Weekly- Wrap Up : Snowflakes, Pattern Blocks and Getting Back into a Routine

Last week we tried to get back into a routine.... back to home school, back to chores and housework! We did accomplish a lot... it definitely was WORK getting back to into the swing of things! Just as hard for me as the kids;)

Bible
The kids and I have been reading through the Proverbs that correspond to the day of month. One or twice they have drawn one of the Proverbs, other times we just talk about it. It's been interesting what they pick up and what we talk about. It's been fun.

We also have been reading through the Egermeiers Story Bible... we've tried reading through it before. But this time we are starting from the New Testament:) So as we settle in for rest time in the afternoons we read a story or two about Christ's life (at least right now... soon it will be His resurrection and the early church).

The kids returned to Awana last week as well. They were soo excited about going back into the program! They are eagerly studying verses and doing Cubbie Hugs.

Language Arts
Everyone is still doing their First Language Lessons (FLL)! While they may initially grown, Chris and Lydia enjoy the short, fun, interactive lessons from Vol 1! This week we did 3 lessons on pronouns;) And Anna "the workbook queen" loves pulling out her workbook! She's become quite the little sentence diagram-er! We added in adverbs this week;)

We are still working on Thank You notes. So our writing/copywork has included some letter writing;)

Maybe it was the break, but this week Chris and Lydia really did well with OPG. Sometimes we hit lessons that are more challenging for them or they forget phonic rules from previous weeks, but last week I really felt like I could see am improvement with BOTH of them!! Just a sweet homeschooling mom moment to see (and hear) the kids get better at reading;)

Anna is reading like a pro;) The problem is that she's too much like her mother... she's picky about the books she reads, but she she finds a good one she reads and reads and reads and reads until it's finished:) Anna devoured Ramona and her Mother this week and only touched the history library books :( 

For Spelling, Lydia started another Unit from You Can Read @ 1+1+1=1. Anna worked through 2 lessons from Spelling Power. And Chris reviewed Sight Words from the Fall "semester" and then we played Sight Word Bingo, too;)

Lydia liked trying to read words off the Bingo cards;)

Math
Saxon, Saxon, Saxon;)

We did have one change for the New Year... and that was Chris getting to move into Saxon 2:) He was very excited! And since they always start with review, it was an easy week and a great start;)


The girls completed 4 or lessons this week:) And our Pattern Blocks from Christmas got plenty of use... from Nate and the girls;)

Lydia used them to find different ways to make certain shapes.

Anna used them for fractions... seeing how different combinations of fractions can equal a whole.

And Lydia used the Pattern Block Design to make different pictures. The butterfly was beautiful:)

History
This week we jumped into India for our history! Again, with the help of Story of the World and our awesome librarian we read a chapter, narrated, mapped it out, and read some fun books. The main characters had crazy names... so basically they were some ruthless emperors who thought they were rulers of the world when they ruled India. They made some bad decisions though that caused India to fall into the hands of a European nation (to be continued in another chapter...)!

For the activity the kids decorated a peacock picture and decorated it with glitter. The decor of the buildings and dwellings of these three rulers would have been very nicely and expensively decorated because of how wealthy India was due to trading with the world.

Anna's finished project:)

Some of our favorite books to go with India were... Tigers at Twilight(a Magic Treehouse Book), The Blind Men and the Elephant,and Taj Mahal: A Story of Love and Empire (Wonders of the World Book).

As I look at all the different countries we are visiting through our history lessons. I am a little saddened that we aren't spending more time learning about the actual country. We definitely read books about the countries and stories from the countries. But Anna seems to pick up more when she has an activity or something that goes with it. I just found these printable Country Fact Sheets from Homeschool Creations (one of my favorite home school mommas). Anyway, we'll be working on these each week, too!! To help us try to remember all the places we've been to:)

Science
Since I'm doing awful at Science this semester, I decided to ease us back into Chemistry using something seasonal and fun. So last week we did Snow and Snowflakes. 

We used the book The Story of Snow as our guide. We read it and discussed the whys and hows;) Anna made a Chemistry of snowflakes notebook page with three chemistry facts about snowflakes. While I worried it might be soo simple for Anna I learned a lot.

Do you know... What do snowflakes start from? And why are they six-sided??



I read the younger books to the younger kids and Anna and I plan to tackle the man who photographs snowflakes this week (kind of a delay there).

The rest of our snowflake time was spent trying to make paper snowflakes with six sides. The kids had fun with this but it wasn't until we started doing some "tough" designs that I realized we were learning about symmetry:)

The best snowflake was this one! Anna wanted to make it for our neighbor who they try to visit daily:) She is the kitten owner and an avid gardener!

Can you pick out cats and flowers ???

This is the limit to this Momma's artistic abilities;)





Well, that's about it for us:)

I've been trying to get into a routine for myself... trying to balance home schooling, the house, downtime with the kids and teaching my online classes. I'm a little stressed out... but I know that it will become routine soon.

Just thankful for the weekend... a day out to town with the family, my parents visiting for the whole day on Sunday (soo nice!) and an extra day to get myself together for schooling everyone this week:)

Linking up with Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers:)