Sunday, November 6, 2011

Weekly Wrap-Up: Creatively Writing on Their Own & Tot in the Schoolroom

Bible
This week we started something new with our prayer time. Instead of using our prayer cards, we each had to thank God for 3 things. The kids were hesitant about this change and some opted out of praying aloud this week :( But I think we got into a rut of praying only what had become comfortable. Often our thanksgivings were offered and then prayers for our friends and family... but I want to have a more thankful heart and I pray (and desire) that my children grow into thankful people as well.

We continued through 1 Corinthians 13... hitting some of the not so popular verses;)

And we read a couple chapters of Psalms looking for things we learned about God.

Language Arts
We covered the basics... reading, spelling, Grammar, cursive!! Here were the highlights...

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A little reading game with Lydia:)

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some "free" reading (probably looking at pictures) for Chris. He did enjoy some more Piggie & Elephant books this week:)

About mid-week the older ones started waking up and going into the schoolroom to write stories on their own:) Their Grammar and spelling is either adorable (if you a Grandma) or atrocious (if you are an educator) !!! But they were very creative. It opened up the day with fun, student -lead learning and allowed me to point out some Grammar rules in a very natural way!
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Their creative writing also opened the door for some dictionary skills with Anna;)
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Math
Lots of math lessons... the kids have just buzzed through these last few lessons. Anna still seems like she is reviewing materials from last year. But I think the extra practice and the review has been nice.... it's not stressful and it seems like she has really gotten better with her addition and subtraction facts!

Lydia and Chris like the hands-on lessons:)
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And they are starting to zip through their fact sheets... they think math is fun:) I think that is awesome;)

History
This week we learned about the warlords of Japan. The names we learned were Hideyoshi, Nobunaga, Ieyasu and others (and yes I typed those from memory.... I get to learn this stuff, too). Basically different leaders of Japan fighting over control over Japan during the same time period as the 1st explorers discovering the New World. And the cultural changes they made on Japan... like establishing Tokyo (then Edo) as the capital city or making the samurai into learned poets & artisans or wrestlers (like sumo) versus the warriors from the periods before.

While there were a few projects to do, we didn't do anything extra but read tales and stories from Japan! And cultural books about Japan.... our librarian hooked us up:) We'll continue to read those books into the beginning of next week and have the kids continue to practice their 5 Japanese phrases.

And then it's off to learn about the Pilgrims and stretch it out until Thanksgiving of course... our librarian hooked us up with that topic, too;)

Science
On Monday we did our experiment for the week. Our goal was to see how two like molecules responded to each other and how two unlike molecules responded. We used water and oil (yes, again... amazing what those two things can help us learn!!).

Two water drops joined into a bigger water drop! And the oil did the same.

But making the oil and water drops mix, was different, they try to stay separated (water on the bottom and oil on the top).
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And just because I was soo excited to learn new science stuff. Water is a polar molecule and oil is a nonpolar (the reason that they don't "want" to mix). What I really thought (and showed the kids) was that the wax paper we were using was also nonpolar... so that was the reason the oil tended to spread across the wax paper and but the water stayed as a drop or drops.

On Thursday we had to run some errands in town and so we made last minute arrangements to hang out at the park with some friends. While we waited for them, we went on a nature walk collecting stuff we wanted to know more about:)

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Other
So, yes, if you saw my other post we now have a little one terrorizing the schoolroom ALL morning!! He's a mess and likes to stay busy. I will have to reorganize myself and attempt to stay sane until we move and come up with better storage and work area for Nate. Until then, we're all together in our home office;)


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For this semi-new-season, I'm going to try to label all my posts that concern Nate doing pre-preschool stuff as "tot in the schoolroom". And hopefully others out there can find sanity.... and there are sooo many people who have awesome ideas about schooling tots.... so I'll probably be linking up to them a lot!!!
Linking up to Weekly Wrap-Up:)

The Homeschool Mother's Journal
www.thehomeschoolchick.com

6 comments:

Kayris said...

My boy is seven and his spelling is much the same. If anything, it shows how difficult the English language is! He was appalled the other day when he was eating Halloween candy and realized that "Kit Kat" is spelled wrong. LOL

Jennifer said...

I noticed the repeated "math is fun." Only one of mine still thinks so.

Sarah said...

Looks like a really good week.

Autismland Penny said...

Math is fun for my kiddos too but not for me. lol We are also working on spelling.

Anonymous said...

It is such a blessing to me to see all the children are doing. They are ALL doing so well!

Erin said...

Your school posts make me SO excited to homeschool!