Homeschool Discoveries

We had a few unexpected happenings this week….

Yes, we got an April snow storm.  The forecast was for such vast quantities of snow that the building our co-op meets in preemptively planned to be closed on Thursday, the day our co-op meets.  So even though we got nowhere near the foot of snow the forecasters said we might get, we still had no co-op.  And the roads in our metro area were definitely icy.  So, Mr. E’s  Star Wars Lego collection was all packed up with no where to go.   He will do expert day later this month instead.

Here are a few other learning highlights from our week:

1.-2: Baking Soda and Vinegar make for a fun rainy snowy afternoon activity.  Even though we’ve done these activities before, it still makes for a fun discussion on various science topics. The kids were thrilled that I gave them a whole bottle of vinegar and a whole box of baking soda and said, “have at it!”

3.  For math this week, Mr. E (Age 6, Kindergarten) continued to review 2 digit addition with Right Start C.  We also hit the lessons with making groups from stars on the flag (pictured) and grouping the dots on a Chinese checker board.  He wasn’t so keen on these activities.  I think this is where his young age for the book comes through — he barely had the patience for the flag, and didn’t have the patience to finish the checker board activity.  I bet it will be a much different story when we hit the checker board again at the end of C (since that will be about a year from now!).

Miss M practiced two digit by two digit multiplication in RightStart D, and did some multiplication and division word problems.  We’re kind of skipping around at this point…next up for her are the drawing lessons at the end of D.

For math games this week, we played Speed (both M and E), Skip Counting Memory (Game P2, both kids), and Find The Two Factors (game P29, just Miss M).

4.  For History and Science we took a few “Rabbit Trails” in our book basket.  We’re studying the Civil War for history, but we spent some time this week zeroed in on a topic of interest — a confederate submarine called the Hunley (Read my post from Thursday to find out about a book that inspired this rabbit trail).   In the science basket, we now have books about backyard birds, as well as books for the unit I planned on Simple Machines. Miss M told me she was really into Robins right now (we have one, pictured in our top collage, that hangs out in one of our trees quite a bit) and wanted to learn more.  So, we found one book devoted to robins, a few books about other birds we have in our yard, and a few books about backyard birds in general.

5.  For Spelling/Phonics this week, Mr. E completed another five lessons of Logic of English Foundations (he’s up to lesson 95 — it’s hard to believe there are only about another 20 lessons left in terms of what is currently written…he’s almost all the way through!).  He liked the assigned reading of “The Foot Book” and also continued with the next chapter of the Little Bear book he started reading last week.  Miss M worked on lesson 32 of Logic of English Essentials.  This wasn’t her best week testing-wise, but at least most of the mistakes were small ones.

In other fun this week…

1.  We took a trip to Minneapolis Central Library downtown this past Sunday.  It’s truly one of my favorite destinations.  🙂  Behind Miss M is the “Milestones Collection” of important first editions or other rare children’s books that don’t circulate.  One of these days Miss M and I want to make a special trip to go to that room and read a couple of out of print Maud Hart Lovelace books that are hard to find.  🙂

2. Kids making individual apple pies

3.  It was my birthday on Tuesday.  We enjoyed these yummy pastries from my favorite bakery for breakfast (and snack, and breakfast the next day).  We didn’t do a lot of special things on the day of my birthday, but Tony did bring me flowers and made us a yummy dinner and dessert!

4. Best “CT” (Cute Toddler or Cute Trouble) chaos moment of the week — helping himself to the stickers from the art cabinet

5.  Isn’t Mr. J a cute Toddler Darth Maul? 🙂

I just realized that Mr. K, the four year old, didn’t appear in any pictures this week!  I think he was too busy playing with Legos and pretending to be a super hero to stay still for any pictures.  😉

Have a wonderful weekend!

I’m linking up with Collage Friday, The Weekly Wrap-Up, and Homeschool Review!