Friday, November 5, 2010

Weekly WrapUp- Nov 1-5

Alright I am personally not having one of my best weeks mood-wise but never-the-less there have been a few bright spots with learning.

Monday - The Pumpkin Fairy came and took the kids candy (can you believe they went for it?) and left some awesome goodies. Jakob's favorite was the handmade parachute kits and spent most of the day in the tree testing them out.

He had Scouts that evening and was very excited to have some of his requirements signed off. Yes.. the birds requirement as well! We were still all pretty hyped on sugar from the night before so other than reading and Calendar time we just played. Oh and per his request he and Hazel spent a while on the computer watching clips from National Geographic on animals. The most memorable was the fight of the Elephant Seal as has been apparent by their reenactments this week.

Tuesday- Our neighbor bought Hazel a full-sized bag of M&Ms for Halloween which meant that is all she wanted for 2 days and although her calling them N&N's was cute we had to do something with them quick or Mommy was really going to lose her cool with Little Bit. I have seen the use of M&Ms for math in various places for years and so we made patterns, counted one to one, and worked on drawing circles and writing M's for her.



Jakob made hypotheses on which color he had the most of, tally marks counting, bar graphing and the like. The biggest achievement was the understanding of multiplication. I have been holding off on this for a while because A) there were other concepts he had not grasped I felt were important and B) I wasn't sure how to make it make sense. Well M&M's did the trick. We made groups and counted them and worked out how to write the number sentence. He impressed me with his reasoning skills and his explanations of how things worked. He did an awesome job.




He also started his Inventions Class at the Natural History Museum and LOVED it!! They learned about the simple machines and drew blueprints of their own inventions that would utilize those specific machines. And I got an hour of knitting in YAY!!

Wednesday- The only day this week we had "regular" routine. We also discussed Tree ecosystems and the definition and importance of a healthy forest.

Thursday- My Birthday. Jakob made me the sweetest card while I ran my "birthday run". We went to story time where Daddy convinced him to choose his next state to research as Texas and they spent the time learning/reminiscing about that "Big Ole' State".
We had dinner at the Cheesecake Factory that night (perfect way to negate a four mile run right? lol) and Jakob read, chose and articulated his entire order. While this may not seem like a big deal to some, it was a hug victory for him since he is often timid about speaking up for fear that he will misspeak or "mess up" his words. He's such a perfectionist and it hinders him more often than not in public. But he is growing so much!


Friday- I woke up in the worst mood ever!!! In an effort to shield my kids from my pitiful state, we went to a playgroup playdate and made Pizzas. Jakob was the human toy and "coordinated" little games for the kids to play. This kept them entertained while the Mommy's visited and setup for the pizzas. There was talk of hiring him out for parties. :-) The rest of the day was a wash and after each of us has received and attitude adjustment, hopefully now we can enjoy the weekend and have a more "on track" week next week.

4 comments:

Jamie {See Jamie blog} said...

Looks like a great week -- and good use of the M&M's!

Sarah at SmallWorld said...

The Pumpkin Fairy? That's hilarious!

The Fambros said...

Yeah the Pumpkin Fairy took their offering of candy so she would leave gifts. Great way to get rid of the candy

Samantha said...

Excellent use of the M & M candies! If I remember correctly from when my children were younger, I think there are counting candies math books as well that your children might enjoy. The Pumpkin Fairy? I've never heard of that before - what a good way to get rid of too much candy.

Samantha

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