Practice for the Math Assessment

We did not do keyboarding, journal, art, or spelling today. I focused on what’s important like: God, math, and English.

The devotion was called “Are you a pack rat?” Turns out JD might be a pack rat. I also have those tendencies, but he can’t stand to part with any of his toys, broken or not. I have to go through his room when he’s not looking and take out the broken toys. I have been known to give GI Joe war veterans proper burials. Some were missing all four limbs. Probably caught up in the war of BB gun meets T-Rex! Those are always very grueling and gory wars. There are also small army guys buried all over my yard, thanks to JD. Then, the devotion transitioned into the Pharisees of the bible. The “keepers of the rules.” They strictly following the ten commandments but they also added hundreds of their own rules; believing their rules were just as important as the ten commandments. The Pharisees also tried to force all of the people to follow their rules too. Those Pharisees were “spiritual pack rats.” Thankfully, for the people of that time, Jesus came and took that burden of “following rules” out of their lives. No amount of rules keeping will earn your way into heaven. Believing in Jesus is what counts and connects us to God.

JD and I started the book of Exodus today. First we reviewed the who, what, when, where, and why of Genesis and then moved into reading the book of Exodus. We only read chapter 1 and 2 today. Chapter one was about the 12 tribes of Israel dying off but the Israelites still continued to overpopulate Egypt. The new King knew nothing about Joseph or what he had done. So since he thought the increased population of the Israelites was too much he decided to turn them into slaves and planned to overwork them. Then, he tried to get the midwives of the Israelite women to kill all the baby boys. But the midwives feared God and did not do this for the new King. The final instruction was to throw the newborn boys into the Nile river. Chapter two was about Moses floating in the Nile river and being picked up by the Pharaoh’s daughter. The pharaoh’s daughter gave him back to his older sister to be weaned at home and brought back when the time was right. The pharaoh’s daughter adopted him as her own. Then, Moses grew up and one day he noticed an Egyptian man beating a fellow Hebrew. Moses killed the Egyptian. The next day when he tried to break up a fight between two Hebrews and they asked, “Are you going to kill us too?” Moses soon fled Egypt when the Pharaoh heard the news of Moses killing an Egyptian and tried to have Moses killed. Moses fled to Midian. There he rescued seven sisters from some shepherds. The sisters told their dad, Reuel, what happened. Reuel invited Moses to eat with them. After Moses settled with them Reuel gave Moses one of his daughters. So Zipporah became his wife and she soon had a son named Gershom. Chapter two ended with the mean Kind dying and the Israelite people groaning under the burden of slavery.

Today JD and I did a math review on all of the missed questions from the last two weeks. Then I had him retake the first half of the practice math EOG. He brought his score up from a 73% to an 88%. (Whew) But he still missed three of the same questions as before. Here…see if you can figure them out. (No cheating…)
1. ) About how many liters are in a gallon?
2.) About how far is 2 kilometers in miles?
3.) Which rectangle has a perimeter of 34 centimeters and an area of 60 square centimeters?
a. Rectangle 1: 6 cm by 10 cm
b. Rectangle 2: 5.5 cm by 10.5 cm
c. Rectangle 3: 5 cm by 12 cm
d. Rectangle 4: 4.5 cm by 12.5 cm

So after I scored his quiz, I looked up this cool visual (picture on the blog) for memorizing gallons, quarts (liters), pints, cups, and ounces. We reviewed a bit more and then I did a stupid thing. I took a practice EOG for a fifth grader. It was released in 2003. I only scored a 77%. I’m so upset with myself. I can’t believe I scored so low. Yeah, this home school thing is working out great!

Today in English JD and I worked together on seven worksheets. JD first learned about simple subjects and predicates. Then, the worksheet asked JD to underline the subject and identify if the sentence was declarative or imperative. The last set of worksheets was all about sentence conjunctions like the words: and, but, & or. When we score his worksheets I let him look at the teacher’s guide while I scored his answers on the worksheet. He was reading the last set of answers to me like this…and, or BUT!, BUT!, and, or, BUT!, and BUT! (He was cracking himself up. It got me tickled too.) He did a lot better than I thought he would. He only missed 19 questions out of 102 total. That’s an 81% on new English material that may or may not be on the assessment next week.