Weekly Wrap-Up : Rock Candy FLOP, States of Matter & Getting into a Routine

After 4 weeks of school, you'd think we have a routine in place.... hmmm, no!!

Anyway, this week after battling and battling we changed it up some and it is working soo much better!! I'll be posting about why and what we are doing differently at another time!

Bible
Again we are chugging our way through Psalms. And the kids learned 2 more verses from 1 Corinthians 13;) I love that we are doing the whole chapter, I really wasn't planning on learning these beginning verses, but they are very foundational to the place of "love" that the more familiar verses describe.

The kids are still using our prayer cards, updating some and adding others!! They push me to pull them out daily!! Those have been very good for us :)

Language Arts
Chris and Lydia worked in their Spelling Words this week following a "schedule" I had come up with. They interact with their words each day for a few minutes;) With Chris it worked beautifully, he soaks in everything soo quickly. One of the activities (for Anna) is writing in flour... Chris likes it too:)



Lydia did quite "get it" with the Spelling words (which was a list of 5 words from a sight word sheet). Anyway, I'm going to try to use You Can Read with her for next week. I saw it this week and think that while it seems almost too easy for her, it would be fun and not be "intense". And because all the activities look really fun and are working with the SAME 4 words, I think she'll get it easier.... we'll see how it goes;)

Doing First Language Lessons with Lydia and Chris has also gotten easier. Lydia is keeping right up and has memorized the poem and definition of a noun as quickly as Chris. I'm thankful I "stuck with it" because it is really nice having them working on things together (and me teaching it once for both of them)!!

For free reading, Chris (and I) have been working on a series of books that is "new to us" called Elephant & Piggie by Mo Willems. Chris just loves these. There are some words in each book that are new to him, but they are either sight words or ones he can sound out. Not classic... but definitely fun and getting him to read because he WANTS to :)

After a trip to the library Anna was a much more diligent reader. Her book choice this week was The Happy Golden Years by Laura Ingalls Wilder;)


Math
Saxon kept us entertained as usual:) Everyone completed at least 4 lessons, Lydia did 5 or 6... little motivated kiddo & that Saxon 1 starts at a really easy/low level... so the lessons are very simple for her. This week, we covered everything from addition/subtraction stories with apples

to fractions and writing about fall:)

History
We finished the last chapter of SOTW vol2 this week!! It feels like such an accomplishment:) We talked about the English and Spanish War, the Spanish Armada, some about pirates(mostly reading library books)!

On Thursday we made our own naval war, labeled each boat with the English or Spanish flags and set sail. Our boats didn't last long once the kids entered the pool, too!! But the kids attempted to act of the two sides fighting it out at sea.

And then the last section was exploring the world at the end of that "era".... all the places we had studied and what the current situation was in each... kind of an overview. We followed the story using a map of the world that the kids colored as we talked about each area... a nice geography quiz;)

Saturday morning it was rainy so we played the review game! The treasure was Smarties, so the happy, little Buccaneers walked away pleased with their loot;)

Science
Wednesday we dug into the rock candy... mostly because we were worried that they were getting too big for the jar opening!!

But I must have done something wrong, because there were sugar crystals stuck everywhere on the sides of the jar and cementing down the string/paper clip!!

We read an experiment/recipe page for Rock Candy, I liked these directions a little better and I like that it gave reasons why the sugar crystals formed;) So maybe you all can learn from us and get better results!!

It was a little disappointing, although the kids tasted some we pulled out and said it tasted too sweet:) LOL!!

As I read through our  experiment  for this week I felt like we had some how skipped over the idea that matter can be found in three main "states"... solids, liquids, gases. Instead of doing the experiment of making gas, we read about solids, liquids and gases!!

We used water to see the 3 states of matter:) Starting with ice cubes...

Melting them into water...

And then making steam.

Even catching it in a jar to feel the condensation!!

I also found some fun online resources:)  They liked the videos from BrainPOP Jr   (we did the trial membership to view) ! Here was another video that was a little "older" from Scholastic.

They also loved this worksheet!!

I printed off a couple more that were of more substance for Anna. Here's their selection for Matter.

And Anna played with this "game" of heating and cooling different solids to see how they change and how much heat is required. There also is a little quiz that was fun for review;)

Overview
I was thankful for all we did this week. And finding the online resources reminded of all there is to incorporate into our lessons when I take the time to LOOK!! The kids really enjoyed the science lesson with all the different elements that were included;)

And I was also thankful for the times of reading with Chris! He did his reading lessons AND the Mo Willems books;) I can't wait to see him "take off" with reading because he is soo curious about everything, when he really starts reading it will be hard to keep up with him;)

Picture of the Week
Still messing with the kittens next door;)

And our neighbor LOVES the kids being over at her house, tramping through he flower beds and talking with her about the kittens;) It's been a fun opportunity to connect with her more;)

I'm linking up to Weekly Wrap up @ Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers.