Monday, November 5, 2012

Weekly Wrap -Up : Gold Rush & Fall Fun

Bible
We enjoyed talking about being content and learning how to not covet by changing our focus. A lot of our conversations were a lot like our week of thankfulness from the week before. I love seeing the thankful stars we have in the windows... our little list of things we are thankful for.

IMG_8395And while handing out candy at our local rehab center isn't learning more about the Bible; it's living it. We didn't go in with tracts but with a heart to show love to the people we met:) It was a great experience!!

Language Arts
We are just continue to work through everything:) Chris and Lydia have just one more page of their month poem book;) I look forward to seeing those put together!!

Anna has been working through making singular nouns plural in both Grammar and spelling.. just timed it right :) And she's has really embraced the writing more this week... yay!! Her assigned pieces were some background passages about CS Lewis so that got her attention! But I think she is also enjoying reading to me.. I like it too;)

Math
I've got two working through multiplication facts and one motivated little one buzzing through subtraction facts;) I actually took them back to the stairs to play a fact flash card game just for fun and an excuse for them to have a piece of their Halloween candy... LOL!!

Chris also got to learn about 3-D shapes!
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History
Last week we finally got started reading about the California Gold Rush. One of our favorite non-fiction books about the Gold Rush was Children of the Trail West by Holly Littlefield. We really enjoyed two of Sid Fleishman's books with characters based during the times of the Gold Rush. The first was Bandit's Moon about a girl joining a band of Mexican thieves looking for her gold-seeking brother. The second was The Great Horn Spoon about a young boy trying to find gold to save his Aunt's estate. A fun read book was called Nine for California.

I tried to think of some ways to make the life of a person traveling to California or a gold-seeker come to life for the kids. Some things were easy to do.

IMG_8474Setting up their tents in the schoolroom and letting them sleep in them the whole week.. actually I hadn't planned on them camping out in the schoolroom, but they asked and I thought "why not?" The girls were my campers I think they slept in the tents 4 nights!!!

The next activity was to prepare a meal over the fire one night. It was a busy day and we chickened out when we realized it would take an hour to cook:/ So we gave them metal skewers and they "cooked" their own hot dogs over the fire.... seriously, they had a blast and asked when they could cook on the fire pit again:) LOL!!  Might have to do it again this week while we are oven-less.

Finally at a friend's Fall Festival they had a horse-drawn hayride. During the trip it hit me that the trailer was a lot like the covered wagon minus the cover. They definitely felt how bumpy and how slow the travelers had to go. Fun that it totally fit into our week:)

This was cute... a little "educational"...maybe:/ Animaniacs "Gold Rush" episode.

Science
So I did get better with Science this week!! We  discussed "dissolving"... first we made salt water:) It was very simple but we saw that dissolving changed the water but not the amount; it stayed at 1/2 cup mark. And that it was completely mixed up:)

We also talked about things that were soluble and insoluble by letting the kids pick things from our pantry to see which would dissolve in water. They had a blast with this simple and silly activity and got to see what soluble and insoluble meant by doing:)

We filled out an experiment page for the first experiment. They did a definition page for the terms. But for the last "investigation" we just did it no extra paperwork;) Just good 'ole guesses about whether things would dissolve or not and then testing our guesses!

Extra Activities
With Halloween falling in the middle of the week we had plenty of activities at local places and our own "traditions":)

Making Pumpkin shaped cookies with friends... usually done at our house, but done at a neighbors since our lack of oven right now:)
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Pumpkin carving while Skype-ing Grandma and Grandaddy:)
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Chris designed his and I carved it for him:)
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Lydia carved her own... she's got the cut on the finger to prove it :/ Lydia and Anna were supposed to work together... but we learned that Lydia's pretty protective of her pumpkin... Anna will have to get her own next year!
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Funny Pictures of the Week
After we went to the rehab center with the home school group we visited the library to "trick or treat":) Our library had books for the kids to pick out as a treat and then the kids kind of hung out for a little bit:)
Searching the Library Digital Catalogue

Skunk- zilla:)
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The reading monkey:)
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1 comment:

Phyllis said...

I love all your hands-on gold rush experiences. I love how you go with the flow. The happiness in your family comes through with each picture. Thanks for sharing it with us.