Weekly Review-- Year 4 Week #12

Another wonderful week gone by!  Where do they go?!  I often think of how slowly our days seem to merge into one another but when I look back I'm often amazed as just how quickly the weeks fly right on by.  We've been trying to live life to fullest and balancing schoolwork with life experiences, school with family fun, and planning for the holidays.  It's hard to believe next week is already Thanksgiving but we can't wait to eat all the goodies that come along with it.



Reading-- Evan read This is Spider-Man, These are the Avengers, One Pup's Up, and Where Does the Brown Bear Go?  Alec read Friendship According to Humphrey, Verdi, Zen Socks,  Hermelin the Detective Mouse, and A Passion for Elephants.  Ian read a couple of more chapters in Divergent, I'm Cool, Phineas and Ferb Thumbs Up! , Old MacDonald Had A Woodshop, and Blue Goose.  We finished up our book on CD So You Want to be a Jedi and requested the next book in the series.  I read aloud a few more chapters in The Hero's Guide to Storming the Castle-- we just LOVE this hilarious series.  There's nothing like laughing with my boys over a silly story.

Geography-- We played the Scrambled States of America game and GeoBingo.  We read My Tour of Europe by Teddy Roosevelt, Age 10.

Math/ Engineering-- So far this week we've played Q bits, Yahtzee, and Spot it! Games; adding up scores, using critical thinking skills, visual/ spatial awareness, and problem solving.  All three boys had practice adding up their money, subtracting what they want to spend, and seeing how much they'll have left.  They also worked in their workbooks completing a few more pages.  The boys have been hard at play with their Lego sets; making up new buildings and fences.  Ian dragged out his Structure blocks and has been building garages and towers.  Evan pulled out our Magna- Tiles and made a car and a house.  Alec joined in and since they were running out of Magna- Tiles they checked to see if the Magnaformers would work with them and began building using both sets. Ian watched Modern Marvels: Golden Gate Bridge and all three boys watched The Magic School Bus Under Construction learning more about building bridges.  They worked together to engineer a blanket fort in the living room using our dining room chairs, blankets, and clothespins.  It stayed up for three days and they did most of their schoolwork in there too.  Ian brought along his Extreme dot to dot book in the car and completed a page on a crocodile with 1,339 dots!  He just loves these books.


One of the houses they built


Life Skills/ Self- help-- raking their great aunts yard and earning their own money.  Budgeting their money on what they want to buy.  All three boys decided it was time to clean out our marker bin and organize all the markers.  They worked together to dump them out, sort by color, check each marker to make sure it still worked and then section them off into different piles so each person ended up with the same number of makers and the same colors/ shades of markers too.  They helped make pizzas one night and have been hard at work learning their new chores; our dishes have never been so clean!

Spelling/ Language arts-- Alec has downloaded Words With Friends onto his Kindle and has started playing games with various family members.  Evan completed six pages in his Star Wars reading book; 2 each on proper nouns, verbs and adjectives.  Ian worked on the next page in his spelling book and after re- writing his spelling words Alec asked to be quizzed on them; he'll move onto his new words next week. Ian and Evan completed a Draw Write Now page and asked to order this new book on Native Americans and Colonial times.  Alec chose to work on some cursive instead.

Science-- We spent an afternoon at an Audubon center walking the trails looking for birds, seeds, and wildlife.  We also spent a day at a local science museum playing, exploring, and watching a documentary on the Unseen World. We've also spent a lot of time watching the ducks and geese right here on our lake.  We noticed that the Mergansers came back and have been having so much fun watching them dive and swim underwater.  It's a fun break from watching the wood ducks.

Looking for birds and nests 

Checking out the taxidermy animals 

Playing with the otter

building bridges with Keva planks 

History-- We started our unit on the great depression and the dust bowl.  So far we've read Potato; A Tale from the Great Depression, Born and Bread in the Great Depression, and The Dust Bowl.  We found some really fantastic books.

Art-- We spent an afternoon looking at watercolor paintings of all different species of birds at the Audubon center.  We all spent a morning coloring together; Evan and I ended up finishing up a page in his Color Counts book while the older two boys and I completed a page in Hidden Feathers looking up pictures of all the different species of Macaws and copying the colors we saw.

See the pretty peacock? 

Coloring in our parrots 

Comments

  1. We love Magformers! We have never tried Magnatiles... Putting on our wish list!

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    1. We stumbled upon them at a children's museum; they're super fun on a light table too.

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  2. Hadn't heard of Merganser ducks before - I dont think any of ours are fish eaters. Re French Revolution. Jim Weiss had done a slightly abridged version on CD of G.A. Henty's 'In the Reign of Terror which is quite good. My dc enjoyed it around the age of 9.

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    1. Thank you for the recommendation! Good to know. I found a few books on Marie Antoinette too so I'm slowly building a pile

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  3. We love the SW workbooks. My second grader is working through the reading and math ones. My fourth grader is bummed they don't make them for higher grade levels. :-( I have Magnatiles on my Christmas wish list for the kids right now. They look pretty cool; we will probably give them a try. Have a great weekend.

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    1. All my boys were bummed to find that the Star Wars book were only for pre-k through 2. I'm surprised they don't make them for higher grades; seems like there would be enough interest.

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  4. Wow, I love those toys! We had the blocks when our kids were little, but not the other ones.

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    1. It was certainly a busy constructing kind of week around there. They built with everything they could get their hands on. I just discovered a Q-Ba maze that the put together too.

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  5. What a great week. So many wonderful hands on activities. We love board games.
    Blessings, Dawn

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    1. Thank you. We love board games too and I always think perhaps we don't take advantage of them nearly enough. Every now and then it's time to just pull a bunch of them off the shelf and remember what fun we have!

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    2. Thank you. We love board games too and I always think perhaps we don't take advantage of them nearly enough. Every now and then it's time to just pull a bunch of them off the shelf and remember what fun we have!

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