First Two Weeks in Review (Seventh grade)

Well, we started off with a bang, finishing ahead of our scheduled time, only to have difficulties arise as early as lesson 6. The first few days went well and quickly partly due to finishing the first two Algebra lessons, giving us an extra 50 minutes for unforseen situations.

Bible: Hannah is working on the ancient Israelites, reading in Exodus, drawing stick figures to remember the scripture covered.

Algebra I: Last year math started with a warm-up, this year, it's Check Skills You'll Need. So far, we've covered variables, exponents, order of operations, number categories (whole, real, counting, integers, rational, irrational), + - / * rational numbers, distributive property, and matrices. Wow, that's a lot.

Science: We have covered lab safety, a modern scientist, metric measurement, living things, classifying organisms, taxonomic keys, and domains and kingdoms.

History: Across the Centuries picks up where we left off last year with A Message of Ancient Days. Hannah is reading about transportation, and the fall of Rome.

Geography: Hannah started with a review of earth's place in space and how this affects the days, months, seasons and years. We are comparing map projections, reviewing longitude and latitude, and mapping ancient Israel.

Composition: We discussed the writing process (prewriting, rough draft, edit/revise, proofread, publish), e-mailed a friend, began a narrative account, vocabulary, unity, coherence, and the order of ideas.

Grammar: Grammar begins at the beginning: sentences, sentence fragments, run-on sentences, subject, predicate, simple subject, simple predicate, and beginning diagramming.

Reading: We began the first day of school with poetry, "A December Day,"and "The Mist and All," " A Visit from St. Nicholas," "Come Into My Tropical Garden," "The Charge of the Light Brigade,"We studied rhythm, rhyme scheme, repetition, meter, internal rhyme, and free verse. We read 11 chapters of Around The World in 80 Days and discovered that in spite of having a hot air balloon on the cover of many versions of the book, Jules Verne's story does not include air travel! We have extensive vocabulary lists, a map, and a character bank.

Spelling: We've had two chapters of spelling so far and she gets some wrong on the pretest, and aces the posttest.

Music: For Music at present, we are using BrainPop to study musical genres. We will try to unearth composer studies from the basement.

Phys. Ed.: Where we live, PE is tough. We are starting a log book to keep track of "progress."

Art History: Architecture is our focus this year. So far,we've looked at Egyptian pyramids, obelisks, and Stonehenge.

Art: For art, Hannah drew a diagram of a pyramid including ways to discourage tomb raiders, and we did a papier mache of a trilithon with toilet paper rolls.

Technology: Technology is long at this point, 25 minute videos, mostly of things she already knows, but you can't switch the order, and there is valuable stuff later. So she has reviewed computer safety, basic vocabulary, menus, toolbars, OSs, keyboarding, networking, and web browsing. We are using BrainPop, Discovery Streaming, and Easy Tech.