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.

Life:

• We saw this huge bubble idea online somewhere and thought it would be neat to do.

Later, we filled it with water!

Then, we sprayed water on top and it became a big, bouncy, waterbed-slash-slip-and-slide!

• We planted our garden!

• We also are planning on watching a tadpole on his journey to becoming a full-grown frog!

• The kids have also spent a lot of time outside, where they've seen plenty of caterpillars!

Hyrum has no fear of creepy crawlies!

Safety goggles are optional!

• And Hyrum is fully into the stage of pull-everything-off-the-shelf!

• Hyrum is also learning to walk!  

He just has to become braver about taking those steps!

Week 13

ABCs:

Well, I really am slacking on this. This week I have no excuse for not doing it...except fot hat it's really hard to think of a fairly simple craft using k or x. I think we'll have to do a hokey "xylophone" or something for x... and maybe kick for k? We'll see what I come up with.

Math:

We reviewed addition over ten with "making tens" and subtracting when there aren't enough ones by "decomposing a ten." Abby understands these concepts, but is slow to complete it. She'd much rather solve the problem using an addition sentence she knows: "Eight and two is ten. So...eight and four is twelve!" I'm okay with this as long as she understands HOW to make ten. We call it having the numbers "share."

We are scheduled to really finish up Singapore 1A this week. I need to buy Challenging Word Problems and Intensive Practice. I think those are what we will take on our three-week-vacation next month.

We have also been fiddling with a few puzzles from MEP math. They should be review, but they are a different type of problems than Abby is used to seeing. She's not sure she likes them because they do make her think.

We also did a few review questions that involved having multiple addends. Again, we are trying to do a few things "out of the box" so she is exposed to different types of problems and solutions.

Emmett did some more sums and counting, but nothing formal. He wasn't up for any of that and I don't want to push.

The rods still get played with by Ellie too. Her favorite one is the purple one she tells me. She likes to do what the older kids do. She has no clue she's younger than they are.

Spelling:

We finished off All About Spelling 1 this week. It has been a long time coming since I really dropped how frequently we used the program and also slowed down to a crawl on the lessons we did do. We'll keep reviewing what she's learned, but won't pick up AAS 2 until January.

Reading:

We have been listening to How to Eat Fried Worms on audiobook. We have read a ton of picture books. I still have yet to read the Radish Cure to Abby. I'm really hoping to get to that this week.

Abby has chugged along in her Me and My Monsters book. In her free time, she's been reading Mr. Putty and Tabby books by Cynthia Rylant.

FIAR:

Like nearly everyone using FIAR, we thought it would be a good idea to row Cranberry Thanksgiving this week to prep for Thanskgiving. It's out of print, so I had to request it from the library. I'm actually amazed we got it in in time to row it this week!

Social Studies:

• We could have reviewed the history of Thanksgiving, but I'm planning that for next week. Instead, we discussed where New England is.

Language Arts:

• This book has text all over the place! During one reading, I had Abby point out the different places the manuscript can be placed in a book.

Art:

• One of the last pages of the book has Grandmother, Maggie and Mr. Whiskers sitting in front of the fire, done in silhouettes. We made our own silhouettes and talked reviewed what are considered warm and cool colors.

Science:

• The book has a line which reads, "Mr. Horace was starched" or something to that effect. We discussed starch and what it does.
• We extracted starch from a potato.

• We tested various things with iodine to see if they contained starch. I first showed the kids how the iodine would react with the remnants of our potato project. Then, we tested different foods with the iodine.

• Of course, discussing starch meant we had to play with some oobleck.

Other:

• We also tried out some craisins and cranberry apple juice.

Swim:

This past week was the last week of swim for the year. The next session won't start up again until February.

Emmett did okay in his Level 3/4 class. He is physically capable, but having difficulty honing the maturity needed to really excel with a group class. He worked on dives and endurance most of this session. Next session we will see if he's matured a bit more to really focus in the class. His teacher tells us no four-year-old should be able to do like he does and affectionately calls him a freak of nature.

Abby did okay with her Level 2 class. Her teacher doesn't seem to get through to her with the what is required...she still needs to figure how to breathe during freestyle as well as work on her breast stroke.

Ellie has done well with splitting her time between a preschool class and a mom-and-tot class. She's advanced to the point where she can go a few body lengths on her own and has started to really enjoy swimming. She likes "going under water."

Religion:

This week we read about Nephi retrieving the brass plates. We read the story in several different places. We made Jerusalem with blocks and then destroyed it.

We made brass plates out of graham crackers and frosting and wrote on them with tooth picks.

We also watched the animated version from the Living Scriptures, Nephi and the Brass Plates. While we watched, we each chose a picture from the activity book and colored that page. Then, after the movie, we reviewed by putting our pages in the order they happened.

Other:

I actually enticed Ellie to color a picture the other day. She doesn't care for coloring much, but this was a picture of Baby Jaguar and she is currently in a Diego-is-the-neatest stage.

We made Thanksgiving cards one night. They came out pretty cute.

Lest you think that the older kids are the only ones learning anything, here is Hyrum and his new-ish trick!

(While he looks pretty steady here, the truth is he only sits for about five minutes max before he either folds in half or topples over. Small and steady steps and he'll get better and better!)