Weekly Wrapup- April 11-15

Whoa! Another week gone just like that!
We had more plain ole' ordinary homeschool fun this week, but this time I did manage to take a few shots.
Our theme this week was Mud.
Although a Mud theme is quite common in New England, I for one have never really "celebrated" it.
Up here though, you just have to well because.... its everywhere!
Once all that snow and ice melts, that is all that survives. And you are so happy to be in fresh air that doesn't slice you throat as you breathe in you just gotta go play in the mud.
No, there's no way to keep it out of the house either.
I'm starting to see the reason Crocs and Rubber galoshes were invented.

So, mud.
We painted our papermache' birds nest with mud colored paint, dug for worms, made Mud Pie, and gave each other Mud Facials.
We had a mud themed poem, read books about mud and mopped up more mud than you can ever imagine.
Of course the house was a wreck by the end of the week, which is precisely when the property manager called to say he wanted to show our house... in five hours. Opps! Thank goodness for a sunny day in which I could throw my kids outside in is all I have to say.



The day we made mud pie was soo much fun. Jakob has really been putting an effort in to try new and different foods as he is learning that he has been missing out on some tastes because of his pickiness. Well when he saw Mud Pie on the Board for our baking activity he was truly torn.
Mom! Are we really eating mud?
What does it say son?
Mud Pie
Well what kind of pie do you think it is?
*sigh* Mud.
He almost lost it when I gave him a bowl and two spoons and told him to dig up a bowl of dirt for the pie.
Of course we didn't eat dirt.
Its a really unhealthy snack of chocolate cookies, chocolate pudding, and gummy worms for fun. YUMMY!

This week we were able to go out almost every morning for a walk and explore. We had fun identifying the flowers and plants in bloom and mentally noting the ones we didn't know to look up later. I really need to get us a good nature guide for this.
The kids also took time each morning to listen and watch the birds as they are all a flutter. We saw a fight between a couple of males for a female which was really awesome!

Math this week was mostly a review about time and the various ways in which we measure time. We talked about sun dials, the lunar cycle, the Months, and how and why the stars rotate by seasons. Jakob is working on memorizing the poem about the days in the months and he had a little question or two in his math book each day to answer about which month had how many days.

Writing this week was good. Jakob is familiar with the lowercase cursive now and can write almost any word I give him without looking at his prompt page.
We started working on some Upper case letters but quickly realized that the uppercase was in a style not normally taught today. It was the style I learned in school, but now cursive has evolved. So I am looking at the letters and seeing which ones correlate and we worked on those.

Music lessons continue to improve and he is finding great confidence in playing without me. Hazel is also showing interest and I believe I will get her a flute for next year.

Other than that we spent as much time as possible playing outside, organizing for the yard sale, and cleaning up our mud.
Again here are a few books that were enjoyed this week..

Weekly Wrapup April 4-8

So this post gets later and later huh? Time flies when you're having fun I guess.
This past week was truly fun. Not in the exciting adventurous, mom documented everything with the camera type of fun.
But the simple flow of life and embracing the moments type of fun.
I'm really seeing the fruits of my labor as far as planning goes, its exhausting at times but it really makes everything run much smoother.

Math: Jakob finished learning about the 4 processes last week including Divide. We spent a couple of days relating our division to multiplication and working on those. The jewels are helping a lot and seem to be much less distracting than the plastic math cubes I was using before as jewels cannot become airplanes, guns, or magic wands. They really just work well for math. :)

Handwriting: We finished learning the lowercase letters and worked a bit with sentences and such. Jakob asked if he could write his spelling words in cursive and did a wonderful job. I am seeing how working with form drawing has helped the most with perspective and relation here.

Theme work: I have been choosing a seasonal related theme each week and basing our readings and circle time upon that. Its the best way I have come up with to include Hazel and "fill her cup" and still not lose Jakob. This past week's topic was spring animals. We read books about sheep, butterflies, and birds.

Music: Jakob is starting to show interest in privately practicing his penny whistle and is trying to teach himself ahead of our lessons. His fingers are getting stronger as is his breath control. Overall he is very pleased as am I.

In preparation for Easter and decorating we have started to blow eggs for special decorations. I always am torn with the boiling of eggs and dyeing them since they sit out, get warm, and then its a game of roulette if you decide to eat them. So the skill has been firm yet gentle as we have busted PLENTY of eggs this week. Fun times.

Other: This week and the next few weeks will be lighter and a little bit of review as we master the skills we have learned and touch back on others that we haven't in a while. Plus with the impending move and all its preparations I think LIFE will be teaching us more than we can imagine.

And just because I always love to get ideas on books to read to the kids, here's a few that were hits this week with my crew....

Weekly Wrapup March 28- April 1

My oh my the weeks seem to rush by!
You would never know that there are actually MORE hours of daylight now, as I still feel like some days I am still struggling to get it all done.

School this week though seems to have gone well.
Math: This week's journey took us through the 4 processes of math. To compliment the lesson I made these little math gnomes to play with. Meet Plus, Minus, Multiply, and Divide.

We used them and the little jewels they find to come up with various math problems.

While Jakob has already been introduced to 3 of the processes, Divide was new and this method also helped us work a bit more visually with Fact Families.
We have continued Times table work and Roman Numeral work through daily exercises.

For the past few weeks I have been testing out a more organized approach to theme work with Hazel and our circle time. There is nothing tremendous about this just the fact that I am paying attention to her involvement a little more.
This week's theme was Rainbows. We read some truly beautiful books this week.

She also enjoyed listening to a book each day with her headphones. These quiet moments are so valuable when it comes to covering new lesson material with Jakob and not overwhelming a 4 year old with information not at her level.

We took the time to see what colors we could get from plants.
Onions

And Red Cabbage (which originally looks purple, but dyes the cloth blue.... unless you add vinegar and then you get pinkish)

We have saved the vegetable dyes and will be using them for other fun activities in the month.

Jakob has continued with his culinary explorations this week and has made breakfast a few days. Tuesday he made (almost entirely by himself) Macaroni Minestrone Soup for dinner. YUMMMMM.

Jakob made me this surprise while I was knitting. "It's the Lighthouse of Alexandria Mommy! You know, one of the Seven Wonders!" Love this kid.

Each week the kids have a seasonal poem that we recite together. It's simple enough that often-times at least Jakob has it memorized by the end of the week. We perform them for Daddy at the dinner table.

Jakob asked me this week how to get a video on the computer. His uncle is a musician and posts many of his songs on youtube. We also use youtube for any visuals that we need for further explanations. So this week Jakob spent some time creating his own tutorials. You can see them here.

Handwriting has been going well. Jakob is writing with ease words with lowercase letters. He told me he is also looking at other words that he reads and turns them into cursive in his mind. He's so funny when he does this as he unconsciously moves his head as he make the shapes in his mind.

Reading-wise Jakob has moved on to The Boxcar Children. I was unsure if this was too much of a jump in reading levels, but he has really enjoyed the books. He has come downstairs each day from his silent reading time and told me all of the wonderful things that are happening.

I suppose that is a pretty good idea of the goings on in our learning spaces this week. What treasures have you found?

Weekly Wrapup- March 21-25

This week was awesome! Not because there were loads of activities, but because I *think* we FINALLY hit upon a rythm to our day that works both for me and the kids. Even Jakob commented, "This week has been a really good week!" YESSSS!
Math: We continued our exploration of numbers and Roman numerals. Jakob has really enjoyed the riddles suggested in the curriculum. He loves jokes and joke books these days, so a riddle really appeals to him.
He is progressing along very well in becoming comfortable with and memorizing his times tables.
He has mastered skip counting by 7s and we clap them out and hop them out to increase concentration. I can't wait to get outside and play hopscotch with the times tables. There was work on identifying shapes and their prefixes which give clues to the meaning of other words.

Music: Jakob has volunteered to perform for his Scouts troop to earn an arrow and a belt loop, so we've been working on some songs so that he has them down pat. This is such a test of patience on both our parts as he learns the music and teaches his fingers how to make the notes.
Writing: Last week I started to formally instruct Jakob on cursive writing. I held off for so long mainly because I was scared. Images of how cursive assignments from school tormented him kept flashing through my mind, but after finding a very simple program on this site, I felt confident that we could overcome this task. The past two weeks have been awesome! He has taken to writing on his small slate and as we learned new letters we have had so much fun coming up with words to write. Handwriting and spelling all at once! Success!

Handwork: Jakob has been working on his knitting diligently and experimenting with knitting with his eyes closed. Silly Boy. We also had a modeling day where we just sat and made different forms out of playdough. He created a jellyfish, a scoropion, a frying pan for the pancake Hazel made, and an alien ship. Fun times by all.

This week a favorite book was "Cockadoodle-moo!" After reading all the mixed up animals we took a few minutes and drew up some mixed up animals of our own. Jakob even designed special "signs" to represent each animal creation. The symbols looked a lot like the forms we had been working on so I was excited to see them in use.

We have instilled a Gardening Day for our weekly rhythm which can range anywhere from planting and weeding to just watering our seeds. This week we planted grass seed for our easter baskets and started our own fairy garden. I'm hoping to get a few little surprises together to live there with the fairies and gnomes.

Friday evening Daddy came home from school and we went to pick him up at the airport. Originally he was supposed to be in really late so I told the kids we were gona dress up in our pjs and pick up Daddy and go out to eat. Jakob was very skeptical and afraid people would laugh. When the flight was changed to much earlier in the day I opted not to dress out but Hazel would have nothing of it and promptly put on her kitty cat pjs. Jakob played it safe by putting his pjs on OVER his clothes... just in case. In the end he said, "Nobody even cares! This is COOL!"