Our Week

We've been working hard in school in the last week.  The kids finished their science reports.  I'm surprised by how much we are enjoying geography.  The curriculum is a little lame, with just a few questions to answer each day, but the kids are having to use all sorts of resources to find the answers. Yesterday, we used our wall map to find the name of the sea between Canada and Greenland (the world's largest island, in case you didn't know), an atlas to find the name of the plain that runs through North America, and we used google to find out what Canada's main industries are.  Caden and Allie continue to do well in Math.  Jaelyn is struggling with percentages.  Our math curriculum isn't a mastery curriculum where you beat a topic to death until you can do it in your sleep.  Instead, a topic is introduced and you do a small amount of practice and then review all their previous topics.  It's continual review.  It was good for Jaelyn last year so she didn't forget things, but it's taking her a long time to grasp it.  Maybe working 30 of the same problems a day with each new topic would be better???  We use IXL to reinforce language arts.  I'm thinking about adding a math subscription for Jaelyn as well.  Everyone has about 30 more lessons and then we'll be done with our math curriculums.  I think we'll go ahead and start on the next grade level.

Here's Caden's report on Tsunamis:

Tsunami by Caden

     A tsunami is a giant wave that means, “harbor wave” in Japanese.  Tsunamis are so big they can destroy entire cities.

Tsunamis are not regular waves. They are caused by tectonic plates rubbing together, underwater landslides, avalanches, or underwater volcanic activity. These violent movements create a giant wave known as the tsunami. The wave can travel over 1,000 miles, and when the tsunami comes into shallow water the waves gets closer together and can rise over 100 feet high. They come in as a series of waves called a wave train. Tsunamis are normally in the Southern, Pacific, and Indian Oceans because of all the tectonic plates.

We have had tsunami warning system since the 1940’s.  Scientists made a new system because the old system was faulty.  There where many false alarms. The new one has a buoy attached to a tsunameter. The tsunameter on the ocean floor detects the tsunami under the wave. Japan has the best tsunami warning system in the word.