Weekly Wrapup- Jan 3-7

This week of course was our first week "back at school" and boy did we have fun! Back in November I decided to take advantage of a sale and purchased a Waldorf Curriculum through "A Little Garden Flower". I'm not a HUGE curriculum fan as a general rule but I felt the need to make things simpler, and free up a bit of time with the planning so I wasn't tempted to be on the computer all day (not that it EVER happens lol)

ANYWAYS!! I am totally in love with this curriculum. It focuses on one main subject in blocks so this month we are working on a math block of measurements. For fun we have been learning about older methods of Biblical measurement like the cubit. We reread the story of Noah and looked specifically at the measurements of the Ark. Then we took a length of wood I had cut at Lowes that was equal to 4 cubits long and started to measure out the length of the Ark. Such an awesome way to work on our skip counting by 4's review. Well it was cold, and windy outside so we decided to measure the width of the Ark instead. It was pretty cool.

The rest of the week was spent measuring and imagining different things.

The favorite this week was by far the music lessons. Jakob has a guitar that neither of us know how to play so when the curriculum came with music lessons I was stoked. Now we are learning to read music together and play the Tin Penny Whistle (like the recorder). So much fun! Jakob said he wished we could play music everyday. And we will once I get Hazel one too so that we can actually make some progress. Maybe after we master the whistle I will feel confident enough to work through the guitar, or maybe Jakob will on his own.

The Lesson Plans run on a 4 day a week schedule which is great for us since Thursdays we usually spend at our local Library for Story Time, and general outing day. For the afternoon though I decided to utilize this time as "Fun Science Experiment Time". I'm a Literature Girl so Science although is fun, does not come natural to me. Which is a shame because Jakob LOVES Science. So I took out my trusty Janice Vancleave Science book and the cloud book I had checked out from the Library and we went to town discovering how water forms and changes in a cloud. We also did an experiment to see what falls faster a rain drop or a snowflake when they both have the same amount of water in them.

For this we used 2 coffee filters and crumpled one up to be the "drop" of rain and left the other flat to be the "snowflake". The kids lifted them up and let them fall and determined that, "The "rain" falls faster because its a ball and the "snowflake" falls faster because its spread out and catches the air like my paper airplane." :-)

Thursday was also our first celebration using the Waldorf Method, Three Kings Day or Epiphany. Now I know that Waldorf did not create this but the premise I have gathered so far is to embrace various seasonal celebrations from around the world as a family. This brings rhythm and learning in a seasonal fashion. And cake. Who doesn't love cake? *grin*

The kids and I made a cake recipe from "Festivals Family and Food" and Jakob learned how to separate egg whites and yolks. I wasn't sure how this was all going to play out with his sensory aversions to slime and dirt but he LOVED it!

We took down the decorations, sang some songs, and read a cute little Epiphany Tree story. Then we took the tree out of the house. To be honest I was a little sad to see it go. It was our first real tree as a family. Hazel actually cried. It was all very touching. I'm sure we weren't able to fully grasp the intended meaning of the celebration but it seemed very fitting to spend the day in this fashion on our last day with our Tree.

This week has taken a turn on the Reading front. Over the Christmas "Break" Jakob discovered The Captain Underpants Book series. He has been devouring each book as I have requested them from the library. He has even been waking up and reading them until breakfast. Super cool. Not my idea of "quality" when it comes to literature, but at this point I'm willing to let him read cereal boxes if it encourages his love of reading.

We are also still reading the Guardians of GaHoole series. I thought we were done with that excitement but when we took a break over Christmas from lunchtime reads Jakob constantly requested another adventure from Gahoole.

Scouting is coming right along for Jakob and we are only a few little requirements away from completing his Bear Badge. Monday at Scouts he made a Toolbox. He was allowed to cut the wood and attach with screws and everything. He loved it!! I'm thinking I might need to hire him to make me some planter boxes for my gardening attempts this summer. ;-)

Well that's pretty much it. The week has been nice. We all have learned loads and benefited from our new choices. Now to go play in the Snow!!