Week of 01 May

Phonics/Reading:

Abby's reading is coming along fine. We are finding that she tries to guess the word based on context and pictures, which can be hazardous since I want her to learn to decode unfamiliar words with phonics. Luckily, her Funnix 2 lessons don't have any pictures until the second reading so she does a lot better with those stories because in some ways she is forced to say it a sound at a time. She completed lesson 24 this week. While she CAN read harder books, she still gravitates to early readers for the large font, small amount of text per page and pictures.

ABCs:

Emmett's letter this week was W. He's pretty solid with his letters now, which is nice. He still loves to do them. Here he is saying, "W says wwww" as he wrote his Ws. He only actually does a worksheet/tracing on Fridays, the very last day we do letters.

Unit Study:

We are still working on weather. Monday night, we let the kids stay up late and have a "special night" to do this tornado in a bottle.

We also finished up our weather observation charts! Emmett LOVED this part.

This week we really focused on the water cycle. We read The Magic School Bus Wet All Over, which was a great introduction to the water cycle. The kids love MSB. I found a catchy little tune online that outlines the water cycle (to the tune of Clementine):

Evaporation, Condensation, Precipitation on my mind.

These are the parts of the water cycle,

And they happen all the time!

We took a day each week to focus on each part of the water cycle.

We did some experiments on evaporation. We put some water on the cement in the sun and then in the shade and observed what happened. In the last one, I had asked Abby what happened to the water and she responded, "It went up in the air!"

Then I asked Abby if only the sun could evaporate water or could we use another form of heat. She hypothesized it was only the sun, but was definitely willing to change her opinion when we boiled some water.

We made a cloud in a jar by watching boiling water evaporate and then condense at the top of the jar. Daddy was flying when we did this one, and he was kind of bummed he didn't get to see it. Apparently he's never done anything like this. I guess if/when we repeat it he can run it.

The next day, we held a cardboard piece over some boiling water and let the steam condense under the cardboard. When it got too overloaded with water molecules, it started to "rain" back into our pot. Unfortunately, I didn't get any pictures of that one. Trying to keep a toddler away from the hot stove and explaining the cycle and holding the cardboard precluded me from taking any pictures.

Read-Alouds:

We finished The Littles! I have yet to decide what we'll move into next. I think we may wait to start another chapter book until after this baby is born...so we may just keep on reading picture books, which the kids love too.

Life:

We visited the Yukon Festival of the Child on Saturday. There were all kinds of exhibits to see. There was a neat "Mad Science" booth that had this tornado simulator. Even Ellie was pointing excitedly at it. Abby was also overheard telling the lady running it that "rain is only one form of precipitation." LOL

Of course, there were other things to see and do. When Ellie saw this, she immediately wanted to climb inside.

The music area was a big hit.

But both Abby and Emmett told us later that day that this part was their favorite! Of course!

Week of 24 Apr

Phonics/Reading:

We're still doing about a lesson a day in Funnix 2. Abby completed up to lesson 19 this week.

ABCs:

Emmett and I discussed the letter T this week. I think Emmett's got all the letter sounds down if I ask him what such-and-such letter says. Now I'm starting to spin the question to, "What letter says XYZ?" He still needs letter review, though, because I can tell his sounds are very much rote repetition from the Letter Factory. I want him to know the letters and their sounds inside and out before I even look at jumping ahead to other things. There's no point in rushing it...he's only 3.5. He has no grasp of beginning sounds at this point, so even if I tried to push him, it would only result in frustration because developmentally, he is not there.

This is our T is for Tornado sheet we did this week. He loved doing the spiral shape. He also likes to try and attempt writing the word, though you can tell he is still all of 3.5 and has the fine motor skills to go with it. He just thinks he's bigger! :)

Unit Study:

We took a break from FIAR this week to work on a unit on the weather. We talked about rain and snow and tornadoes and flooding, etc. We observed weather and the clouds. It was a great week to take off and talk about those things because we had quite the varied weather: windy, sunny, rainy, cloudy!

Doing our weather observation chart was a perfect way to practice our scissor skills. Emmett's fascination with scissors and all-things-cutting have really helped him to figure out what is the best way to hold them and how to work it. Abby still gets confused on how to hold the scissors.

We discussed how the weather influences how we play and what we wear. We talked about how if it's sunny we don't typically wear a winter jacket, and we don't go normally swimming outdoors when it's snowing outside. And then we engaged in some weather appropriate play!

We played Mother May I.

We also played Simon Says.

We watched a video on the weather with a snack.

I also took a moment with Abby to talk about the tornadoes that ravaged the south this past week. We discussed how we live in an area where tornadoes happen. We talked about tornado sirens and ways we can protect ourselves from tornadoes. And then we watched a video of lots of severe storms (tornadoes, floods, blizzards, etc).

As a topping to our week, I thought we'd head to our local science museum where I remember them having a section on weather and tornadoes especially. Unfortunately, they are in the process of re-making that area. Which is neat because it was a bit run-down, but a bummer because we didn't get to see what I was planning. We did check out the newly painted wall with all kinds of different weather phenomenon.

We still have a tornado to make out of some two-liter bottles. I'm waiting until we finish the soda inside them, though! (That'll probably happen early next week.)

Swim:

The kids' swim lessons have been very busy. The coming summer season makes everyone want to teach their kids to swim, I guess. Our kids' class is traditionally for children 6 and up, and yet our 3-year-old and nearly-5-year-old are in the top of their class. This session the head guy has pulled Abby aside a few times to encourage her to swim more than she does. She tends to overthink and freak out that she can't do it. He also worked on diving with the kids and commented that Abby really can dive. He said, if he had to put a number on it, that she goes at least 6 feet down. They still love their class more than ever. We all can't wait for summer to hurry and get here so they can have more pool exposure.

Read-Aloud:

We only have three chapters of The Littles left! I guess I should start deciding on another chapter book. Emmett doesn't have much attention span for a chapter book, so I have him pick his own picture book for read-alouds too. My goal is to get him to be interested and paying more attention to the actual story in a book...not just the pictures.

(Yes, this is what storytime looks like sometimes...nose-picking and all!)

Life:

On Friday, Abby started showing symptoms of strep. Since then, everyone has been sick. We have all three kids on antibiotics and are waiting for everything to clear up so we can start sleeping again.

We also noticed that our blackberry bushes are blossoming! All that rain has been helping!

Next week? The water cycle!