Saturday, August 24, 2013

Back to School!

We finally started back up this week! We had done one week in June and ended up taking the summer off. I'm glad to be back in the swing of things and so are the kids. Here's there's first day of school pics. I officially have a 4th grader kindergartner, preschooler and of course the new addition who is 1 month old! 

Exploring Countries and Cultures  

We had started week two back in June so we spread the other 3 days out over the week. In science we read about plants and trees and Chelsea started her leaf collection. We have a flower press so that will eventually be used to press the leaves. 

For the history/geography portion we read from Maps and Globes about different types of maps and she got to use a map I drew of our yard to find her "treasure" which was the cake mix for our world cake which she made on Friday


Treasure hunt



World cake! 

Chelsea baked the cake and frosted it on her own with just a little supervision from mom! She's quite the little baker! Instead of blue and green frosting we used colored sugar from the store. Everyone enjoyed the cake for dessert after dinner! 

Math

In her Saxon book it's still a lot of review but much needed since we took the summer off. We worked on odd/even, adding several numbers, finding missing numbers and more. She is enjoying the DIVE program but the homework part not so much. She can do the work but that's the problem, it's work and she's not a big fan of math. We worked out way through though and she did well on her first test. 

Reading/English/Spelling

For reading this year we are using A Beka third grade reading. This week we used their Handbook for Reading to practice and review phonics skills. 

We worked on reading poetry and sentence structure for English lessons and completed the first unit of the spelling program which is also from A Beka. Chelsea seems to like the workbook style spelling program but I do think we will need to use some of the word study skills used last year with Spelling Power. Many of the mistakes made on Friday's test were one letter mistakes so she's close on the couple she missed.

Bible

Bible lessons this week were readings in Window on the World about different religions around the world, Islam, Judaism and Hinduism. I've learned about the other religions in college courses but it was a first for my kids other than just a quick mention and we had a few questions about why people believed or did certain things. 


Kindergarten

Our unit this week was Oo Octopus! We have had a lot of fun making octopus pictures with our hands, octopus hot dogs for lunch and a BIG ocean mural that friends helped Hunter and Natalie make. 

In reading we continued practicing the blend ladder and reading simple words. Hunter is doing a good job with it. The blend ladder he likes to try to add his own ending sounds to the sounds when we just have two. He's full of energy so getting him to focus is a challenge sometimes too! 

In math we worked on the 100 chart and calendar skills. Hunter had a fun page with an octopus where he wrote the numbers 1-8 to number the octopus arms. He then cut out rectangles and we practiced using a ruler for the first time to measure one rectangle and then put them all in a line and measured the line. He used the rectangles to make one big square and one big rectangle. 

Octopus hot dog. They all got a big kick out of these! 
Hunter Natalie and their friends Audrey and Bre helping with the ocean mural
The finished project! 

Preschool

Natalie has a workbook from Rod and Staff that we have been working on but for the majority of the time she follows along with Hunter's activities like the mural painting or other activities. In her book she practiced tracing lines and making X's as well as coloring, cutting and sorting shapes.


It's been a fun week and we're excited to start our country studies with ECC and continue working through our K and preschool stuff! Any fun ideas for our next kindergarten unit W for water? 


2 comments:

  1. Thanks for sharing your week! Looks like it was fun for everyone.

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    Replies
    1. Yes a bit crazy but fun none the less! thanks for stopping by!

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