homeschool happenings and highlights (week 3)

*We finished up our first literature selection, To Kill A Mockingbird, this week. I think Annie loves the book as much as I do. As we're also working on "newspapers" this year, Annie has been reading editorials. This week, she wrote an editorial about Tom Robinson's conviction and death. And as an added bonus, we watched the movie version last night.

*Annie chose one of her journal entries to revise this week. She picked a cute little story about Baker. She posted her final version on her blog.


*We finished up with Georgia by baking Georgia Peach Bread. Yum! This whole idea of using recipes as part of U.S. States unit is really working out well...Annie seems to be developing a love of baking, something that has never interested her before. Not to mention, of course, we get to eat the results!

















We then moved on to New Jersey and Massachusetts.

*We also finished up our U.S. Elections unit. Annie did an activity that I think will serve her well in the future. She chose some "issues" that she felt affected her or that she was interested in. She then researched the Democratic and the Republican party platforms to see where each stood on these particular issues.

We also played an elections game...she won the presidency from me with a landslide victory. (She really would make a much better president than I anyway, so I think "the best man" won.)



*In continuing with our rocks and minerals unit, we headed up to Lake Ontario to do some rock collecting.















*Swimming lessons began again this week.

*This week in Natural History of NY, we covered mammals of New York. Rich and Annie did some plaster casting of mammal tracks along a creek bank. They also did some live trapping of small mammals in our backyard last night (one short-tailed shrew was their only capture).