Week 19: (MFW wk 18) Eli Whitney, Tennessee, and Living Things

"Whatever is worth doing, is worth doing well." Eli Whitney

This quote was the theme for school last week, and I think our new "motto" here at home! We really enjoyed reading about the life of Eli Whitney. I knew he had invented the cotton gin, but, had no idea that he also invented mass production...which we learned from one of our library books. We also learned that Mr. Whitney was not very good at books, but, was very good with tools and that Mr. Whitney endured many set-backs and misfortunes during his lifetime. What great lessons we could gain from Eli Whitney!

Here are our books (and movies, CD's and audiotapes!) from last week.

Also, as part of history/social studies, we learned about the state of Tennessee. Dario completed his state sheet and read about Casey Jones and listened to some railroad songs on CD. He also played games about Tennessee at www.learninggamesforkids.com along with his Shake the States game on the iPad.

Dario also learned about Living Things and Cells this week in science. Dario completed the Creation activity suggested in our Teacher's Manual (we read the story of Creation from Genesis 1 and listed everything that God created as either a Living or Non Living thing). Dario also completed an additional cut and paste sorting activity seen here. .

We also read about Cells and how all living things are made up of cells. We watched Bill Nye the Science Guy explain cells and we read the book "Greg's Microscope". We also made a model of an animal cell (poured prepared jello into a zipper bag (cell membrane), added a grape (nucleus), and added bits of candy (organelles).

Dario also started writing in a journal this past week. I don't think we'll do this daily, but I definitely want to continue to incorporate this activity into our routine. He also studied plural nouns and aced yet another spelling test!

In Bible this week we learned another name for Jesus...the Lamb of God.

In math, we continued to review addition and subtraction. I really hope to move on to multiplication in a few weeks, but, until then, we'll continue to practice, practice, practice! Here's the workbook we're using for now.

Next week we move on to Ohio, Pioneers on the Ohio River, and Johnny Appleseed. We'll also learn about classifying animals and continue to learn how Jesus is the Lamb of God. Maybe we'll even work on our History Pockets this next week...who knows?! Every week always looks so "light" when I look over it on Sunday...yet, we always seem to add more and more all the time!!

I am linked directly to the Weekly Wrap-Up and the Ultimate Homeschool Blog