Unit 11 Complete!

We did school yesterday, I just didn't have time to blog about it.

Drew's poem for this week was titled Never Give Up and talked about the birds not giving up if they fall, or the trees that come through a storm - they grow strong. It was encouraging us not to give up, but to keep trying & going in life.

Drew's illustration of his poem shows a man running along a path holding his water bottle, a tree growing tall and baby birds learning to fly complete with little marks to show "action" which was something he learned recently. Drew has learned about grams/kilograms this week for math. It's hard learning about g/kg when we measure in oz/lbs. here...oh well, he'll be all set for whenever we make the switch to the metric system. Ha! Seems like it's been 20+years coming as I remember my teachers saying the same thing to me in school when we learned about g/kg.

We had to find something that weighed a kilogram. A can of green beans and a package of butter was the closest we could come. He compared this weight to the weight of a pair of shoes and 5 textbooks to complete part of his math paper on Thursday.

He read about the pilgrims finishing the work on the common house and how they framed it with wood beams. Here he's assembling a frame of straws...

He drew the common house for his timeline...
Today we read the story of The Mitten over lunch. It's a cute story about a boy who loses one of his mittens, animals find it and crawl inside....lots of animals go into it, even a bear! D&K enjoyed watching the illustrations as Jan Brett always gives a hint of what's to come on the far right of each picture. They were calling out what animals would get into the mitten next before I even turned the page. :o)

We also read a few facts about the animals featured in the book from our Animals encyclopedia. Drew was especially interested in the Hedgehog since that is what animal "Sonic" is - one of his Wii games that he plays often.

Kate had two activities to go with the story I had printed awhile ago from homeschool share's website. She cut out the animals...

Then put them in the mitten I sewed from fleece (she was upset it wasn't white as in the story, oops!)...

All the paper animals fit! She even "rolled" the paper skunk so he could fit in the thumb as he did in the story. :o)

She enjoyed matching up the animal prints with the animals. We had read another book about animal tracks after reading The Mitten. We saw quite a few last week in the woods and have see several in our backyard this week...


Drew correcting sentences for his grammar lesson today...I wrote them incorrect and he had to correct them with a capital letter and correct punctuation. He did well!To go with Kate's Bible story abotu Ruth today, she glued pieces of rice to brown stalks (she drew with brown crayon) on paper.
One complete, a few more to go. I didn't get a picture of the completed project...but she did finish it and they look like little wheat stalks.

Schooling is fun, but I'm always thankful for the weekend! Have a good one!

groundhog's day, oil paper windows & ribbons

We did not get to the museum today to see the local groundhog's prediction due to the ice/snow storm. Thankfully, I hadn't played it up too much about going after hearing the warning come out on Monday. So D&K weren't disappointed especially since daddy didn't have to work today and stayed home with us. :o)

We had finished reading this book yesterday in preparation for Groundhog's Day today. It had two chapters so we read one Monday and the other one Tuesday. It was a cute little story about Phil and his family in their burrow and his prediction on his birthday - Groundhog's Day! The kids learned about hibernation & burrows. (I bought this book at a thrift store in PA last summer - gotta love 39 cent books!)
Kate colored this groundhog picture today...you can barely see the outline as she was trying to hurry and get it colored. She gets frustrated with big areas of coloring even though I've taught her the "tricks" to color them in quickly. Oh well, it'll come, right?! Kate also enjoyed matching shadows...she first found the groundhog's shadow and circled it. She then matched all the other shadows to the correct animals by drawing lines to each one.
Drew completed this groundhog maze with a little difficulty (I always like when I can find challenging things for him as most things are usually too easy!)...He wanted to do it in marker instead of pencil and so it looks like a lot more lines than it actually was to get to the end.
The kids watched Punxsutawney Phil's prediction via YouTube this morning. It was funny to hear the guy say right before reading Phil's prediction that "The Steelers will win the Super Bowl!" and see his Steeler's scarf as Punxsutawney isn't far from Pittsburgh! :o) Maybe one of these years we'll make the trip there to see Phil! Drew heard that Phil didn't see his shadow and so spring should be right around the corner...ha! We'll believe it when we see/feel it! :o)

We read this about the groundhog today...they're so cute! And reviewed what burrow and hibernate mean...even Kate knows now!

For history today, Drew listened to a story about a pilgrim boy who caused trouble for the men building the common house at Plymouth. He found out the boy put an arrow (stick) through an oil paper window that they used for windows in the house. Drew made his own "oil paper window" today and thought it was so cool, especially when he began to smear oil on the piece of paper bag and could see straight through it!

Seeing if the light comes through - he had held up the piece of paper bag to the window before putting oil on it and saw hardly any light came through...
Kate doing one of her "activity bag" activities...measuring/sorting various lengths of ribbon. She had fun "inching" them over to the correct piles after she measured them.

measuring & super mind

Drew finished up the measuring section of his math today. He had to measure wavy lines using string and then holding the string on the ruler. He thought that was so cool! He also did a little beginning geometry with lines...he told me he can't wait to begin geometry. Me either! I actually understood geometry really well when I took it in HS!


We began doing something crazy with his spelling words during the last unit before vacation. I finally took pictures of it today. While Drew isn't looking, I write each spelling word on a separate line with bogus letters filling up the entire line in between the correct letters. When I give the paper to Drew, I say the first word and then Drew has to find the correct spelling by circling the correct letters in order across the line. He LOVES this ~ mainly because it gives him a break from writing the words himself, I think! :o) Today he circled the correct letters in marker. Here's what it looked like afte the first two words...Kate learned about Samson today (strongest man in the Bible). An activity to go with her story was to compare various cans/boxes and put them in order lightest to heaviest. She did a great job...some were really close in weight.

All done!While Drew was busy with his work today, Kate surprised me and stayed at the table working on Super Mind puzzles. It had been a little while since we had them out and she can now do most of them on her own with just a little help from me (if there's a big blank space to fill in with a lot of shapes). :o) She wanted me to take a picture after each puzzle was done. She completed 4 of them today.

Drew kept wanting to help out, too!

Last day of January!

Time really does fly! Last week we thoroughly enjoyed our vacation and did not do any official schooling at all....though the kids learned a bit of geography, science & social studies through the week by traveling, watching the weather change constantly (lots of snow) and getting reacquainted with extended family. :o)

We began Unit 11 today. Drew was happy to finally get the pilgrims to Plymouth...seems like they have journeyed forever to get to the new world! :o) He learned how they built their houses today...chopping down trees, making planks, pegs, etc...lots of hard work!

He's continuing in his math with measurement - using centimeters and meters. He's doing a great job - only problem we don't have a meter stick...so we're always visualizing 10 cm off the end of our yardstick. Ha!

Kate learned about God choosing Gideon's army today - the story about narrowing down the army by the way they drank from the river...hand to mouth or like an animal. Drew was listening in and told me he would have drank like an animal so he wouldn't have to fight.

Kate's having fun flipping through the preschool "Brain Quest" cards the past few weeks. She answers questions about math, nursery rhymes, science, social skills, etc.

beanbags, Jericho & clay

Drew & Kate balanced the "ark of the covenant" (beanbag) on their shoulders as they crossed the river that God parted. It was Kate's activity from yesterday that we didn't do until today due to running a few errands yesterday afternoon. ;o) Kate walking 7x around the city of Jericho (dining room table)...

Drew's learning about MEASUREMENT! Singapore uses meters/centimeters but I had Drew learn about a yard today instead. He had to estimate and then measure the couch. He was close...estimate: 2 yards. Actual measurement: 2 1/3 yards.
He also estimated the length of the dining room: 3 yards and measured it: 3 2/3 yards.
For science today he created a replica of the ocean shelf, slide and floor using oatmeal clay (1 c. oats, 1/2 c. flour & 1/2 water). He made the clay by himself...
Stirred it for awhile until he asked me to take over because I "stir faster" ~ ha!
Then shaped the sea level (against the top of the bowl), the shelf below that, the slide down to the ocean floor. He realized the neat "glow" fish he read about a few months ago live in on the ocean floor - darkest, deepest place in the ocean. :o)
We then poured water over the model to show how it really is...we see the water at the beach, not what's really underneath...but it's there! ;o)

setting & bays

Drew contrasted the setting of Sarah Whitcher's Story to our home in a picture today after listening to a few more pages of the story. He drew our home on the left and the earmuff-looking thing at the top left is a telephone, he also drew Jim on the roof fixing it...with his water bottle on top of the red ladder. The cabin on the right is the actual setting of the story that's situated in the middle of a forest years ago (no electricity). Notice he drew a telephone with an "X" through it along with the sun/sky as it was in the middle of a forest where not much light came through the trees (in his mind)?!?! I love seeing what he creates!

For history we read about the pilgrim men who had gone to shore to look for a place to settle who were attacked by Indians one day. The Mayflower was anchored in a bay and so we talked about what a bay is, pointed out a few in Massachusetts using a large map. Then drew sketched the outline of the land, the bays and labeled the bays, Plymouth (where the pilgrims eventually settled) and Boston. Sorry you can't really see his sketch very well in the picture...he did it really light. :o( I feel like the pilgrims are never going to get to shore to settle...they will it's just that we take 1 story a day right now and it's moving so slowly! But I know why HOD does it...it makes history come alive to the kids and they remember it rather than spend 1 day on it and move on. :o) I'll be patient...

Jewels & BOOM!

We began Unit 10 today...

Kate's Bible story was about Joshua leading the Israelites.

She decided to draw jewels on a skirt as part of her math activity today. :o)
Drew's memory verse for this unit is Psalm 118:1..."Oh Give thanks to the Lord for he is good, his steadfast love endures forever."

Drew made this art project to go with his history story about a boy on the Mayflower who got into the gun powder room, fired a musket and gave everyone on the boat a scare! This happened while the Mayflower was anchored off-shore during a day several men went ashore to try to find a place to settle.

He cut out a large oven, drew an X with a vertical line through it, then cut each line...He roll each triangle shape back to reveal an opening in the center.
He wrote "BOOM!" on the front of the red oval and then drew a scared face on a cotton ball to represent the scared boy who fired the musket resulting in an explosion.
He completed his math paper today that had 9 problems on it all 3-digit addition AND subtraction - some with regrouping and some without. He did a nice job with just a few errors that he was able to correct. :o)