Homeschool Discoveries

It’s been a more of a non-routine week at our house.  We had a birthday (read an interview with the birthday boy here), Miss M needed to prepare for her Expert Day presentation at co-op, I was tired all week from staying up late for the quarterly editing deadline on the publication I work with, and the weather finally started to warm up a bit…and apparently warm weather makes some students completely unable to think if they are inside a building.  😉

Miss M did a bit of independent work and preparation for Expert Day on Monday, but otherwise, Monday was devoted to celebrating Mr. E’s birthday:

Miss M did her Expert Day project on Dolls this year.  She decided to focus on four “famous dolls” of the 20th century:

We did do a few other things this week:

1.  Dyeing Easter Eggs

2. – 3.  Even though Miss M didn’t do very much of her “regular” school work this week (due to expert day and other distrctions), Mr E still managed to do 4 lessons of RightStart C and 3 lessons from Logic of English Foundations.  The “Silent E” board game was a lot of fun!

4.  With everything going on this week, we decided to take a “fun school” day today — we played Corners, read Life of Fred Butterflies and Grammar Land, and now the big kids are outside playing.

5.  Mr. E also started work on HIS expert day project today.  His class will present at co-op in two weeks.  He is doing a project on Lego Star Wars.  I taught him how to cut and paste from google images so he could find some pictures for his display board.  We also started trying to figure out how many sets have been produced (236 up through 2011, but we’ll have to do some counting of other lists to update that number through 2013).

6.  J really likes his older brother’s new lightsabers.  🙂

7. Lots of Lego building this week as the boys worked on Mr. E’s new sets

8. Cute pic of the three boys — they like to sit on the warm heat vent in the dining room floor early in the morning!

Have a blessed Easter weekend!

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

I was almost going to skip on a wrap up this week…it’s getting late and I should be working (I have my quarterly editing deadline coming up in a bit over a week for the publication I work on).  And I have gifts to wrap for a certain boy who’s turning six tomorrow…but I had a lot of great pictures from this week and I didn’t want to forget all about our week by the time another week goes by.  🙂

Here’s some of what was keeping us busy this week:

1. and 2.:  Making a paper mache “Princess Leia Bird” (from Angry Birds Star Wars” for Mr. E’s birthday party.  It could have been a Pinata, but…who wants to smash something like that — that, and it’s not really “pinata weather” here yet!

3. Yes, it snowed again here last Monday! Only about three inches this time!

4. This was the First Day of Spring for 2013.  On the first day of spring in 2012, the kids were climbing the tree in a neighbors yard wearing shorts and t-shirts.  It was an exceptionally early spring last year but….really?  This is an awfully cold start to spring, even for MN!

5. and 6.:  our first Snap Circuits set — an early birthday present for Mr. E from Grandma Karen.  The set is a huge hit!

7. and 8.:  Trip to the Children’s Museum on Tuesday with Grandma.

9.  Mr E’s birthday party with friends on Saturday afternoon.

Despite the busy week, we did get some of our regular school work done too:

1. and 2:  Science for the week consisted mostly of random experiments Miss M (age 8.5, 3rd grade) picked out from some physics experiment books we found at the library, watching Magic School Bus and playing with Mr. E’s new snap circuit set.  All told, I think it was a lot of science learning even though it really wasn’t very “planned” on my part.  🙂

3.  Miss M has been busily preparing for her “Expert Day” presentation at co-op…it’s coming up this Thursday.  Here she is searching google images for pictures of the dolls she is talking about in her presentation.

4.  and 5.:  Mr. K (age 4, Pre-K) is keeping busy with Kumon cutting books, Preschool busy bags, and his Little Lambs preschool art book.

6.  Mr. E writing spelling words on the magnadoodle board.  He  completed three lessons in Logic of English Foundations.  Miss M had a review week in Logic of English Essentials.  She didn’t feel as confident as we had hoped she might on her review words, so we may take another review week before moving on to lesson 31.

7.  In math this week, Mr. E completed a couple more lessons of RightStart C — still mostly review.  Miss M worked on fractions in Right Start D.  I just love how RightStart presents fractions.  It makes me fall in love with RightStart all over again, even if it is not a perfect fit for Miss M’s learning style.

8. and 9.:  I feel like we are having a bit of a math game renaissance here.   I am finally after multiple years with RS as my math curriculum being convinced that the games really are excellent practice and worth making time for.   Mr. E and I played “Go to the Dump” and Advanced Addition War.  Miss M and I played the fraction game “One” as well as multiple games of Fraction War.

The weekend is over and we are looking forward to another busy week with Mr. E’s birthday, Miss M’s expert day at co-op, Easter weekend and my editing deadline!  I still hope to sneak in a post or two on the blog…but if I don’t, you’ll know why!!!

Linking up with Collage Friday @ Homegrown Learners!

So, raise your hand if you are still tired in the mornings even though it is has been almost a week since the Daylight Savings time change???  I know we certainly are.   Surprisingly enough, Monday wasn’t too bad — we prepared for our day the night before and even got an early start on school.  It was all the other days that we had a hard time getting going.  Hopefully next week will be easier in that department!

First a few schoolwork highlights from this week:

1. History:  Miss M (age 8, 3rd grade) has been reading like crazy about slavery and the underground railroad the last two weeks.  One book didn’t even make it in the picture, so she has read 13 books from the book basket already for this unit.  Given her speedy reading pace, we’ll probably only spend about another week or so on this topic.  I’ve read a couple of these picture books aloud to the boys and hope to read a few more to them next week.

2. Bible:  I don’t mention it very often in my weekly wrap-ups, but the kids read or listen to the Bible each day.  Miss M reads from her own Bible while the boys listen to the Bible using the YouVersion app for iPad.  Mr. K (age 4) doesn’t always listen, but Mr. E (almost 6, Kindergarten) looks forward to Bible time every day.  Sometimes he just listens, sometimes he listens while eating breakfast or snack, and sometimes (like today) he draws a picture while listening.  The picture wasn’t related to the Bible reading though — it was a picture of an imaginary Star Wars battle scene.  🙂

3. Math Games:  I played Bead Card Memory (a RightStart A game) with Mr K on Monday night while the big kids were at a volunteer opportunity with Tony at our neighborhood boys and girls club.   I played Addition Old Main with Mr. E this week and Multiplication Old Main (both RightStart games as well) with Miss M.

4. Math Lessons:  Mr. E started RightStart C and completed lessons 1-5, which are all review.  He is enjoying making an addition table.  Miss M started the Fractions chapter in Math Mammoth 3-B.  It was mostly review with a few new concepts and a few “old” concept presented differently. Miss M really took issue with Math Mammoth using the term “pie models” (RightStart doesn’t use these at all) to describe fraction models that weren’t circular.  “Mom, pies are NOT shaped liked hexagons, octagons or pentagons!”.  LOL!

5. Spelling/Phonics/Reading:  Mr.  E finished 4 lessons of Logic of English Foundations.   He isn’t always too excited about the reading that comes with the curriculum (he would rather read a real book), but I have him read some of the Foundations workbook exercises anyway.  This week we discovered that reading with a hi-liter in hand made reading it SO much more exciting!  He chose to highlight all the long vowels and two letter phonograms after he read each sentence.  Miss M worked on lesson 29 of Logic of English Essentials for spelling.  This was probably her hardest list ever in this program, and she got more wrong than right on the test.  Good thing next week is a review week so we have time for more practice on the ti/ci/si phonogram words!   Mr. K just practiced his phonograms with the LoE app this week.

Science (not pictured):  I’m starting to see a pattern in our science studies…the weeks I teach the 1st/2nd grade science at co-op, I have a hard time pulling together a different lesson at home.  So, my kids got a review of BFSU 1 lessons D-1 and D-7 on gravity, as well as watching a bunch of youtube videos on the topic and a magic schoolbus episode about gravity. We watched a couple other Magic Schoolbus episodes as well.  Next week, we’ll be back to a lesson in BFSU Vol. 2.

On Thursday, we celebrated Pi Day at home (and I celebrated at c0-op with my science class):

Most of our celebrating this year was of the eating variety, but we did re-read Sir Cumference and the Dragon of Pi.  🙂 I brought the “pi pie” (blueberry in flavor) to co-op for my students along with a store-bought turtle pie.  My family wasn’t too disappointed that I brought home most of the blueberry pie.  Miss M made the Pumpkin pie in the lower right corner with just a bit of help from me with the pesky can opener and moving the over-full pie to the oven.   “CT” Mr. J (“Cute Trouble”, 16 months old),  helped himself to the lid of the pie filling can (don’t worry – it wasn’t sharp!) and an empty-but-for-a-few-crumbs bag of sugar for a tasty treat while I was a bit too focused on helping Miss M with her pie.

The kids had a lot of opportunities to be creative this week:

1.  Miss M created a Pirate disguise, inspired by an Usborne arts and crafts book

2. We attended the monthly Family Day at the Minneapolis Institute of Art last Sunday.  This month’s theme was “cityscapes,” so we made skyscraper hats!

3. Besides playing math games while his big siblings were gone on Monday night, he got to bake cookies!  Peanut Butter Kiss Cookies from a cookie mix are just the right speed for a 4-year-old, and he could do almost all the work himself!

4.  and 5.  With just a tiny hint of spring this week (aka, temperatures above freezing in the mid to high 30s a couple of days), the kids begged to make mud pies.  I let them, despite the mess it caused requiring immediate baths and laundry afterwards!

6.  With the leftovers from her pumpkin pie, Miss M created this cute mini-pie and a couple of “cinnamon pie crust rolls”.   Those treats were her personal Pi Day dessert!

Have a wonderful weekend!

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