Holy Week lapbooks

Lily's

Gabe's

Instead of our usual lessons on Thursday and Friday Lily and Gabe created these lapbooks documents the events in the life of Jesus in the week leading up to His resurrection.

Easter Garden

 We saw this idea on Pinterest and on Lazarus Saturday (the day before Palm Sunday) decided to plan our garden.

 Lily, Gabe and John filled the basket with dirt from the garden (after lining it with plastic wrap), molding the dirt around a flower pot turned on its side and wetting it down to keep everything in place.

 We then planted wheat,  made three crosses, and found a stone to roll in from of the "tomb."

 By Thursday it looked like this:

Lily took pictures of the grass every hour on Thursday to observe its growth - we could almost see it growing! On Friday John rolled the stone in front on the tomb and on Sunday morning woke to find it rolled away and the tomb empty!  
This was such a fun activity.  We all enjoyed watching the wheat grass grow and wondering early in the week if it would come up in time for Easter.  It was wonderful to see how engaged John was with this and hearing him recount different aspects of the events of Holy Week and Easter.

April 1-6

This week found us learning about stars: how they form, different classifications and how they die.

Lots of work was completed in math with each child completing 4-5 lessons in addition to playing Rocket Math on the ipad.

Lily and Gabe filled out lots of information about the Ancient Greeks in their History Portfolios with a focus on Alexander the Great. 

Lily started working on her Journalling Through the Liturgical Year again - perhaps inspired by the upcoming Feasts.  Gabe helped her with some of the journal and is asking about doing his own!

Gabe and John read lots this week.  John in Hooked on Phonics and Gabe in Christian Liberty Nature Reader.

Week of March 25 - 30

We studied the last two planets in the Solar System this week: Uranus and Neptune. Lily and Gabe completed narration pages and Lily made several diagrams about various aspects of each planet.  We preformed an experiment from Astronomy for Every Kid illustrating how atmosphere density affects sight. This led to a discussion on light, heat and how the atmosphere can be changed.  It was a great opportunity to discuss pollution and Climate Change.

Lily completed 6 math lessons this week including an Investigation into the geometric construction of bisectors.  Gabe and John each worked hard at math with Gabe focusing on subtraction and John learning to count by 10s.

Gabe, doing his math at the chalkboard for a change of pace from paper.

John showed real progress and diligence with his reading this week.  He read pages 46 through 55 in his Hooked on Phonics workbook and read a little book titled Tag.  He is continuing to practice his handwriting.  I am going to look into purchasing a cursive workbook for him - the printing book is too large and when he uses cursive his letters are much tidier.
Gabe began reading from Christian Liberty Nature Reader 1 this week out loud.  It was very helpful for me to hear where his reading is at although he's reluctant to be put on the spot and read aloud.  He is working through his  cursive workbook with very good handwriting. He wrote several summaries for science and history this week and completed a spelling and grammar lesson.

Lily completed a couple writing lessons this week and one of them happened to coordinate nicely with our science.  She also worked on spelling and grammar. She has been reading Treasure Island (the original) and D'Aularies' Greek Myths. This morning, while working on our history portfolios, we listened to Greek Myths via booksshouldbefree.com.

Lily and Gabe completed their swim lessons last Friday.  Although neither passed their level both worked hard, learned lots and had lots of fun.  This week was a return to dancing and Judo, as well as bike riding.

Trojan Horse Project

Spring Break was the perfect time to finish up our Trojan Horse!

Art project

Gabe's

John's, with substantial help from Mom

Lily's

Weeks of March 4-16

 Reading with John - he's really doing great!

 Working on models of the planets.

Our finished planets hanging up in order above the school table.

Lots of the standard school work this week.  Plugging away at math lessons, spelling, language, and French.  We studied Jupiter this week; did an experiment showing the effect of hurricane type winds on particles and began putting together models of all the planets.  Our moon diary project continued with some good opportunities for viewing the moon.  Everyone enjoyed running more of our paper route with the nice weather and spent lots of time outside climbing trees and riding bikes.

Lily and Gabe started swim lessons this week.  They are really enjoying being back in the pool and like the Spring Break lessons which go everyday for two weeks.