D completed days 1-4 of Unit 1 in Beyond.
He LOVED his science activities. On Wednesday he learned about ocean currents to go along with history studying the voyage of Spanish settlers to Florida. D made a small current using a dropper, index card and tub of water. Later that day while he was outside filling the kiddie pool, he discovered another current (hose underneath the pool water pushing his plastic boat) and came running up to me to tell me about it.
K is repeating LHTH for the second time. We're not doing the letter activities (other than the rhymes) or the math activities again. I've been adding some other ones in and decided to shelve the earlybird & fine motor skills books that go with LHFHG until next year when she's in Kindergarten. She wasn't ready for all the writing yet. In the meantime I'm coming up with other activities for her to do from the internet or things we already have on our shelves.
One day it was a printable from a website (can't remember where I got it). She was coloring numbers, cutting them out and pasting them in the right order. She did it all by herself! She tried to stay in the lines and did a good job overall!
Gluing is one of her favorite activities...I see a future scrapbooker!!! ;o)
All done!
D's science yesterday was about whales/dolphins that have blubber (fat) to keep them warm in the deep, cold parts of the ocean where they live. He coated one hand with Crisco and the other with nothing and put both in cold water. I had added a few ice cubes to the water to make it really cold. He noticed a difference between his two hands right away! The one with the "blubber" on it stayed much warmer than the non-coated hand.
This is another non-HOD activity for the kids...they begged to play with colored plastic clothespins I bought at a local craft store for $1. My mom had found a bunch of extra felt at a garage sale for $1. I cut small "clothes" shapes out and let them hang them on the "clothesline." This kept them busy for about 20 minutes. I'll bag it all and use it again when I need something to keep K busy while I work with D.
D is doing well with Singapore 2A so far. The plans in the Bigger guide make it easy for him to understand. Today we took playing cards (2-9) and shuffled them. We each had a ones/tens paper in front of us. We each drew 2 cards from the pile and make a number...trying to make the largest one. D did a great job figuring out the higher # had to be in the ten's place to get the bigger number. We made a greater/less than sign out of foam and put it between us, turning it to the higher number. We kept tally marks on the side. Drew beat me 11 - 10. :o)
Kate's non-HOD activity today was making a dot pattern "snake" since in LHTH we had read about Satan being a snake and tempting Eve to sin. She messed up once, but otherwise kept the pattern going...
Something new for D this year in Beyond is poetry. Last year there were songs/rhymes that he enjoyed doing (after the first few units). I didn't know how the poetry would go over, but so far he loves it. He especially enjoyed making up motions as I read it yesterday.He illustrated the poem today and copied another line of it. Eventually he will be copying all of it, but this week we did only 6 lines. He does not like to write, so we're easing into it slowly!
The spelling words this week were too easy for him, so we're going to try the optional (harder) list next week. If he breezes through those then I'll be coming up with our own...but I wanted to try what was in the guide first. Here's his spelling "test" from today that he did perfectly! He added the sticker to show a job well done!
He began his timeline for history today. This year we're doing it on a large piece of banner paper we can unfold as we add to it. It'll fit in his portfolio for the end of the year and be easier to store during the year. He drew a fort for St. Augustine (1565) and a boat for Columbus' voyage in 1492.
Now we're off to the weekend! Yeah! No stress on me to get books from the library or plan out next week! ;o)
Looks like a fun week with HOD! We love HOD at our house too.
ReplyDeleteI don't know if you need any ideas for your daughter to do with LHTH or not, but when my son was here age he loved the other Rod & Staff workbooks that aren't in LHFHG. If you go to their website there are 2 sets of workbooks - an easier set of 4, and then there are 3-4 more that are on the same level as the ones in LHFHG. They help build skills in coloring, cutting, pasting, following directs, recognizing numbers and letters, etc.