Our Life in Learning: Weeks 32 and 33 - the last of the "school year"

I randomly declared that we would be "done with school" at the end of last week. We will continue to review our math, Emmett will have reading lessons, and we'll review phonics (via OPGTR) for Abby this summer. We will have unit-study-ish themes where we can do crafts and fun things, but otherwise, we will play and play!

Tot School:

Ellie worked on her own little Veggie Tales lapbook these last two weeks. She loved having her own "book" and carted it everywhere. It accidentally got spilled on and she had the biggest conniption when she had to throw it away. We did make another, though.

She worked on spelling her name. Now she points out Es wherever we go: "E for Ellie!" she says.

She worked puzzles and also did these Melissa and Doug Pattern Block things.

She inserts herself into the older kids' activities whenever she can. She's pretty insistent that she colors the same sheet when the older two do geography.

She played on the iPad plenty. (This little thing was on sale at Target for $8. It's called DuoPlink. We also are enjoying the GameChanger, though it's a bit much for a 2-year-old.)

She loved that we visited both the zoo and the science museum this last week.

Language Arts:

Emmett completed just past lesson in 100 Easy Lessons. He is doing well still.

It was a great time in spelling to pause school because Abby just finished the last step that has to deal with vowel-consonant-e words. She spells them better than she reads them sometimes.

Abby loves her grammar - she even asked to do it over summer break! She has memorized Hearts are Like Doors completely and is set to move on to a different poem this coming week. She is still reviewing proper and common nouns as well.

This week, she focused on memorizing her complete address (including zip code) and my cell phone number.

She has read through a fair amount of lesser known Dr. Seuss works, her favorite being On Beyond Zebra. These are long books with lots of nonsense words!

Math:

Emmett is still familiarizing himself with the rods. He is a great staircase-builder now!

I'm starting him on a bit of Gattegno-esque things that I worked on with Abby back in the fall. He seems to enjoy these lessons...probably because I try to "stump him" and he likes to be un-stump-able!

Abby worked through sections in Singapore Math 1B that have to deal with multiplication, division, and fractions.

She did surprisingly well with these, though division was a newer concept.

We pulled in some Miquon Red to work through talking about "how many fours are in twenty-four?" and that really did help. We still love Miquon!

Daddy also read her some Life of Fred, which she still really loves. She was inspired to draw her OWN picture of Archimedes, even!

Geography:

We learned about South America and Europe these past two weeks.

Gymnastics:

The kids are still loving gymnastics.

Abby even participated in a cartwheel clinic.

She loves to practice her cartwheels and handstands.

Ellie even did the class without me tagging along next to her, which is awesome because Hyrum is becoming more busy as the days go by!

FIAR:

We even did a FIAR unit to go along with our bear theme-ish study. We rowed Another Celebrated Dancing Bear.

Social Studies:

We learned about Russia, including Tchaikovsky. The kids loved listening to the Nutcracker and the 1812 Overture. Abby told us frequently that she was putting on a ballet. :)

Language Arts:

We didn't do a huge formal language portion. We mostly discussed the words that the kids didn't know (glum, samovar, etc).

Art:

We tried our hand at etching and printmaking. It finally evolved into etching into play-doh and then stamping.

Science:

In the book, Max puts the samovar on to boil. Thanks to a love affair with ramen noodle, my kids are familiar with what it looks like when water boils. Instead, we discussed what happens when things boil and how things are made of molecules. I had them be the molecules for the solid, liquid and gas phases.