More writing to a prompt

My daughter did another lesson on writing to a prompt today and ended up with another adorable piece of work. She did much better on focusing on the topic today than with the one she finished yesterday, and had fewer errors. She had trouble with misspelling words and a little trouble with run-on sentences but these are consistent weaknesses that we are working on. The ideas and the expression of though are marvelous, though, as always, and I thoroughly enjoyed reading this.

Her prompt today was:

If you could be any animal, which animal would you be and why?

Here is her paper:

If I were an animal I would certainly be an elephant. Why is that, you say? Because an elephant is strong. It has the strength to lift up a full grown male human. It can even rip off a thick branch right from the tree!

Another reason why is because the elephant has pads on its feet so it walks quietly. But when an elephant stomps, another elephant can hear the sound waves through the ground. Here is an example: when a child elephant is playing and his mother is in trouble, the child can hear the stomps and comes to the rescue!

Another reason is because they can fight off predators like hyenas and lions with their scary tusks and large size. So that is why I want to be an elephant.

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I corrected her spelling as I was typing and when I was reviewing her paper with her I made a few grammatical corrections, especially in the final paragraph. (She got lazy it looked like, and was sloppy in her sentence construction.) Her thought process is precious and the way she expresses herself in her writing is very engaging to say the least!

Writing to a Prompt: Jehovah is My Hero

My daughter has been working on writing to prompts. I'm really proud of the topic she chose for the paper she finished today. I did not help her with choosing a topic at all. The prompt was:

Who is your hero? Tell why that person is your hero.

I would have thought she would have chosen her dad or maybe Niki Manaj. LOL But she chose someone even more important.

She worked on this quite a bit as she had way too many details that didn't really fit in with the topic. Here is her finished version.

JEHOVAH IS MY HERO

Jehovah God is my hero, because he made the earth exactly right for us to live on. Do you want to know how Jehovah made the earth? Well of course you do. Jehovah put the earth exactly where we can survive. You see, if the earth were just an inch closer to the sun it would be scorching hot. If it was just another inch further away from the sun it would be too cold for us. So God put the earth in the perfect position.

Now I'm going to tell you why people are imperfect. Once there were some perfect people named Adam and Eve. Eve was at the forbidden tree and a snake came down to her and said, "Eat the fruit and you will become like God." Eve quickly took two pieces of fruit and ran to Adam. She said "Try some," so Adam tried some. They soon noticed they were naked, and they ran from Jehovah when he said "Adam, where are you." "I am behind a tree," said Adam, "because I am naked." Jehovah said "WHY HAVE YOU EATEN FROM THE FORBIDDEN TREE!" "Eve made it look so delicious." Jehovah said, "Eve, you have given Adam forbidden fruit. So I will increase the pain of your labor and you will grow old and die."

But you shouldn't worry, because Jehovah will restore the earth and everyone will be perfect.

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I tried to type it exactly as she wrote it. I did leave out the few spelling errors but put the quotation marks exactly as she wrote them since she just studied that. As you can imagine I was laughing quite a bit as I was typing it. I adore the way she puts things and the way her mind works when she is writing.

Science experiments

My daughter loves the ARVA science experiments. I'm not so keen on them but she's a scientist at heart and loves to make the messes. Here she is with a modeling clay model of an oxygen atom she made yesterday.

She took modeling clay and made 8 blue balls and 8 green balls for the protons and neutrons, and wrapped them up in plastic wrap to represent the nucleus. Then she made 8 small yellow balls and attached them with toothpicks to represent the electrons surrounding the nucleus.

Multiplication

We've been being introduced to multiplication in a sneaky kind of way the past couple of weeks, and the past couple of days we've been doing full-blown multiplication, all without memorizing the multiplication chart! That will come in time (probably sooner than later) but now she's learning it by drawing it out in grids and other visual ways and by using small shaped pieces to line it all up on her desk. She's enjoying all this playing!

She's been studying ecosystems in science, which is pretty fascinating for her. She's working on a report on jackals for the composition part of language skills, and whenever we finish that I'll print that here. We just finished up a unit in adjectives in the GUM (grammar, usage and mechanics) segment of language skills. She's working on test readiness in literature and Italy in history. She's been painting and making clay models in art and I have a photo or two of that to show. Music is hopeless because although she's quite musically inclined, I'm not and I struggle to figure out the simplest things I'm supposed to be teaching her. On one lesson this week I gave up on trying to teach "crescendo" to her from the book and the supplied music and found a YouTube video of a fascinating performance of the orchestra classic (and childhood love of mine) "Bolero." Ahhh, much better!

She went on a field trip this week to the Governor's Mansion and learned more about their pets than anything else I think. I keep hearing about the Beebes' dog Viper and the Clintons' now-deceased cat Socks. Her dad went with her on the trip and it seemed more interesting to him than her!

We are looking forward to a few days off this coming week!

More on independence and working ahead

We are making good progress with working independently now that we are very familiar with how all the lessons work. We learned something in our conference with her teacher last week — if she knows the subject matter well, it is okay for her to not complete each lesson in the unit or all of each lesson. We also learned something else. It is okay for her to work ahead. Being able to skip parts of some lessons has enabled her to do a little more catching up and working ahead. Here is a picture of her working with her teacher and the other kids in her class during the conference last week.

Earlier this week she did an entire unit of science in about an hour. It was something she had already covered in school and we were having fun so we kept going until we were tired of it! She really enjoys science. We did some extra work on spelling and language this week as well. With her not starting in the school until a month and a half after everyone else did she has a bit of catching up to do but a good portion of this material she already knows because she had it at school.

A friendly letter

My daughter was working on a short unit on writing friendly letters and she wrote a letter to her grandparents. They've received it by now so I'll share it with everyone else:

(Written just as she wrote it, with all the corrections made, notice the date :D)

Tuesday, Oct. 31, 2010

Dear Ma and Pa,

I want to tell you about how I am doing in school. I am doing very well on everything except math. I have a little trouble with it. I think it is because I don't like it as much as I do everything else. I do very well on everything, and because of that I get stickers on every worksheet almost! And best of all I'm home schooled. Well see you next time I come to your house or next time I write a friendly letter.

Your granddaughter,
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Independence

Schooling at home is going great now that we are on our fourth week. She is really enjoying it and I'm learning how to do her school and my work at the same time.

A couple of weeks ago I spend a day or so working on improving her speed and independence, but quickly gave that up in favor of encouraging independence. Her pace is quite unhurried and I thought I'd gently nudge her into working quicker in areas where she knows the subject matter, but it didn't really work out that well. I know her well enough to know to back off before she got flustered, which happens easily when she is hurried. We'll pick that up later (I guess).

Encouraging independence is working out well and of course my being more familiar with how the program works helps in that area too.

She is going to speak with her teacher tomorrow for the first time and she's excited about that. In the meantime I have to make sure the computer has whatever programs it needs for the conference and that I know how to operate them.

She has a paper that she's been working on for about a week and when it is finished I will publish it here.