Week Seven -- The Week That Nearly Wasn't

It's hard settling back into routine after a nice weekend vacation.

So we sort of didn't.

We skipped school on Monday as it was Christopher Columbus Day and all the kids were out. And even though we live so close to a monument of Columbus' three ships, I couldn't bring myself to drag us out the door again. So instead, we did laundry. We cleaned house. We caught up on all errands that had been neglected--oh, wait.

That was all me :P

With the upcoming weekend looking pretty packed as well, we hit cruise control and enjoyed a mild week, hence the lack of pictures.

We did our daily date writing to work on learning how to spell the month and days and practice our handwriting. We started--and have sort of decided to stop--reading Peter Pan. He's showing zero interest. I think we'll try Pinocchio instead and see if that's more up his alley.

We learned about the four types of sentences: declarative, imperative, interrogative, and exclamatory. First, we wrote a sentence for each of the four types

Then I used a free download I found online to read off sentences and have Little Bug tell me which type they were.

Once he had them pretty well memorized, we worked on recognizing the proper punctuation for each type of sentence. I supplied the sentences and he had to fill in with a ? ! or . 

We began the math lesson on +9. This whole way of teaching math is so foreign and intriguing to me and I'm grateful for the DVD lessons because I'm not quite sure I would understand the concept the way they teach it if I didn't have it to refer to. 

Other than that, Little Bug memorized a verse, read a book--one he quickly informed me was something he'd read in kindergarten already--jumped on some bubble wrap packaging because it sounded fun, passed out asleep in the hall with a book late one night, taught Kyle Dog how to go trick-or-treating to increase his candy inflow this year, and dressed up in costumes throughout the week. 

Week Six -- Never Eat Slimy Worms

'Monster Stew is made with dogs.' 

 Halloween is on its way and it's a top three favorite holiday in the Hannah household. Naturally that means we get to do lots of Halloween-y themed things. Like our journal prompts.

This week we learned about maps. We started off with seeing where we were locally and then expanding all the way out to our solar system.

We made a compass and learned the importance of Never Eating Slimy Worms. This led to a discussion where I explained it wasn't really kosher to eat worms in general unless you were in a culture where worm-eating was considered a delicacy and even then it'd probably be best to politely decline. I don't think that message got through . . .

In math we started solving for 'what number' which is eerily similar to some pre-algebra stuff and it gave me bad flashbacks. So far it looks like Little Bug is far better at math than I ever was.

We drew our own map of the house complete with a legend and compass.

And then he used the map to give me directions to different areas in the house. While wearing a dalmatian costume. Because everything is better in costume.

We finished Charlotte's Web!! Which is good because it was a week overdue at the library and the librarian wasn't thrilled. But then, she never seems thrilled about anything other than sighing and making her lovely patrons feel like an inconvenience :) So in honor of finishing the book, we rented the movie and had a family movie night.

There's nothing quite like watching your little one's innocence crumble to the floor like sand when they show *spoiler alert* Charlotte's death scene montage set to music. Good thing we haven't watched Old Yeller. So it's on to a new classic now-                                                                                     -Peter Pan!

Week Five -- Verb Is the Word

With a good grasp on nouns, we moved on to learning about verbs. Being as a verb is an action, I didn't think we'd want to sit around doing a lot of worksheets. We started the week out with drawing a verb word from the jar and performing the action.

Little Mario saved the day by picking a verb and matching it to the correct item. He may have taken the game a little too literally when he took a bite out of the paper mushroom o.O















By the end of the week we were ready to sort both nouns and verbs.

Little Bug's great behavior with Mrs. Rebecca earned him a special treat. It's much more fun to write out some digraphs in shaving cream than with a pencil ;)

We don't really get to see the leaves change in this part of Spain. But that doesn't keep us from starting some fun fall activities, like our fingerprint leaf tree.









We also started learning our +2 facts in math and only have two chapters left in Charlotte's Web :)

Week Four -- Senses and Symphonies

 This week we focused on the 5 senses. Our experiment consisted of some serious science-ing with a grahamfuls cracker. 

Sadly, our grahamful didn't offer up anything good for the 'hearing' section of our paper, though Little Bug was convinced if you listened extra hard you could hear it whispering ;)

The poor kiddo is probably sick to death of doing

a daily handwriting sheet. When he counted out how many more letter sheets we have until we finish the alphabet he was ecstatic. I'm waiting until next week to burst his bubble and inform him that we'll be moving on to handwriting sheets with several sentences.

 

 I'm going to have to stop letting him help me pick out his journal prompts too, as I'm seeing he just chooses whichever one is shortest. Devious lil child. He gets that from his dad.

Our character development for the week was on finding purpose and our verse was Proverbs 19:21. Little Bug made a picture of something God had made him good at.

We started our music lessons with Mrs. Heather this week! Focusing on our Term 1 composer, Haydn, Cole learned about the Surprise Symphony and the terms to describe the volume in music, piano through forte. I don't think anyone was surprised that Cole excels at not only identifying, but also demonstrating the forte level.









While I plan to get him back out to the shore to view and sketch the ocean now that it's cloudy and stormy more frequently, we kicked it in the kitchen and made a jello aquarium with fish as part of our nature study that you can read more about here.









We made some great strides in our reading and spelling lessons with Mrs. R. Now when he reads he sounds out the words he doesn't know so well. And his spelling is getting great. So great that I have to make sure I put my laptop away when I leave the room or otherwise he'll go to my friends' pages to work on spelling out some of his favorite words on their wall, in a message, and even commenting on their status. Words such as pooooooop. (Oh I wish I were kidding.)

We ended the week by cashing in our behavior stars for a trip to the bowling alley.   

The Jello Aquarium That Looked Super Cool and Tasted Pretty Bad

So I figured we could just use some blue Hawaiian Punch to get the right color of Ocean Water. 

We made it according to the jello instructions . . .

and it looked to be just right.

















I waited a few minutes too long to slip in the Swedish Fish and ended up crumbling some of the top layer of jello.

Y'all, Blue Hawaiian fruit punch might be a tasty lil drink. But as a jello it was disgusting. A mix of elmer's glue (not that I've ever eaten paste . . .) and those really stout striped mints you used to find in your Grandma's candy dish. Luckily, Little Bug was just after the Swedish Fish anyway and was perfectly content to toss the rest out.

             

Week Three -- Fishing for Nouns and Singing About Snails

If there were any doubt that Schoolhouse Rock could stand the test of time, this noun song proved it (at least it did in our household). We've viewed it at least ten times and he's still asking to watch it again. (This, and song about interjections because a boy gets a shot in the rump and Little Bug found it vastly amusing.)

So with the noun introduction out of the way, we moved on to some real work. Liiiiike going jellyfishing with spongebob for nouns. Each jellyfish had a word. If it was a noun, it went in our "net".

Okay. Then we really did do some work throughout the rest of the week with nouns. 

We started our section on subtraction in math.

 Little Bug also started his reading and spelling lessons with Mrs. R. The lessons are fast-paced, but stretch that short attention he has which is great.

We built our own ocean model based off this tutorial to learn about ocean zones. There's more about that project here.  

 And for our character development this week, we followed this lesson from meaningful mama on patience. He especially liked the snail song.

And of course we made sure we had plenty of time to play.

                        

The Ocean Zones

While walking the shore line is fun, we needed to acquainted with the critters that live a bit further out than we could explore. So we started off by reading some from Ocean Habitats (both of us getting a little case of the wiggins when they showed pictures of the weird looking fish that live in the deeper waters.)

 

For each zone, we cut a strip of cardstock and added stickers of the animals that live there.

 Then we glued the strips in order on the back of an empty, clear container. 

Then all we needed was some "ocean water" and a good shake.