Weekly Re-Cap: The Week of our Science Fair

We had another fun and busy week filled with lots of learning, fun and family time.  We've had pretty nice (though chilly) weather and we've been trying our best to spend at least a half hour outside every day.  

Physical Education/Health:  The boys and I spent our Friday afternoon at a local trampoline park for their homeschool jump time.  We had a great time doing tricks on the trampoline and playing dodge ball.  We had an appointment on Monday with the Doctor to try and determine why Evan is always feeling so sick lately.  He was amazing when we get to blood work done with hardly a whimper! The boys have been playing ping pong quite a bit with their dad; trying desperately to beat him.  We went on a walk one sunny day just to get some fresh air and enjoy being outside.  We also played a rousing game of wiffle ball one afternoon taking turns pitching, hitting, running, and fielding the ball.  The younger boys made it to karate this week and spent a fun morning practicing their forms and sparring other students in the class.

Spelling/Language Arts:  The boys had a free write on Friday. Ian set the timer for 10 minutes and wrote about whatever came to his mind while Evan practiced writing all the upper and lower case letters of the alphabet in order.  Alec chose to do a Draw Write Now page on eels.  All three boys also took their spelling tests on Friday and got a 100 so they each moved onto the next list this week.  Evan worked on another unit in his word family book.  They're continuing to fill in a line each day on their 30 days of thankfulness in honor of Thanksgiving.  Some of their answers have been quite comical.  I had no idea that one of Ian's favorite smells that he was thankful for was the smell of diesel! The older boys worked on another page in their grammar books dealing with verb and tenses and a page in their writing books dealing with correcting run-on sentences.  They each worked on some more cursive this week too.

Science/Technology:   All three boys finished up their science fair projects and reports-- finally!  Evan had so much fun making chocolate parrots to go along with his report!

They watched a few episodes of Wild Kratts and attended their science fair.  It was a lot of fun with so many wonderful projects to walk around and learn about. 

We took a mini class at our library learning about the new 3-D printer.  It was so much fun and I'll be writing a full post about that coming soon.

History/ Geography:  Evan, Alec and I played Journey on the Amazon Playzzle.  We also picked a new history topic and requested a bunch of books from our library.

Math: The boys each filled out another two pages in the Multiplication games book from Thinking Tree.  Evan, Alec and I played a good 6 rounds of Zeus on the Loose; it's the first time Evan's played with us and he had a great time.  Alec, Ian and Evan worked in their math books completing two more pages each day.  We started Alec with a new McGraw Hill math book to help him better understand what he's been working so hard to learn; we're hoping a more linear approach to math will help him.  He always understands what he's working on but is having a hard time retaining concepts that are only introduced and dealt with once or twice in each book over the past few years-- like mean, median, mode & the formula for area and perimeter.  Alec enjoyed beating me at both checkers and chess one afternoon; apparently my head was not in either game because I lot quite quickly and with him still having so many pieces on the board!

Life skills:  Ian spent the weekend helping my husband with building the shed.  He nailed in boards and they got the door hung.  He also has been helping his dad just about every night set up a new super duper table saw at the family's woodworking shop.  This week they worked on setting up a vacuum system for all the sawdust.  He looks so forward to actual work!  The younger two boys helped me clean the house and did some laundry for me this week. Evan has been trying to make himself the perfect walking stick.  He has picked up sticks at least twice this week, walked around with them to check length, and then started taking all the bark off of them using his new pocket knife.  I was pretty nervous at first but he's quite careful using these sharp new tools!

 Family Fun:  Alec, Evan and I played Harry Potter Scene it, Trivia Crack the board game, and R2D2 Is in Trouble.  We spent a fun afternoon playing lots of board games.

Reading:  Evan read How to Find Gold to me and stared reading  Roscoe Riley Rules; Don't Swap Your Sweater for a Dog.  Ian finished up The Haunted Hotel and started reading The Invisible Island.   We read a few more chapters in Into the Gauntlet and listened to some more of our book on CD.  Alec found a Golden Compass graphic novel to go along with his chapter book but after a few pages was disgusted to find out that it was nothing like his book so he returned it to the library.   He decided to watch the movie and compare the book to the movie instead.  Alec also found a new series to start reading: Loki's Wolves.