Subjects
Here is a list of subjects we taught this school year. Click on the button to take you to the subject and the grey arrow to bring you back.
Mathematics
We continued working with Right Start moving on to Right Start Level E this year CLICK HERE FOR PDF . Yesenia still did not like the games in the Right Start although I thought they were great. This year we touched on multiplication, division, geometry, and fractions. Yesenia also started working with Beast Academy. The questions from BA are very challenging so they don’t really correspond to the grade levels exactly. The questions certainly stop and make you think! We started at 3A worked together to answer the questions that left her stumped (to be fair, it took a lot of trial and error for me too!) She always liked the Brightside puzzles so I thought let’s give BA a try!
Language Arts
This year for Language Arts, Yesenia used Spell Zone and Vocabulary from Classical Roots, LVL 5. The vocab book is especially great because it breaks down the vocab by root words which really helps you to decode words in general. She gets weekly verbal quizzes.
She read the Diary of Anne Frank graphic novel which culminated in a visit to the Holocaust Memorial in Miami Beach and a short creative writing essay based on Anne’s time spent in the Annex. We are planning a visit to the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam this September while we are in Germany visiting Yesenia’s father.
Yesenia also read Radioactive: Marie & Pierre Curie: A Tale of Love and Fallout by Lauren Redniss. Marie Curie is Yesenia’s favorite scientist and so we capitalized on that enthusiasm and incorporated it into our reading for the year. To show her comprehension, Yesenia made a poster with ten facts that she learned from the book! It’s going to be useful next year because we plan to continue on the exploration of Chemistry with an online class at WTM institute that includes a written assignment on a famous scientist.
Mostly her free-form writing assignments were tailored to her interests. She used her time to write fanfics of her favorite show, My Hero Academia. She also was given time to write character descriptions for the animated series she is in the process of creating.
Linked is her reading log for the year.
History
We started the first 6 chapters of STOW Vol. 3 this summer. We’re on a break now, but will continue throughout the next school year. The kids have enrolled in a Minecraft STOW class and I’m excited to see what they create! To be continued in August…
Geography
Geography this year started out with the basics. The continents, the oceans, the cardinal directions. Then we switched to a week-by-week study of the African countries. We kept it very simple. Watch a video (Geography Now! videos on Youtube), add them into our geography books, and have a short discussion. We are going to continue our studies into the new school year. The kids loved the Geography Now! videos and would often ask for them outside of school.
Japanese
Yesenia wanted to switch to Japanese this year! She loves all things Japan and anime so of course I obliged and said yes! She first started with daily Duolingo lessons but once I knew she was serious about her studies, we switched to a weekly tutor (Ms. Mayuko) through TakeLessons. She also had some study sessions with a close friend of mine and they geeked out about all things Anime and practiced their Japanese together.
Science
Science-this year we used The Elements: Ingredients of the Universe by Ellen Johnston Mchenry as our science curriculum. We learned all about electrons, protons, and neutrons. We explored the periodic table. They memorized elements 1-50 and the element groups for the memory work this year. We also did lots of fun experiments! Slime of course is always a given, but we found how to detect oxygen, make molecules out of food, and launched a homemade rocket. We also played cards with our periodic table matching games.
Here is a video of her reciting the periodic table. The kids learned it using the Aseop Science periodic table song.
Music
This year we switched completely and took Ukeule lessons! We had an excellent teacher who can 2x a week to teach them through pop songs.
Art
Yesenia continued on her animation path. She moved into creating original characters on Procreate on the iPad. She is currently taking classes with 21 Draw to learn how to shadow better and draw those pesky hands!
She loves to create little gifs of her drawings. She even made a cute gif for her friend’s birthday.
Yesenia has been dreaming up an animation series, all full of original characters and stories. It’s a big and daunting project so we are taking it slowly. She currently is working on character descriptions.
She also got a lesson from her step-father on how to edit videos with Adobe Premiere. She plans to reopen her YouTube channel with original content.
