiplication.  They had letters instead of numbers.  It was a placeholder.  Then you find which number is missing and multiply it to check if it's right.  My grandma helped me with my math this week.  I enjoy my math, but it is a little hard, but that's okay.

LANGUAGE ARTS:  I've been reading 20 minutes a day.  I did handwriting and poetry.  In my book I had to read like four poems, and then I started a new story.  I also practiced fixing sentences.

SCIENCE:  The Statue of Liberty is actually copper.  It's just when copper corrodes it becomes blue overtime so if we were to put salt and vinegar on the Statue of Liberty it would change color because that's how to clean copper.  We practiced with corroded pennies.
Salt water is heavier and more dense than fresh water.  If you have saltwater on the bottom and put fresh water on top it won't mix that well.  But, if you put the saltwater on top it sinks to the bottom and the colors mix immediately.

ENGINEERING:  Engineering was the best!  I made a planetarium and poked out some holes or the constellations.  Then I engineered a switch and went on it.  Then you turn it on in a dark room and the constellations show on the wall.

KARATE:  I tested this week.  I did all my forms and I won't get to know if I passed until Thursday, but I feel pretty confident.

LEARNING LOG WEEK 10

MATH:  I did multiplication boxes where you could tell what some of the other boxes were because you could just add a little bit more instead of remultiplying.  I also did math word problems.

LANGUAGE ARTS:  I read poems, and I had to make a floor plan of what I would want my dream house to be.  I read 20 minutes a day.  I worked on sentences to see if they would need a period or an exclamation point or a question mark.  I did a Halloween craft.  We cut out these little bats and we put dots around them with our finger and we took the bats off and there was an outline of the bats.

SCIENCE:  We learned that we have 206 bones in our bodies.  If we didn’t have bones we’d be a pile of slush.  When you build a building they put the framing in first (like bones for the building) to hold it together.  We made an outline of our hand and put all the bones that we have.  Then we put oil on the bones.   When you hold it up the window it looks like an x-ray, and you can see all of the bones.

ENGINEERING:  The basketball hoop that I made I played with again.  It’s pretty fun.  I also set off my rocket again.

KARATE:  We have not very long until I’m testing.  I have all three stripes on my belt.  That means I’m ready to test.  I’ve been helping some of my froends learn how to do it so they can earn their stripes to test.

LEARNING LOG WEEK 9

MATH: I've been working on multiplying big numbers.  I also have been working with my dominos with my brother.  We've made a lot of fun designs and figured out how to make big projects work.

LANGUAGE ARTS:  I read a book about farm animals.  I also worked on my handwriting and spelling.  I did some artwork too.

SCIENCE:  I'm still learning about water.  The terrarium plants are getting bigger.  I learned about saturation.  When there's too much water in the dirt if you put more water it just runs down the side because it can't soak it up.

ENGINEERING:  I worked on my catapult and tried it out with a basketball hoop.  It's fun to make things and play games with them.

KARATE:  I am getting ready for my test.  I'm going for my orange belt.  I helped my friend learn the first form for his test.  He wants to be a purple belt.

OTHER FUN THINGS THIS WEEK:

LEARNING LOG WEEK 8

MATH: This week was complicated.  It was fun, but hard and it took awhile.  I had to write out all the problems and it became a little hard.  I multiplied big numbers like 45 x 56 then you separate it on a rectangle to be (40+5) x (50+6).  Then you add up all the boxes.  A fun thing that makes it easier to do is when the numbers have zeros at the end you just take the first numbers and multiply them and then add the zeros and there's your answer.

LANGUAGE ARTS: I did handwriting and drew a picture of a dog and a little baby chicken.  I read 20 minutes a day.  I did All About Reading worksheets too.

SCIENCE:  I went to the museum and learned about fossils and dinosaurs.  My favorite bones to see were the Brachiosaurus ones.  We also made pictures of the water cycle this week.  The water evaporates to water vapor and goes up into the clouds where it cools off and turns back into a liquid which is condensation.  Then it rains down called precipitation.  I also used play dough to create an island with a river, an ocean, a bay, a gulf, a straight and a lake.  Most of the water on our earth is salt water.  We looked at a map that shows that.

ENGINEERING: I built a basketball hoop.  First we looked at the instructions.  I already built a sling shot.  Then we put the basketball hoop together.  It would tell you how to print out certain things that you would need for it.  We also cut out cardboard to make it a strong basketball hoop and glued it all together.

KARATE: Next I am testing for my orange belt.  Today I got my last stripe so that means I'm ready to test.  One of my friends in karate is a white belt and wants to be a purple belt but doesn't know the first form so I helped him out with it.