Weekly Wrap Up; Year #4 Week 30

What an exciting week!  We did so much, met up with friends and family, and just had a fabulous time learning together.  I'm putting together some exciting changes for my blog and we've been busy painting our house.  Spring is a time of change and I am embracing change EVERYWHERE this year; at home, on the blog, with our schooling.  It's exciting and scary.



Math:  We've played Yahtzee; working on multiplication and adding long lists of numbers. Ian has completed 2 more pages in his Key to Fractions book each day while Alec has been working out of the 5th Grade Math Made Easy book; also completing two new pages each day.  Evan spent a few days working with coins; identifying them, matching them, and adding them up.  He also played clock Bingo with me one day and then started working in his new workbooks: My book of Money & My book of Telling Time, completing just one or two pages in each book so far.  He used a Mystery Picture page on addition one day just reviewing simple addition facts of one digit numbers.

Playing telling time bingo from The Measured Mom

The older boys each completed two more pages in their Are You A Math Genius? books and all three boys worked on the next two pages in Multiplication Games.  Alec has been busy building with our Wedgits again.



Geography:  The older two boys decided to battle one another playing Stack the States on their Kindles.  They played side by side and battled to see who would get their states to the line first.  They also tried to see who could put all 50 states into place the fastest with the least amount of mistakes.  That app has been the best tool we've ever downloaded!  Evan decided to put together our talking United States Puzzle at the same time so he occasionally helped out with answers about state shapes or names of capitals.



Intense game of Stack the States

Evan and Ian completely finished their geography fair reports and all three boys have picked out the stamps they'll need for the passports at the fair.  I'll finally have some time freed up to help Alec with his report. Alec watched Beauty and the Beast as part of his France study (a bit of a stretch I know but I could not deny that there were words and french inspired scenery).  Evan, Alec and I read Here is the Arctic Winter one day.

Writing and Language Arts:  Ian and Evan have completed a few more pages in their Draw Write Now books while Alec has worked in his cursive book. Evan worked in his Star Wars book learning about proper and common nouns.  The older two boys also had a mini writing assignment after acting horribly at the grocery store.  I wrote a list of questions for them to answer in complete sentences:  1. What did I do wrong?  2.  How could I behave better next time? etc. They had a good 10 questions and they took their time with their answers.  I told them that it wasn't really a schooling lesson but more of a behavior lesson, however, I could not deny that they were getting writing practice in. All three boys used some of this copywork from Homegrown Learners one day; they were thrilled that it was all based on Narnia! We are once again watching all of the Harry Potter movies and talking a lot about the books.  We also finally got around to watching Mocking Jay part 2 and spent quite some time after the movie discussing how we pictured and remembered things differently from the book reading.

Spelling:  All three boys completed two more pages in each of their Thinking Tree Spelling journals.  The older boys got another mini spelling lesson when they wrote up my grocery list for me while we were in the car. I dictated what we needed and they worked together to sound it all out.  Evan has been spelling up a storm naming and labeling things in his Minecraft world.  Alec has been playing Words with Friends each day.


Reading:  Ian has continued reading Treasure Hunters Down the Nile and read quite a few pages in Strange But True.  Evan has read 5 Green and Speckled Frogs, Antarctica, Pandas, Without You, and Kung Fu Panda Po's Secret Move.  He's also started re-reading an old book each night before bed and before Alec reads aloud to him just for a bit more practice.  Alec read Magnificent 12: The call, a few more chapters in Confronting the Dragon, and several pages in Strange But True. We listened to a book on CD this week called Hate That Cat.  It was a really short story (just one disk) but went through a lot of a poetry and my boys thought it was a riot.


Arts & crafts:  Alec worked on his fairy watercolor kit and just about finished his painting.  He also started work on another stained glass made easy kit; this one is all about safari animals! Ian started putting a truck kit together using his tools.

Ready to build 

The artist at work 

Cross- Curricula:  Alec has also been playing Trivia Crack answering trivia questions across all subjects.

Physical Education:  Ian has been trying to work out at least three times a week mostly using our elliptical.  The boys all had fun at a new friends' house playing, running around outside, and using their trampoline.  The boys and their cousins played all sorts of made up games at the Ecotarium playground and had a great time climbing up the rope net.


Socialization: We went to a new homeschooling families' house (well they aren't new homeschoolers but they are a new family that we've just met).  The boys hit it off fabulously with their kids at the park and were so anxious to go to their house.  We all had such a fabulous day we can't wait to have them over our house.  We also spent a day at my mothers visiting with her, my sister and my nephews.  We spent a day at a museum with them all too!  We had lots of family fun on Easter with a family egg hunt, a brunch with our extended family a looong game of kick ball.

Life Skills:  Ian spent part of the weekend working with his grandfather once again.  He has also been helping me re-paint our hallways.  He's been watching me repair holes (where doorknobs have gone through the walls!) and prep the walls for painting.  He tried his hand at cutting in against a few taped doorways and realized he's better suited to a roller for now.  Alec tried his hand at rolling too but after a few mistakes he decided it was too stressful to continue painting with me.  Evan offered to make everyone French toast one day and learned all the steps involved.  We did some banking this week and Ian filled out his own deposit slip.  I sent him into our local cell phone store by himself one day since he had something he wanted to buy; I parked directly in front of the store and it's small enough that I could see the whole thing so I knew he was safe but it was still a great lesson in being self- sufficient and dealing with salesclerks.

Science:  We've been watering our seeds and checking on them almost daily.  They have sprouted so much and are growing so tall we're talking about re-planting them since it's still to early to plant them outside.


We also watched The Martian over the weekend; while fiction it's still a great science movie! We had some new ducks on our lake Monday and spent the morning watching them trough our binoculars and matching up their markings with the pictures in Alec's birding book.  We decided they are Ring- Necked Ducks. We spent a day at the Ecotarium learning about electricity, animals, momentum, and more.  You can read about our day here.

The plasma ball was a huge hit with all the kids


Comments

  1. Wow! You all got so much done in just one week. We love Draw Write Now books. I think my kiddos are done with them now ~ BooHoo.
    Blessings, Dawn

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    1. My kids used to grudgingly work with the Draw Write Now books but suddenly they LOVE them! It's nice not have to fight with them to write anymore!

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  2. It is truly hard to believe this is a report on only 1 week!!! Wow! I loved your logic for watching Beauty and the Beast. :)

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    1. It's always amazing to me just how much we accomplish in one week; because it really seems like we only "do school" for an hour or so each day! But then I watch them in our after school hours and they show me all the ways in which they continue to learn on their own through play and through life.

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  3. What a busy week! Have you ever heard of the States game by Brainquest? My kids love it. As for trivia crack...I am addicted to that game!!

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    1. I have not heard of that game; my kids LOVE Scrambled States of America and I would love to get them some other games to learn even more about the states. We'll have to look into that one. My son and I enjoy Trivia Crack so much that we went out and bought the board game! We've had lots of fun playing together as a family.

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  4. What a busy week! Have you ever heard of the States game by Brainquest? My kids love it. As for trivia crack...I am addicted to that game!!

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  5. Wow I really like the Ecotarium playground. We don't have one where we are. Sounds like a busy week. I also like the fun books and different ways you get math in. I'm visiting from Weekly Wrap Up.

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    1. Thank you for visiting! We don't have many great playgrounds around our house but we try to stop at different parks and playgrounds whenever we're out on a field trip (if time allows) and have found so many wonderful ones. We just lucked out this week that our field trip destination happened to have a great playground right on site!

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  6. What a fun week of learning, Mother of 3! I love how you incorporate games and puzzles into homeschool learning! We enjoy doing that as well in our homeschool days. Thanks for sharing with #SocialButterflySunday! Hope to see you link up again this week :)

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