I Think We Covered it ALL!

Knowing we've had several weeks of just math, reading & either writing or spelling I planned to cover a few more subjects today.

Geography and Sociology:      
We received two more post cards in the mail over the weekend so we read about the states of Kentucky & New York.  We found them on our United States map & reviewed what we knew about them for some geography lessons.

Ian watched quite a few episodes of River Monsters over the course of the last few days learning even more geography on his own.  I love that the show has little factual tid-bits listed at the bottom of the screen for him to read and that he gets to hear some of the people talking in their native languages with subtitles down below.  It's a great way for him to learn sociology and geography because he is so engaged in what is happening.

Science:
 I read The Milky Way and Other Galaxies aloud to the boys as part of our Star Wars unit.  What better way to get them interested in space?  We learned about dark matter, dark energy, the Hubble space telescope & other galaxies.

Of course some of the boys had their own ideas when it came to science today.  Alec and Evan pulled out Alec's galactic ooze to play with after reading the book and played out various scenarios with planets, galaxies, and aliens.

Galaxy ooze 

For math:
The two older boys decided they just wanted to work in their workbooks today and each picked out two more pages.  Alec worked with word problems and real- life application of math facts.  Ian worked more with area of unit shapes.

Evan had a Star Wars page on fractions and I offered to read him My Half Day and Whole-y Cow! to him first.  We read through the two stories and then he had to cut out the picture of the fraction and paste it over the name of the fraction.  He thought it was so simple and he was done in no time.

Reading:
For reading all three boys chose to read a series of simpler books today.  Ian read two short books; Mittens, Where is Max? and Swim, Fish then still asked to read a chapter together in Catching Fire so I was thrilled! At least he's finding a balance between easy and challenging.

Evan read Happy Halloween, Mittens, and then listened to various stories that either I read or Alec read to him.  One of his favorite was Prairie Dog At Home on the Range it's part of a series of books and while Alec does own the whole series Evan and I actually read the book together at the barber shop.

Alec read Happy Halloween Mittens, Mittens, Where is Max?, Pete the Cat and the Bad Banana, and Swim, Fish.  We also read a chapter in Harry Potter while having a picnic lunch.

picnic time! 

Writing/ Manners: 
Each of the boys had a mini writing assignment today as part of school/ manners.  They had behaved poorly for my mom Friday night and I had them each all write a letter of apology.  The boys did a great job and after talking a lot over the weekend about behavior, fighting, and being nice to one another I've seen a huge improvement in how they're acting towards one another and how they're acting for me.

Sight Words:
Evan finished up his school day with a fun sight word activity.  I handed him his sight word stackers and he set up some mini towers all around the living room and on the stairs; he then got out his light saber and knocked them over one by one.  As each tower crashed to the ground he'd pick up the cups and read the word to me.  He was excited to practice and thought the game was a lot of fun.  We put them away as he got them all correct.  He did pretty good but I could tell we hadn't worked with these words in several days.

Light saber sight words 

Sight word towers 

reading the words 

Art:
 Alec and Evan took out the dry erasers and spent part of the morning drawing.  Once Alec filled up our small white board both boys turned to the window and started decorating that.  They took turns drawing and handed markers to each other once they were up high enough to need the step stool.

 Alec and I talked about drawings and different techniques.  We discussed whether or not all 4 legs would be visible in a picture of an animal and when that might not be the case.  He's very good at drawing and can draw elaborate pictures when coping a picture or following some how to instructions.  When drawing from his head he tends to revert back to more stick figure type drawings and that's fine.  I try never to critique or discourage his love of drawing but I will casually point out the details when he's oohing and aahing over some drawing.

the boys combined drawings;
not easy to see when they're on a window!