Nov 4-10 Recap

A friend of mine has been blogging a journal recap of their homeschool week.  I LOVE reading them, so I thought I'd try it for myself as a way to log our work and organize my brain and pictures.

Math

Both N and X continue Teaching Textbooks 4.  Since it's the beginning lessons a lot is still review-ish, which they both enjoy.  Review = easy + high scores!  They've been adding large numbers with re-grouping and reviewing place value, money, and time.

Reading/Spelling

Xavier still journeys through his Rod and Staff 2 while Natalee goes through her Rod and Staff 4.  I've found that Xavier has a high retention rate for whatever we are learning but we are focusing a lot on reading and following the directions.  His spelling words are what he classifies as "easy," so I've been buckling down more on having them written with proper capital/lowercase letters (versus a random capital letter in the middle of a word, etc.).  

Natalee's reading has gotten more challenging and we are learning lots!  Antonyms, synonyms, homophones, and dictionary use are all being brought into her curriculum.  

Our family read aloud is The Lewis and Clark Expedition and all of us are learning a lot!

Writing

Both kids recently wrote a new Story Path story (video to come!).  Instead of just writing, I am now introducing peer/teacher editing.  This is hard, both learning to take and give constructive criticism, but such a necessary part of learning!  Pray for us.  Ha!

Science

We started a food chain/web unit and are having a lot of fun with it.  Each day this week, the kids made a separate food chain.  They had to research (via supervised google searches and reference manuals) what the animals on the chain ate, what ate them, and then link them together, assigning them a role as the producer, primary/secondary/tertiary consumers.  The first two days the animals were assigned - the last day they developed their own.  THEN we took all those chains and made a massive food web!  This was a little confusing until they got the hang of it, but it was fun to see them make the connections.

After we made the 3D web, I had them choose 1 chain to draw.  They drew it out in a circle, and then I sat with them and helped them web it out by asking questions like "what else can eat ___" or "what else does ___ eat?"  They used the research on their links to easy access the answers they couldn't remember.

Their food webs ended up looking similar even though they started with different chains.  Magic of the food web.

We used our Bee Bot (coding robot) to review food web vocabulary words (producer, consumer, herbivore/carnivore/omnivore, scavenger, ecosystem, population, predator, prey, etc.)

Chelsie brought STEM activities to Bible study Friday morning for the kids.  Natalee did a few of them, but then helped her friend Kalyn watch the babies in the nursery.  Xavier, however, LOVED them and worked for at least 2 hours on challenges!  What fun.  Thanks, Chelsie.

History

In history, we've won the Revolutionary War and have begun writing the Constitution.  Our history reading is slowly taking us through the events that took place to make our nation.  As I learn alongside the kids, I long for everyone to have the opportunity to really learn the history of our nation.  The kids are enjoying watching their way through the Liberty Kids DVD episodes a couple a week and it's fun to hear them say "hey, we learned that!" when something we've covered comes across an episode.  They have also been reading together, fiction books that are historical to the time period.  They recently finished George Washington's Spies and have begun Justin Morgan Had a Horse.  We also continue to read the Rush Revere books out loud when we find time!  

Non Core

We are reviewing in Spanish, using Pim TV and Salsa videos to hear the language spoken.

In addition to Bible reading, the kids started a Philippians video series this week via Right Now Media.  They've enjoyed this little change of pace!

Story Hour at the Library this week focused on poetry and the kids really enjoyed the Shel Silverstein silly poems!

Xavier finished a basketball camp at the public school on Saturday (technically last week).  It was 4 sessions and he seemed to really enjoy it.

We also had art journaling, where we started a pop up flower project, and the girls had ballet.

Ameliya continues a letter a week.  This week N.  She doesn't have it's sound quite memorized yet, but we'll keep reviewing. 
She did sit down on her own the other day and filled this entire page with capital N's.  She was so proud!

Then she told me she wrote them in a pattern - a line of big ones, a line of smaller ones, big ones, smaller ones.  That made me smile. 
We continue patterning, counting, daily calendar, and lots of reading together.  Ameliya dances through each week with her hair fixed and her clothes fashionable.

(a video from 10/28)

Our friends came on Thursday so Mia got to play with Rylee and I got to snuggle little Eli.

Zayden tempted fate this week and dipped his toes fully in the waters of trouble.  He colored on his bed, tore up his window shade, took numerous toys from others, and all around had a lot of training this week.  Mom is tired.  Ha.  However, he also had a great week in undies with no accidents and we are proud of him.  He's 3 now, so I'm sure being naughty will go away with the 2's. (grin)