Weekly Wrap-Up

Another great week! I am ready for spring to come, but my kids are still enjoying winter and the extra snow we got this week! Andre and I measured the snow for Science for Citizens twice this week, once before the storm (2 inches) and then after the Groundhog Day Storm (6 inches). The photo above shows the second measurement.

This week we also signed up for the World Maths Day . This is our second year participating and since we now have 2 computers hooked up to the internet, Adrienne and Andre found themselves competing against each other! There is also a World Spelling Day competition. The World Maths Day is on March 1, and the Spelling on March 3, but you can log in now and practice. Here is the site's description for the Math event:

"Students play at home and at school against other students around the world in live games of mental arithmetic.  Each game lasts for 60 seconds and students can play up to 100 games, earning points for their personal tally.  Students can play beyond 100 games during the event, but points will only count to the World Maths Day Mathometer, not their personal point score.  The students who answer the most questions correctly appear on the Hall of Fame.  There are 5 different levels of play, 20 games on each level."

It's a free event too! My kids are not the competitive type, but they really enjoy this, the practicing and the competition days as well. They enjoy seeing where their competitors are from (a bit of geography there!). They also like creating their own avatars for their profile, you can see Andre and Adrienne's below:

We continued this week with our regular subjects. I was surprised that Celeste is learning about fractions already! 



In World Geography, we are now learning about Africa. We are still using the Trail Guide to World Geography still, but I like to supplement with books and/or videos. I found one video so far at our library, we watch it on Friday. It was interesting and showed us a lot from Ethiopia and Egypt. The Mystery of the Nile was an IMAX show at some point, and shows the trip of a team of explorers navigating the Blue nile from source to sea. It's a 3,260 mile trip on one of the world's most dangerous river (rapids, crocodiles, armed bandits..).

I found a few library books on Africa. One beautiful book is The Africa Book: A Journey Through Every Country in the Continent from Lonely Planet. It's a great introduction to every single country in Africa, each has gorgeous photos and information on landscape, history, people, marketplace, and more.

In Canadian History, we also took a little side trip to cover some African history, and also read about the British Empire and the Industrial Revolution. Adrienne and Andre often narrate for me, this time they wrote about something they thought was interesting. Adrienne wrote about the Boers and the Great Trek. Andre wrote about the Zulu warriors. Next week, we are pausing our Canadian History to do a comparison between life in Europe and life in Canada around the late 1800s. 

In Science, we finished our study of simple machines with the wheel.

Mystery Class also started this week!

If you would like to read other homeschool families wrap-up posts, please visit Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers.