Earth & Moon Update

Lily and Gabe had fun painting their Earth and Moon creations after struggling with perfectionism and embracing the fact that it won't look like the globe!  Looking at an example picture helped.  Although they each made a form for both the Earth and Moon, Lily's got crushed.  It probably worked out for the best as Gabe painted the Moon and Lily the Earth.  John is working on a robot there in the corner.

Week of September 11

Math: Gabe and John started in earnest on their math lessons. Saxon Math 1 lessons  2- 3 (John) Saxon Math 2, lessons 6- 8.(Gabe)  Lily completed math lessons 3-6.  John is excelling at playing Rat-a-Tat-Cat with good number recognition and beginning addition.
Language Arts: Lily and Gabe started on their new spelling notebooks completing the vowel and consonant reference page and their first spelling words and sentences. Lily completed the first week of Writing with Skill practicing narration. Advanced Language Lessons 1-4 (concrete & abstract nouns,descriptive & abstract adjectives, capitalization & punctuation of proper nouns, noun gender). Gabe sat in with Lily on the first lesson and can tell the difference between abstract and concrete nouns.  We played lots of phonogram bingo together and John started on some handwriting.
History: We read lots of books about prehistoric peoples, archeology and Ancient Egypt from the library.  We watched Prehistoric Beasts and Mysteries of Egypt.  Lily continued work on her Ancient History Portfolio.
Science: We read Earth and Sky, Lily read the introductory pages about Earth in the Kingfisher Science Encyclopedia.  They each completed a narration and made a paper mache planet earth and moon.
PE:  Gabe continued with Judo and Lily began Highland Dance.  They both went on daily bike rides and ran their paper route.
French: Lily worked for 20 minutes a day on Rosetta Stone French.
Fine Art: Lily and Gabe both continued with piano.

First Week of School

This week did not go as planned.  We all came down with the stomach flu - first the kids, then the parents.  We did listen to lots of audio books including Treasure Island, The Silver Chair and the Last Battle.  Gabe managed to do his reading lessons and Lily got started on her math for the year.  Everyone started on a family history project after we read the Introduction and first chapter of Story of the World Vol. 1.  Lily and Gabe have also immersed themselves in books from the library about prehistoric peoples and ancient Egypt.  They also all completed a Who Am I? worksheet.  John's answers are hilarious!

Lily and Gabe both attended a free Judo class to determine whether this would be a good activity for the school year.  Gabe came home really excited and showed me some awesome somersaults and he even took down Daddy using his weight against him!

Spider Observation

This spider has made a large web is the corner of our garage door.  We have been watching him off and on for a couple weeks and yesterday the kids noticed that he'd trapped a bee and was wrapping him up.  Lily took these photos and all three watched as the spider had been for lunch!

New School Year

I love fall, the return to routine, the crisp air and the school supplies!  Lily, Gabe and John are all looking forward to starting back to school in a more structured routine.  Although we continued with informal studies through the summer everyone is ready to get back to math lessons, history - Ancient Times this year - and the older two have even expressed their excitement at returning to grammar.
Here's some highlights of our summer learning.
 John holding a butterfly he caught:

A Western Painted Turtle we found at Horseshoe Lake:

Which resulted in some checking out some books from the library and a page in Gabe's Nature Portfolio.

Keeping up with learning our letters:

And more to follow in another post!

Outdoor School

School moved outside yesterday with the gorgeous weather. Lily diligently editing while Gabe was taking a quick trip up the block on his bike in between subjects.

Spring Learning

These sunny spring days are inspiring us to focus our school work more on art, nature study and physical activity.  New artist easels arrived for Lily and Gabe this morning along with some new history audio books and DVDs.  So we declared an art and history day!  The easels were immediately set up and drawings of animals began while listening to our next three history chapters.  And now it has warmed up just enough to make softball outside sound appealing!