Fifth Grade--Week One

This was Hanna's first official week of homeschool! As I have mentioned several times over the last few weeks we are doing homeschool throughout the summer since our baby will be here mid-September. Hanna has been anxious to start and was ready, actually asking me if we could begin only a couple days after she got out of public school. I "convinced" her to take a little time off before we began. Our first week was very successful from a few different standpoints. I will talk about our productivity and what she did on an academic level in this post. I figured out lots of great scheduling and organizing techniques we are utilizing beginning next week that I will address in a different post.

Hanna is hoping to get all of her lessons finished up most weeks in a four day school week, Monday-Friday. This week she did accomplish that. She is satisfied with all of her curriculums we chose (thank goodness) and feels comfortable with their content and the way the lessons/assignments are laid out.

English/Math
She completed lessons 1-4 from Rod and Staff English and Math. So far these lessons are just review from 4th grade materials, so no problems.



Wordly Wise 3000 Book 5
Hanna will complete one lesson from this book per week. Since she has used this book beginning in second grade until present, no surprises here either. Great way to learn new vocabulary and also works on reading comprehension.

Science
This week Hanna completed lesson 1 from Apologia Zoology 1, Flying Creatures. She began her notebook for the course and learned alot about notetaking skills!! This week's lesson defined zoology and discussed the basics of classification, extinction, flight, biomes and touched on a few bird facts. She also completed short reports on Carolus Linnaeus and five biomes.



Hanna also started her pond life project. Hers, just like Joe's, will be a unit study completed over the course of several weeks. Hanna's will be more in depth than Joe's and done independently.

History
Hanna completed lessons 1-3 from History Odyssey-Ancients, Level Two. She began her history notebook (science and history are both notebooking based curriculums for her), timeline and map 1. She really enjoyed her work time in both science and history!

Spelling
Hanna didn't have any spelling words this week. I am pulling her spelling words each week from any words that are misspelled throughout her weekly writings/reports, as well as from her history and science lessons from the previous week. She will begin weekly spelling next week.

She had a super week! I was impressed with how well she did and how well she worked independently. I did my best to find curriculums for her that would encourage as much independent work as possible. She has been in Montessori school and is used to independent lessons and I wanted to continue that in our homeschool. I am very satisfied with our first week!