Week of October 23

Field Trip: Hug a Tree presentation with the Kimberly Search and Rescue

Math: John did his first 1-100 dot to dot worksheet and loved it!, Gabe lessons 30-33, Lily lessons 23-27

John sorting shapes - triangles on one side all other shapes on the other

History: Ch.6 The Jewish People

Science: watched a documentary called Ring of Fire about earthquakes and volcanoes in the Pacific Rim, Lily updated her science notebook with diagrams and vocab about volcanoes and the structure Earth (crust, mantle, outer core, inner core)

Language Arts: Gabe is making progress reading his chapter book in addition to lessons from Hooked on Phonics, spelling lessons, phonogram bingo and practice handwriting. Lily and Gabe both wrote cinquain poems this week.

Getting some exercise!

Volcano Project

Our paper mache volcano. The didn't want to paint it, usually they can't wait to wait things! Oh well.

And it erupts!

Week of October 16

Math: Lily: Test 3, lessons 19-21, Gabe: lessons 24-29; John: lessons 10-12
Gabe is finding their is a lot of review that he doesn't need in these early math lessons. So we've abbreviated some lessons and skipped others altogether.  We continue to play lots of games that practice math skills including: Set, Skipbo, Phase 10, Uno and Yahtzee.

History:Ch. 5: Sumeria

Science: This week we studied volcanoes, reading from Usborne Ecyclopeida of Planet Earth, writing up narrations and vocab and finally making a paper mache volcano which we plan to erupt later today.  Hopefully pictures will follow soon.


Language: Writing with Skill (Lily), Advanced Language Lessons 10-11 (Verb Tenses), Gabe completed lessons 104-105, also working of verbs.  We learned the poem Autumn by Emily Dickinson together and copied it into their Nature Portfolios. Gabe continues to spontaneously journal and Lily wrote an original poem about sleeping this week.  John continues to practice his letters (both reading and writing).  Gabe read pg. 24-37 in Hooked on Phonics as well as beginning to read aloud a chapter book.  Lily and Gabe also continued to work on their spelling lessons.

Gabe's poem - the colors of the leaves didn't scan as well as I hoped but you get the idea.

PE: Judo (Gabe), Highland dance (Lily), scootering at the Skate Park, paper route, biking and playing jump rope!


Fine Art: piano lessons and practice

French: Gabe continued working through lesson 1; Lily

Week of October 9

Math: Gabe lessons 16, 21 - 23, John lessons 8-9, Lily lessons 14-18

Language Ats: Gabe read Very Hungry Bear, Hooked on Phonics pg. 18-23, practiced saying and writing phonograms, Lily completed Vowels  and Multi-letter phonogram reference pages in her spelling book.  John practiced saying and writing the single letter phonograms.
First Language Lessons 100-103, Advanced Language Lessons 8-9

History: continued working in our History Portfolios adding narrations and examples from Story of the World Ch. 3-4 First Writing and Old Kingdom of Egypt, additional reading in Kingfisher History Encyclopedia and Kinfisher Book of the Ancient World.

Science: We read two library books on earthquakes: Earthquakes and Tsunamis by Terry Jennings and Earthquakes by Cynthia Pratt Nicolson.  Our science encyclopedia, Usborne Encyclopedia of Planet Earth, also arrived!  And we read pages 38-44 about earthquakes.  See the post below for our experiment.

Fine Art: piano lessons and practice, singing at home and church, drawing

PE: Judo (Gabe), Highland dance (Lily), bike riding, jump rope for all!

French: 20 minutes a day for Lily - she is making steady progress through Unit 1 lesson 3 of Rosetta Stone.

Earthquake Experiment

After slight earthquake

Before slight earthquake

After moderate earthquake

Before moderate earthquake

After large earthquake

Before large earthquake

After moderate earthquake with a new kind of building

Before moderate earthquake with a new kind of building

The modification of the building from blocks stacked to a shaped with large base and tapered top was the kid's idea based on the previous experiments.

Handwriting

My j is in the middle, John's are on either side! He was very proud.

Week of October 2

School was out of the box (or house!) this week.  We spent the week in Disneyland, but covered a surprising amount of school anyway.  There were many educational opportunities for John in particular.  We walked and walked and walked all week.  Every afternoon was spent in the pool swimming.  John found and identified numbers and squares, triangles, circles and rectangles everywhere.  He also learned his right and left and used the Disneyland map to find where we were in the park and where to go next. Lily and Gabe also used maps to help direct us around the park.

Playing Silly Sentences back at home.

The boys received a new Silly Sentences game which is more in depth and helped Gabe and Lily to practice nouns, adjectives, verbs, articles and prepositions.  Gabe also journaled all week, writing sentences and (very) short sentences.  Lily made friends on the trip and played rounds of Mad Libs with them.  Lily and Gabe started putting together scrapbooks of our vacation as soon as we returned home.

We all learned about new plants (palm trees, birds of paradise flowers, ect.) and identified new and old animals.  We found snails in the pool, saw new species of birds and Lily even got to hold a praying mantis.