Week In Review- Week #2 Year 4

With two doctors appointments, an orthodontic appointment, and a dentist appointment this week we were pretty busy just keeping up with life.  Somehow we still managed to squeeze in lots of fun activities, some school work, and lots of physical activity! We're just not giving up on summer fun yet.  We're finding ways to balance all that we'd still like to do while squeezing in schoolwork here and there too.



Reading-- Alec read The Dragon Keeper, finished Night Whispers, and started Garden of the Purple Dragon.  Evan finished Meerkats and read a few of the Sight Word Tales books: One by One, and Some Dogs are Very Good.  Ian started reading the first few chapters of Divergent by himself!  We finished listening to When Life Gives You OJ and listened to the book How To Be a Pirate.  We also read a few more chapters in The Hero's Guide to Saving Your Kingdom.  We spent one morning reading a bunch of nursery rhymes; one local town has a reading stops set along it's walking trail and this month they're displaying nursery rhymes with pictures from local artists.
Here's one of the rhymes with it's illustration 


Science-- While it may sound a bit weird; we had a great time learning about science at a local amusement park.  We spent a family day at Canobie Lake Park and had many discussions about the science behind the rides. We checked out the gears running the roller coasters, talked about gravity, momentum, and centrifugal force.  We went for a nature walk one morning between appointments.  It hasn't rained here in a while and we're checking out all the differences in local lakes and rivers now that the water is so low.  The boys have found a few more Wild Kratts episodes to watch that we had never seen before so we learned about ring tailed lemurs and Aye- Ayes.

Health/ nutrition/ Physical Education-- We've been spending quite a lot of time talking about health and nutrition.  In the past week and a half all three boys have had doctor's appointments for physicals. Ian ended up in the ER with a fishing hook in his finger and we got to see the x-ray machines and get a brief explanation about how they work.  We set Ian up with a food/ exercise log to help him keep better track of his food choices and he's been working really hard to include more movement in his day.  We've been on many family bike rides up and down our road getting Evan comfortable riding before we start going on longer rides on roads with actual cars (though we attempted that one night this week too and he did amazing!).  The boys have been soaking up every last swimming day that they can and enjoying many more tubing rides.  Ian and his father went walking down the river one night trying their hand at fishing the local river.  They encountered many beaver dams and had to even swim at times.  The boys have been swimming across the lake while I've kayaked or swam alongside them.  We've walked the river trail and have used our exercise machine; taking turns to make sure we all get a good workout in.



Life Skills-- Ian spent a good portion of the weekend working with his father splitting wood for winter.  He mostly ran the excavator and used it to help pick up large logs and load them onto the wood splitter.  It simply amazes me to watch him running equipment; he's so good at it and he looks so grown up!  I swear he was born with an innate ability to drive and understand machines.  We all spent a bit of time this week learning about newborns too.  My sister had a baby and we went to visit her, bring her some food and gifts, and ooh and ah over the newest addition to our family.  I compared the baby to the boys actual birth weights to give them idea of the sizes they were when they were born.  Evan could not get over how tiny the baby's hands, fingernails, and feet were.

History/ Geography-- We've started a unit on the Vietnam War and the country of Vietnam.  We found it on the map, talked about it's climate and read America's White Table.  We also re-watched Families of Vietnam and read The Lotus Seed.  We've also read a few more Felix books (Felix and the flying Suitcase as well as Felix Explores Planet Earth) and completed a few of the activities found in The Felix Activity Book.  We just love reading about the wonderful adventures of this little bunny.  His letters home are adorable!

Math-- The boys have been continuing to work on their math minutes and in their math workbooks.  We also went shopping and the boys used their own money to buy some things for themselves; making sure to add up what they were spending in their heads and counting out their own money to pay for it.  Alec noticed that one series of movies we were looking at used the Roman numerals; a system he had just learned about in his math book.  Evan spent quite a bit of time in the car asking me if he had the answers correct for various addition sentences he was making up.

Socialization-- We had some friends over to play this week and had a wonderful day playing in the lake.  The boys also had fun meeting their new doctors and talking up a storm to all the nurses and secretaries.  We went to lots of stores, the library a few times, and in general just talked to a lot of people of all ages and sizes this week.  Debunking that socialization myth one day at a time!

Weekly Wrap-Up


Comments

  1. I admit I hadn't really thought about all the science behind amusement park rides, but what a fun way to study mechanics and such!

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    Replies
    1. It all started a few years ago when we watched The Science of Disney Imagineering videos; they take a behind the scenes look at all the science concepts that the Disney rides use. We now apply that to all the park rides wherever we go.

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  2. Awesome! We love the science of disney videos.
    Blessings, Dawn

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I think we've watched them a few times each. We're huge fans of anything Disney here.

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