Columbia River Maritime Museum

We visited a fantastic museum this morning that chronicles the history of the Columbia River: its discovery by Europeans, traditions of Native tribes living along its shores, naval history and fishing/commercial history.  We watched a video at the museum which highlighted the changes on the Columbia from a hundred years ago to now with the addition of dams. The video also documented the expertise needed to navigate the river and the bar; each requires specialized training and only a handful of men are qualified bar pilots.  We also got to tour the Lightship Columbia which was anchored 5 miles off the mouth of the river until 1970 because the coast along the Oregon side is not suitable for building a lighthouse.

May 6-11

Game of ball and tag combined before the exam.

Exam.

Gabe completed his first year of Judo and earned his yellow belt tonight.  We are so proud of him!  Judo was a huge learning experience for him.  He naturally excels at the athletic aspect of Judo, quickly and easily mastering the moves he's taught.  He also thrived with the ritualistic aspects of Judo: bowing when entering, bowing to instructor and fellow students, folding the kimono, and tying the belt.  The most difficult part of his lessons came with the other students.  He was frustrated with the lack of attention and focus some of the younger boys displayed and after 4 months was given the opportunity to join the older class.  The older students were much more focused (though many of them still struggled) and Gabe met a slightly older boy who partnered with him most of the time.  This boy helped Gabe to learn new moves, correcting his mistakes patiently.

End of April!

We began our new science unit: Diversity of Life/Animal Growth and Changes.  Lily studied plants cells in depth our first week of study, reading about cells, drawing diagrams, memorizing parts and making and examining her own slides.  She also compared plant and animals cells.  The boys enjoyed looking at the slides and Gabe drew what he observed. John is spontaneously observing nature, especially birds and following up with finding coloring pages and asking us to read to him about the birds he sees. 

Gabe and John are both making steady progress with their reading and spelling. John has decided that he wants to be a writer when he grows up and has been asking lots of questions regarding this.

We finished our study of Ancient Greece with a Greek dinner and even sang our usual hymn in Greek.  John loves the Greek version and is now asking us to sing it in Roman.  We've started reading about the Ancient Roman Empire and Lily has been doing independent reading.  She especially enjoyed Rotten Romans and would read passage aloud that especially caught her interest.

We bought a new book for Fine Arts: Story of the Orchestra which has been lots of fun.  It includes a CD which relates to specific pages.  As an instrument catches someone's interest we read about it and then listen to the appropriate track.

The usual math, physical education and piano studies continue.

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.